Teacher planning tools for a cross-curricular CS program
Client: Raspberry Pi Foundation, Experience CS curriculum team
My role: Contracted instructional designer supporting the curriculum team
Scope of contribution: Designed and built a curriculum map, key vocabulary repository, and four getting-started tutorials. Developed and organized a professional development library using content provided by the Foundation. My work complemented the human-delivered implementation support provided by the Foundation's PD partners and customer success staff.
Timeline: July 2025 to present
Public artifacts: Experience CS website, Getting Started page, Teaching Resources, curriculum map, vocabulary repository
Project context
The Experience CS curriculum embeds computer science into other subject areas, including math and science. The cross-curricular design creates strong opportunities for schools, and it also creates practical planning complexity for the adults implementing the curriculum. The Foundation's curriculum team had developed strong student-facing materials and wanted to invest in the adult-facing layer that supports teacher planning, onboarding, and cross-referencing across units.
What I contributed
I designed and built three teacher-facing resources:
A curriculum map that shows how each unit aligns to standards across content areas. The map currently covers 12 units, with each unit containing 5 to 8 lessons.
A key vocabulary repository that shows when terms are introduced and revisited across the curriculum, helping educators decide when to teach a term explicitly and when a quick reminder is enough.
Four getting-started tutorials for educators new to the curriculum. These went through multiple rounds of iteration, including review by the Foundation's copy team, and were later translated into additional languages.
I also developed and organized a professional development library for the Foundation's PD partners, using content provided by the Foundation. My role was to structure the library so PD partners could find and use what they needed efficiently. The content itself was developed by the Foundation.
This work sat inside a broader implementation system that the Foundation operates. The Foundation's PD partners handle direct implementation support with schools. The Foundation's customer success staff handle ongoing district relationships. My role was to design the digital complement to that human-delivered infrastructure, not to replace it.
Design decisions and approach
Terminology consistency across materials
Enforced consistent terminology across unit overviews, lesson plans, and slide decks. Where inconsistencies existed, I flagged and corrected them. This strengthened the accuracy of both my resources and the underlying curriculum materials.
Navigation built for speed
Teachers planning during a preparation period do not have time to hunt. A clear table of contents, quick-reference structures, and predictable layouts were built in from the start.
Multiple representations of the same information
Grade, unit, and lesson-level views were all made available. Different people in a district need to see the curriculum from different angles at different times.
Accessibility built in, not added on
Color was never the only way to communicate meaning. Structure, headings, and text alternatives were part of the design from the first draft.
Selected examples
The following public-facing resources reflect this body of work:
Experience CS website: an overview of the program and its cross-curricular approach.
Getting Started page: the teacher-facing entry point designed to help educators begin implementation.
Teaching Resources page: the collection of implementation supports for educators using the curriculum.
Curriculum map: the planning tool showing unit-to-standard alignment across content areas.
Key vocabulary repository: the cross-unit reference showing when terms are introduced and revisited.
Project notes
The curriculum map landed well enough that some schools began using it as a template for mapping other subject areas in their buildings. That was not in the original scope. It was a sign that the tool met a real need, and it reinforced a pattern I have seen before: adult-facing planning resources are often the most direct lever for improving curriculum implementation, especially in cross-curricular programs where teachers need to see the content from multiple angles at once.
This project reflects instructional design work completed in a contracted capacity for the Raspberry Pi Foundation's Experience CS curriculum team. I was not hired by and do not represent the Raspberry Pi Foundation.