Rigorous Curriculum Design: How to Create Curricular Units of Study That Align Standards, Instructi

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 contexts
• Expansion of content to include "lessons learned" by school and district leaders who are in years 1, 2, and 3 of RCD implementation
• Success stories from school systems that have implemented the RCD model and experienced improved student learning on state exams