Understanding the curriculum

A guide for new teachers (and teachers new to North Carolina).

(Photograph by Sydney Brown. More about the photograph)

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• Carolina Online Teacher Program (COLT): Now you can earn a LEARN NC Certificate in online instruction through the Carolina Online Teacher program (COLT). In five core courses and two electives, totaling a minimum of 17 CEUs, you’ll master the component skills of online teaching: effective collaboration and facilitation, creating learning communities, navigating the virtual classroom, and developing student-centered instruction.

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• Learn more about curriculum and new teacher support.

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The core of LEARN NC’s website is resources that help you understand the curriculum, find content to meet it, and teach it more effectively.

The Standard Course of Study

LEARN NC provides the complete text of the North Carolina Standard Course of Study, the state’s K–12 curriculum, in an easy-to-use matrix format: just click on the grade level and subject area you teach, then navigate through an expandable list of goals and objectives. Then, when you click on the objective you need to teach, you’ll find a list of relevant instructional resources from our collection.

North Carolina Professional Teaching Standards

To help teachers satisfy the criteria of the North Carolina Professional Teaching Standards and the accompanying teacher evaluation instrument, we’re aligning all of our resources for professional development to the new standards. Just as you can find resources for your classroom by goal and objective of the Standard Course of Study, you can now find resources for your career organized by the professional standards they meet.

Lesson plans

LEARN NC’s lesson plan collection includes thousands of instructional plans correlated to the North Carolina Standard Course of Study. Most were authored by experienced North Carolina educators; some are provided by respected education organizations across the country; all have been reviewed by LEARN NC staff to make sure that they meet standards of quality and appropriateness for North Carolina classrooms. You can browse the collection by grade level, subject area, and goal and objective of the Standard Course of Study, or search to find exactly the plan you’re looking for.

Articles on innovative instructional strategies

LEARN NC’s best-practice articles on K–12 teaching and learning provide perspectives of real teachers on topics from classroom management to integrating technology to teaching reading, math, science, and history.

Excellent educational websites

Instructify

Instructify, LEARN NC’s blog of free technology for teachers, posts daily articles about tools and tricks that teachers can use in their classrooms to engage 21st-century learners. Instructify examines technology with an eye toward what it is, what it does, and how to use it in class.

Best of the Web

LEARN NC’s Best of the Web collection includes annotated links to 3,000 websites that provide high-quality educational content and professional development related to all areas of North Carolina’s K–12 curriculum. We’ve reviewed each website to ensure that it not only has excellent content but also is safe and appropriate for students to use for independent research. Many sites are annotated with additional suggestions for teachers on "Teaching with this resource" in your classroom.