The short answer
A scope and sequence is the progression layer: what a curriculum covers and the order in which learning develops. A curriculum map is the working layer: the connected record of units, objectives, assessments, resources and evidence that sits behind it.
You can read a scope and sequence in ten minutes. You plan from a curriculum map every week.
| Scope and sequence | Curriculum map |
|---|---|
| Shows what is covered and in what order | Shows what is planned, taught and assessed, and how it connects |
| High level, often a few pages per subject | Detailed, down to units and lessons |
| Read by leaders, coordinators and visiting teams | Used by teachers in day-to-day planning |
| Changes slowly, at a review | Changes through the year as teaching changes |
| Answers: is the progression sound? | Answers: what is actually happening, and where is the evidence? |
What a scope and sequence is good at
Its strength is that it is short. A whole school can look at it at once and ask whether a concept develops or merely repeats, whether Grade 6 assumes something Grade 5 never taught, or whether the sciences and humanities are pulling in different directions.
Because it is short it is also blunt. It says that a concept is introduced in one year and applied in another; it does not say how, or what students produced.
What a curriculum map is good at
A curriculum map holds the detail: units, the objectives or criteria they serve, the assessments, the resources, and where the evidence sits. That connectedness is what lets a school answer questions about what happened, rather than what was intended.
The price is size. A full map is too large to review in one sitting, which is why a school also wants a shorter view of it.
How the two should relate
Treat the scope and sequence as a view of the map, not a second document. If the two are maintained separately they will disagree within a year, and a school that cannot say which is right has neither.
In practice: one working record that teachers plan in, and a progression summary generated or refreshed from it for the reviews that need the whole picture.
Which one does an IB school need?
Both, in the sense that the IB expects a written curriculum that shows progression and is planned collaboratively, and the school needs a working record to make that true. The IB does not prescribe the format of either, and its programme documentation is the authority on what it requires of each programme.
If you have time for only one, build the map and derive the summary from it. The reverse produces a tidy document with nothing behind it. The map is built in how to create a curriculum map for an IB school, and the summary in scope and sequence for IB schools.
Where skodle fits
This section names our own product, so read it as that. The distinction above is true whatever you use.
skodle is built around the second document. Maps, units and lessons are records, a map is versioned by cloning, and for PYP and MYP units a gap report counts overused and unused concepts and unmapped or unassessed objectives from the mappings people approve, which is the nearest thing it has to the review a scope and sequence supports. The PYP programme of inquiry is a live year-by-theme grid. Detail is on the curriculum planning page.
The limits. skodle does not produce a scope and sequence document or a year-by-year progression view, so the summary layer is still something your team writes and keeps. The analysis covers PYP and MYP units, and its counts are only as sound as the mappings behind them. Cambridge and CBSE run through the school structure and framework-tagged unit planning instead, and a Cambridge syllabus is not modelled the way an MYP unit is.
A practical recommendation
Keep the scope and sequence short enough that the whole staff can review it in a meeting, and let the map carry everything else. Review the summary annually against the map, and when they disagree, treat the map as the record and correct the summary.
Choosing a tool for the pair
Whatever you pick, test whether the progression view updates when a unit changes, and whether a change to the map leaves a record of what it was before. A tool that makes you edit both by hand has recreated the problem.
