Rigorous Curriculum Design: How to Create Curricular Units of Study That Align Standards, Instruction, and Assessment

Rigorous Curriculum Design (“RCD”) presents a carefully sequenced, hands-on model for educators and curriculum designers. The RCD model has proven to be effective in school districts across the US, and it serves as a road map so that educators may design a progression of units of study that keep standards, instruction, and assessment tightly focused and connected. Applicable to every grade, course, and content area—and fitting in to all sets of standards, you will learn: What a rigorous curriculum is and how to create, sequence, and pace such a curriculum.Why seeing the 'big picture' connections first is essential to beginning curriculum design.How to lay the foundational steps for designing a rigorous pre-K–12 curriculum.How to design a grade- or course-specific curricular unit of study, from start to finish.How to use formative assessments and data analysis to guide instruction before, during, and after each unit.How leaders can organize, implement, and sustain this model throughout the school and/or school system. This new edition of RCD shares updates and enhancements to the process, gained through nearly a decade of learnings from myriad schools. Updates and new additions include:  Greater applicability to every state’s unique set of learning standards, through Standards examples that illustrate each step. An important new focus on relevance in the design of rigorous curricular units of study, meaning the inclusion of real-world problems that are both predictable and unpredictable, situations that afford students the opportunity to apply their learning in realistic contextsExpansion of content to include “lessons learned” by school and district leaders who are in years 1, 2, and 3 of RCD implementationSuccess stories from school systems that have implemented the RCD model and experienced improved student learning on state exams Read more