7 Best Practices for Building a Multimodal, Online Elementary Curriculum: A Course Designer Shares the Process That Her Virtual School Uses to Create STEAM and Humanities Content

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] WITH MANY STATES requiring students to complete one or more online courses to be eligible for high school graduation, virtual schooling has taken off in K-12 education. According to iNACOL's Fast Facts About Online Learning, in 2013, 29 states and Washington, DC, offered their students full-time online school options. However, almost 75 percent of the 1,816,400 enrollments were at the high school level and focused on course recovery. There were far fewer students in sixth through eighth grades, and even fewer still in grades K-5. There are several reasons for such low enrollment at the lower grade levels: 1) Not as many full-time virtual programs exist for these age groups; 2) parents or learning guides must commit to facilitating daily student learning; and 3) standards-aligned, interactive, engaging curriculum is difficult--if not impossible--to find. I'm sure you've heard the saying, If you want something done right, you've got to do it yourself. Well, that is exactly what our virtual elementary school decided to do. We used the following best practices to build and implement humanities and STEAM curricula for our K-5 virtual school program. Determine Your Virtual School's Needs Determining the needs of your students, staff and parents/learning guides requires student data analysis, a thorough investigation of the curriculum you are currently using and providing stakeholders with the opportunity to present feedback. First, look at student performance data in reading and math to spot achievement trends and identify areas for improvement. Conduct an alignment analysis on your current curriculum to determine which core standards, if any, are addressed and how they are being assessed. Be sure to evaluate whether or not the curriculum offers teachers a way to differentiate instruction for individual students, has accommodations for ESE and ELL students and includes instructional guidance for parents/learning guides. It is also important to survey the virtual teachers and parents/ learning guides to gain their input about the successful or unsuccessful components of your current virtual program. Once you know the needs of your program, you can create one or two specific statements that will clearly define and focus your online content creation process. Build a Committed Team It is critical to assemble a team consisting of both teachers and administrators who understand the project goals, work well together and are committed to the curriculum process. There may be times when team members have personality conflicts, differences of opinion and varied priorities, but knowing how to engage in difficult conversations, using effective problem-solving strategies and being open to compromise are essential skills for all team participants. Agree on a Vision Creating a vision for your virtual program is a good team-building activity that brings focus to the project and can serve as a guide when making future decisions. Start by having each team member create a personal vision statement for the program. They could ask themselves, If my child were enrolled in a virtual program, what would I want it to look like? or What would I expect from my child's virtual teacher? Once all team members have created their personal vision statements, the team should work together to look for commonalities, combine them and develop a collaborative vision statement that will represent the program. Once the statement is complete, creating a video and posting it on your virtual program's website is a great way to communicate your vision to current and potential families, as well as to all community stakeholders. Review the Standards and the Current Curriculum Understanding the core curriculum standards and determining how you plan to assess them should drive the writing of your online curriculum. Determining what students will need to know and do is imperative to student success. …