There’s a huge advantage reorganizing to have thematic standards. When I went through my standards and changed them to thematic standards, I gained so much! First I went from 5 days of final exam review to five weeks of final exam review.
In addition to helping out the pace of the curriculum, thematic organization helped my students. I notice that when my course was reorganized, my students were able to learn better and faster. When each of my units connected to the last and the next, my students built knowledge better.
How to organize thematic standards?
You can organize thematically in one of two ways. You can either group your standards thematically, or you can group your units thematically. If you are going to organize thematic standards, you have to collectively look at all of your standards. Then you group them based on a particular underlying theme. Standards that are based on the same theme should be taught near each other in your curriculum calendar.
If you are going to organize thematic units, you have to look at all of them first. Then you want units that are of the same theme to line up in sequence.
My example of thematic standards
My course used to be organized differently, but now they are organized thematically. Now my first semester of chemistry is considered micro chemistry. All of the units teach about the small parts of chemistry that we can’t see with our own eyes. The entire second semester is considered macro chemistry, which is the chemistry we can see in our every day lives.
When I organized my course thematically, I was floored at the amount of time I gained in my curriculum calendar. I was also surprised at how much my students were understanding compared to other organizations in other years.
When you get all of this time back, just from strategic sequencing of standards, you have so much more time to do this things you want in your classroom. You can get my standard sequencing pages for free here. It will help you to organize your standards and units thematically. You will also get an example of how I do this in my chemistry classroom.
