Curriculum Essentials
Format of Documents
Curriculum Essentials are available as interactive PDFs for Mathematics, Science and Social Studies at Grades 1 to 8.
Each interactive PDF consists of three pages:
- Grade at a Glance, with links to the provincial curriculum documents
- Curriculum Overview, with links to the provincial curriculum documents
- Processes, skills, practices and/or competencies
The PDFs can be printed as 11" x 17" or 8 1/2" x 14".
PAGE 1 Grade at a Glance
The Grade at a Glance infographic is the first layer that provides the visual consistency across curricula and synthesizes multiple outcomes to the barest essentials within strands or clusters. The big ideas and related grade-level specific learning outcomes appear in columns.
The columns represent:
- the strands in mathematics,
- the thematic clusters in science,
- the thematic clusters in Social Studies.
Specific learning outcomes related to each big idea/curriculum essential are linked on the interactive PDF to the exact page in the corresponding provincial curriculum documents.
The yellow arrow across the top of the columns and wrapping around the columns highlights the foundational and enduring processes, skills, practices or competencies of each subject area. Grade level knowledge and understanding essentials are important, but they are achieved in tandem with foundational practices, processes, skills, competences and mental dispositions that deepen and extend throughout the grades. In the interactive PDF, these are linked to a description of the item. (These descriptions are also printable as a third page for use in professional learning sessions.)
In mathematics, knowledge and processes are sequential, due to the nature of the discipline. In science and social studies, knowledge and understanding may be particular to a grade level, but the practices develop across the grade levels. Knowledge and understanding processes, skills and practices are deployed together in service of big ideas that deepen students' understanding and have enduring value beyond the classroom.
PAGE 2 Curriculum Overview
The Curriculum Overview supports the Grade at a Glance infographic. Because each subject’s curriculum framework is structured differently, the supporting overviews are a bridge between the infographic and the provincial curriculum document. The overviews are arranged in ways that reflect each subject area's curriculum.
On the Mathematics Curriculum Overview, arrows indicate the concepts/ideas that have been previously introduced or are being introduced for the first time. This helps you see what is foundational to future understanding and where you may need to fill in a gap for a student within the sequence of Mathematics. A legend in the lower right corner explains the meaning of the different arrows.
The Report Card categories are clearly indicated along the left side in Social Studies and Science. In Mathematics, the Report Card categories are shown in the arrow shape at the bottom of the Curriculum Overview because the mathematical processes are interwoven throughout the Knowledge and Understanding category.
Note that the background colours are tied to the covers of the Curriculum Frameworks for ease of reference (purple for Science, etc.).
PAGE 3 Processes, Skills, Practices and/or Competencies
This chart provides a general description of the underlying processes, skills, practices and/or competencies inherent in each subject area that are developed across the grades by being integrated throughout learning experiences.
