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Teaching Librarian 18 Ontario School Library Association snaked across the resource center as teachers from various subject areas consulted curricu- lum diaries, wrote their content information on cue cards, and placed the cards on the giant chart. A power surge of discovery filled the room as teachers began to have meaningful dialogue. The visual evidence of redundancies and incon- sistencies was immediately apparent. Science and mathematics were huddled over their duplicate data management cards. Music and English were in another corner discussing the timing of a report writing assignment. Music had just realized that by delaying the assign- ment one month the students would reap the benefits of applying a skill recently taught in another subject area. French immersion and English had a substantial stack of redundant topics. We had found true north on our cur- riculum compass! A post meeting survey indicated that we had struck a chord with staff but had generated many more questions. We set targets that were determined collaboratively, focused on meas- urable results, and were subject to reflective revision. Each grade level would document content over the school year, thus enabling dis- cussion across subject areas. A planning team consisting of an administrator, the teacher- librarian, a resource teacher and a teacher rep- resentatives from each grade level would exam- ine vertical planning over the span of three years and would communicate to colleagues about gaps and redundancies on this long range map. Teachers quickly came to realize that they needed to progress rapidly to the next stage and add skills to their map. As the teacher- librarian, because of the unprecedented atten- tion being placed on both information literacy and technology literacy, I was able to find will- ing collaborators to develop a three-year plan "You need a passport to go from class toclass in this building," moaned Ryan, agrade 7 student. Much time was wasted, he continued, just figuring out what each teacher required, especially in terms of research assignments. Little did Ryan know that his teachers were experiencing their own struggle to understand curriculum and pro- gram delivery. At the time, high stakes testing had added its requirements to an unprecedented flood of cur- riculum and instructional data. Novice and experienced teachers were struggling to stay barely ahead of this unrelenting avalanche. Sensing that staff would be receptive to any reasonable solution, I proposed we test the planning strategy outlined by Heidi Hayes Jacobs in her book Mapping the Big Picture. Use of this tool would allow for extensive col- laboration as we shared planning tasks and built a scaffold of related learning experiences over the three senior school years. Might we be better able to train new staff, solve prob- lems, and ultimately deliver a three-year mid- dle school program which required no pass- port? With the critically important involvement of the administration, our team established a set of common goals around curriculum mapping. Consensus was needed on a fairly large scale in order to justify this focus in our staff profes- sional development, so we decided we would begin with content, as suggested by Jacobs, because it was the least threatening element. We would ask everyone to come to the plan- ning table with a retrospective overview of the past school year's teaching content. Mural paper, divided into months of the school year, Margaret Nieradka IC T @ y ou r li b ra ry ® CURRIC ULUM MAPPIN G Evolving from Theme Thinkers to Problem So lver s