Many of the enhancements and updates to Curriculum Trak for this quarter were related to making the Lesson Planner feature more robust. Part of these were made as part of the responses to the major overhaul of the lesson planner made in December of 2019. Others were identified strategically in advance of possible Spring adoption of the Lesson Planner for Curriculum Trak schools currently considering this feature.

Expanded Lesson Attachments Options: At the request of teachers/administrators, the types of attachments available for lesson plans has been expanded to match the options available at the unit plan level This now includes links, Google Docs, and Page with Text in addition to files.

Facts SIS Syncing: A couple of changes have been made to further support schools syncing their lesson plans with FACTS SIS.

  • The biggest of these is the ability to limit how far into the future scheduled lesson plans will sync to FACTS SIS in the overnight sync. Schools can now define the exact number of days into the future they want lessons to sync (through the end of the current school year). By default this setting is defined as seven days.
  • Another significant change is making the FACTS SIS Integration report more visible/accessible in the Lessons Menu (rather than hidden in the setup area).

Lesson Instructional Methods Feature Added: The option for CT Admins to add a list of instructional methods (i.e. – assessment types, differentiation strategies, accommodations, etc.) to the lesson planning area. These options can be reported out at a school level to review diversity, inclusion, and other patterns of use.

Lesson Planner Menu/Reporting Overhaul: The variety of reports available in the Lessons Menu were overhauled to more logically follow user permissions. Menu headings were changed to provide more clarity based on desired reporting activity. CT Admins can now see most reports related to support and accountability in addition to specific reports for Lesson Plan Reviewers. Lesson Plan Reviewers can see support and accountability reports specific to their area of responsibilities (attached teachers), and the “Teacher Tools” area is now reserved specifically to only the content perceived to be relevant the teacher’s specific area of instruction.

No School Days Limited to Current Year: Logic was added to prevent “No School Days” from being added outside of the school current year. Errors were being made from time to time adding no school days for hundreds of years past or present which led to a time-out error for the account. This is now being prevented.

Textbook Course Information Included in Print View: Textbook information, added through the Course Information button on the Curriculum Mapping or Unit Planning view, is now included in the PDF/Print view of the maps.

Printing Multiple Lessons: Corrected error occurring when at teacher attempted to print multiple lessons. This included how the lesson records were pulled and the order in which they were printed.

Setting Lesson Plan Reviewers: We have simplified the steps for setting lesson plan reviewers. Rather than a two-step process completed in two separate areas, all of the steps required for defining lesson plan reviewers is now completed in the Users Database. Click the option and attach reviewers all in the same screen.

New Service: End of Year Review – Curriculum Trak is now offering an end of year review for school leaders. This paid service ($50 fee) provides a one-hour webconference with the Curriculum Trak Support team to guide curriculum leaders through the specific tools available for their most effective review.

Network Building: Curriculum Trak has made intentional efforts to promote the network of faith-based schools. Both prior to and during the pandemic concerns. We enhanced our efforts in some of the following areas:

  • Expanding our relationships with publishers and curriculum design organizations.
  • Offering webinars and web conferences to encourage and connect educators around the world.
  • Planning curriculum-specific webinars to support changing planning needs.