Comprehensive Arts Curriculum

Curricular materials must be anchored in developmentally appropriate instructional approaches, allowing students to progress through four developmental stages: Creative Exploration (PreK–2),  Arts Integration (3–5), Exploratory Choice (6–8), Artistic Pathways (9–12).

Comprehensive curricula include teacher- and student-facing resources, course, unit, and lesson materials, and embedded assessments, all developed simultaneously and derived from arts learning standards. Comprehensive curricula provide educators and students with everything they need for the entire year, but also guides educators to create custom experiences for the students they are working with.

Curricular Sources

Participants were asked to choose the three sources they used most often, ranked from 1 (most often) to 3.

Strategies:

1. Develop and implement a comprehensive, standards-aligned, and culturally responsive PreK–12 arts curriculum. This district wide curriculum will be anchored in four developmentally appropriate instructional approaches—PreK–2 Creative Exploration, 3–5 Arts Integration, 6–8 Exploratory Choice, and 9–12 Artistic Pathways—and will include vertically aligned learning progressions, high-quality core units, and assessment tools.
2. Integrate curated supplemental materials from Chicago’s rich ecosystem of arts organizations, providing educators with diverse, flexible, and locally relevant resources to support high-quality implementation across all school models and instructional contexts.
3. Develop a system to track the arts curricula being implemented in schools, and if those curricula meet the definition of high-quality, in order to provide targeted supports and professional learning to applicable groups. This is called for in the district’s Continuous Improvement and Data Transparency (CIDT) policy.