What is "curriculum"?
A curriculum is a plan that guides what educators teach and do with children each day. It includes activities, materials, and strategies for supporting children’s learning and development through play and interaction and can be adapted to fit each classroom’s needs. Programs may use a published curriculum, create their own, or combine multiple curricula to support different areas of learning.
Characteristics of a “high-quality curriculum”
- Provides developmentally appropriate, evidence-based learning experiences
- Includes open-ended, hands-on learning experiences with rich, high-quality, varied, diverse, and age-appropriate texts and materials
- Is organized around structured, flexible and play-based routines
- Is responsive to learners with varied interests, skill levels, cultures, and languages,
- Offers multiple ways to engage in learning experiences (e.g., through movement, words and songs, and sensory experiences)
- Is organized around clear learning goals aligned with the Massachusetts Early Learning Guidelines
- Uses appropriate assessments to document children’s progress towards learning goals and guide teacher decisions
- Promotes partnerships with families
How can programs identify high-quality curriculum?
- Facilitated curriculum quality reviews engage program leaders and educators in assessing the quality of a curriculum. This process guides program staff to identify a curriculum’s strengths and weaknesses in order to enhance their curriculum’s quality and implementation supports.
- Curriculum quality reports provide information about a published curriculum’s quality. These reports summarize the results of an independent, validated curriculum quality review process. They describe a curriculum’s quality, including the curriculum’s strengths and weaknesses, and summarize the curriculum's materials and implementation supports.
Additional Resources
- Curriculum Quality Review Rubrics
EEC has developed Curriculum Quality Review Rubrics that provide detailed descriptions of criteria for high-quality early childhood curriculum. Preschool, Toddler, Infant, and Mixed-Age Holistic Curriculum Quality Rubrics describe the characteristics of high-quality curriculum for the appropriate curriculum type. EEC has also developed Preschool Language and Literacy, Social Emotional, and Mathematics Curriculum Quality Rubrics. These rubrics describe how preschool curriculum can demonstrate quality in the relevant learning domain. In addition, the Out-of-School Time Program Materials Quality Review Rubric describes the characteristics of high-quality materials used in Out-of-School Time programs, like curriculum, guidebooks, and frameworks. - Curriculum Reports
EEC has reviewed select publicly available curriculum using the Curriculum Quality Review Rubrics. These Curriculum Quality Reports provide short summaries of each curriculum, including what the curriculum includes and what trainings the publisher offers. In addition, the reports provide information about the curriculum's quality, including the strengths and weaknesses.
To learn more about identifying high-quality curriculum, participating in a facilitated curriculum quality review, or accessing information about rubrics, reports, or other curriculum-related resources on this page, please contact Jennifer Crandell at jennifer.crandell@mass.gov.