Understanding Curriculum and Courses

This article explains how curriculum and courses work in Forefront. 

Watch the Course Configuration webinar recording on demand here.

Terminology in Forefront

• Assessment: sets of questions or observational frameworks with defined scores, performance levels, and Standards alignments
• Program: sets of assessments, can be grouped into “parts”
• Curriculum: the assessments, standards systems, and documents
• Subject: can be used to organize curricula
• Lens: a way to highlight key standards or combine standards systems (Read more about lenses here.)
• Course: one or more curricula and associated documents and report cards
• Class: a group of students in a school with a teacher and a course

Examples of Course Set-Ups

An elementary school teacher has: 

• one class of students 
• in the course third grade
• subjects are math, science, social studies and ELA, which are each a curriculum with their own programs of assessments.

A middle school teacher:

• teaches the subject math
• she has several classes in the course Sixth-Grade Math
• has lenses to look at assessment results through the lenses of state standards, priority standards, and historic student data.

A large school district allows teachers to choose between two math instructional systems. 

• For each grade level course
• teachers choose between curricula of the systems, to have the correct assessments and programs.

How To Set Up Courses

Single-Subject Course

Prerequisites: Users must have a district management level role to configure courses.

Step 1: Navigate to the courses page. Click “Courses” in the left side navigation, then click “Create New Course.”

Step 2: Name the course and select the applicable grade level(s).

Step 3: In-app text explains next steps. Click “Create curriculum.”

Step 4: Name the curriculum as prompted.

Step 5: Select or create the subject.

Step 6: Configure standards lenses.

Read about lenses and setup how-to here.

Step 7: Add assessments by clicking “Add assessments” and browsing for the appropriate assessments.

 

Step 8: Add parent reports (if applicable).

 

For more information on standards-based grading report card configuration, click here to watch a webinar on-demand.

Multi-Curriculum or Multi-Subject Course

To configure a multi-subject course, follow the above steps. Then:

Click the three dots in the upper right corner. Then add a new curriculum, or a new subject and new curriculum.

Follow the same steps again to create additional curricula.

Need more support?

Submit a support request or email our team at support@forefront.education.