Vertical Articulation

The Goal:

Empower schools, PLCs, and teachers to progressively enrich civics instruction.

The Strategy:

Develop and implement sequential, vertically articulated, overarching standards-aligned curriculum maps designed to spiral and reinforce recurring civic understandings through all required social studies courses from grades 6 through 12.

The How:

By scaling up the Understanding by Design® framework, Civic Learning Threads™ links each topic and content standard in each social studies course with its assigned Big Idea Thread, Essential Vocabulary Thread, C3 thread and thinking standard, literacy standard, lesson content sources, and balanced formative assessment.

This ensures students enter their next social studies year with relevant prior learning, and that each new topic is channeled as ‘primer learning’ for what comes next.