Sequence Adapted Curricula

In order for a school to implement the SAL Approach, the curriculum needs to be adjusted.  In reality, the curriculum approach is more streamlined with a SAL school.  Each course represents a specific block of knowledge, there is no need to keep repeating content in the classes.  Each class is not burdened with the need to review a wide variety of pre-requisite material, and students are never placed in classes they are not ready to take.  The class syllabus can assume a common level of knowledge has been achieved by enrolled students.

Eliminate Boring Review Material

At the beginning of each new school year,  the curricula usually provides endless review of previous content.  This is an essential tool to bring up students who are not ready for the course.  The down side is that advanced students are bored out of their minds and mentally check out of the course, eventually never checking back in.  Another downside is that teachers rarely get through the new material and students just keep learning less and less.

Develop Unique Courses

Sequence-adapted curricula does not contain a significant duplication of past content in each course, each course presents new and unique material.  When students are carefully placed in their courses through the intake assessment process, all students experience challenging material within their grasp.

However, a school, may want to re-enforce certain concepts, and include the same material in multiple courses. The desire to re-enforce learning is different than reviewing past concepts at the cost of learning new material.  Sequence-adapted curricula may well contain repeated lessons for the purpose of re-enforcement.

School Driven Syllabi

SAL schools look at their collective set of syllabi as the school's own educational program, ensuring the the each class covers the material in the planned sequential order.  Where traditional schools level the syllabus to the teacher to develop, the SAL approach transfers the development of each class syllabus to the school as a whole.  This transfer of responsibility is essential to ensure that students are truly prepared for the next level of learning, and that all students start the class off with the minimum readiness level.

Intake Assessment tied to the Curricula

In order to make decisions about the courses a student is ready for, the student must take an assessment prior to enrollment in those classes.  The results of the assessment must be able to point to the courses the student should be assigned if the assessment is to be useful.  SAL tightly connects the assessment with the class readiness expectations.

Specialized Intensive Coursework

In cases where a student is falling way below the mark, specialized intensive coursework must be developed so that students can get back on track.  This coursework should cover the bare-bones sequence of educational content required to bring the student back to normalized performance. 

SAL schools have demonstrated that all students greatly improve with an intensive course focusing on their learning gaps, and most are restored to normalized performance within a term or two of specializing learning.

Sequence-adapted learning can not be properly implemented unless the 'intensive courses' are developed and made available to specific students who are in need to remedial education.