By the end of this guide you'll know how to build a curriculum — a reusable teaching plan — and store plans, materials and preparation tasks on each topic so your work survives beyond a single school year.
Why curricula matter
A lesson on the calendar is tied to a date. When the year ends, that calendar fills up again — but the thinking you put into titles, plans and files should not disappear with it.
A curriculum is your durable plan for a school and subject, used by one or more classes. Inside it, each topic is one piece of that plan: what you intend to teach, roughly how long it takes, the lesson plan text, materials and todos.
Think of it this way:
| On the calendar | In the curriculum |
|---|---|
| A dated lesson you teach this week | A reusable topic you can apply again |
| Materials for that one occurrence | Topic materials you keep for next year |
| Prep status for today | Prep tasks you can copy onto future lessons |
You can build a curriculum from scratch (this guide), import it from past lessons, or grow it one lesson at a time from the calendar. Then you apply it back when you teach.
Open Curriculum Management
From the sidebar, open Curricula. The page is Curriculum Management — create, organise and apply curricula from here.
Create a curriculum
- 1
Click New Curriculum
On the Curriculum Management page, click New Curriculum.
- 2
Fill in the basics
In Create New Curriculum:
- Curriculum Name (required) — e.g. “Year 10 Biology — Core”
- Description (optional)
- School and Subject (required)
- Classes using this curriculum — select at least one. You can select several classes that share the same school and subject
- Academic Period (optional) — e.g. “2025–26”
Name the curriculum, choose school and subject, then select one or more classes Click Create.
Selecting more than one class makes a shared curriculum. Edits to topics then apply to every class connected to it — powerful when parallel classes follow the same plan, so change titles and materials carefully.
Add topics — where your plans and materials live
Expand the curriculum and open Topics. Click Add Topic.
Each topic is a container for everything you want to reuse:
Details — the teaching plan
In Create Topic → Details:
- Topic Title (required)
- Type: Lesson or Exam
- Duration (min) — estimated length
- Position — optional number if you want to place it in the sequence without dragging
- The rich-text plan editor (placeholder Enter detailed lesson plan...)
You can start from a template: Bulk, Lesson Plan or Lesson Plan Detailed — the same templates you use on calendar lessons.
Write the plan here when you want it to travel with the topic: objectives, activities, homework ideas, notes to your future self.
Materials — files that belong to the topic
Open the Materials tab (Topic Materials). Upload files, add links, or attach existing files from your library.
This is the heart of long-term reuse: slides, worksheets, PDFs and links sit on the topic, not only on a lesson dated last March. When you later apply the topic to a new lesson, those materials can come with it.
Todos — preparation tasks
The Todos tab holds preparation tasks for that topic (the same idea as lesson preparation tasks). Use them as a checklist you can copy onto lessons when you apply content.
Click Create Topic when you're done.
Ways to store your work (pick what fits)
Teachers use curricula in different ways. All of these are valid:
- Plan ahead — build the full topic list before the term, with titles and durations; add plans and files as you go
- Archive as you teach — keep calendars current, then import lessons or use Add This Lesson to Curriculum so good lessons become topics
- Shared core + local tweaks — one shared curriculum for parallel classes; apply content to lessons, then adjust the dated lesson without breaking the shared topic (or edit the topic when the change should apply everywhere)
- Materials library by topic — even a light curriculum (titles only) becomes valuable once each topic holds the right files
The durable layer is the topic. The calendar lesson is the delivery on a given day.
Reorder topics
Your sequence is the order you intend to teach.
- Drag a topic using the drag handle (Drag to reorder topics) — the new order saves immediately
- Or open the topic and set Position
You do not need a separate “save order” step.
Edit, delete and duplicate
- Edit the curriculum to rename it, change description, academic period or classes
- Delete removes the curriculum (confirm carefully)
- Edit or delete individual topics from the topic list
- Duplicate creates a copy named like “Copy of …” and opens edit — useful for a new year or a parallel class
Duplicate copies topic titles, sequence, duration and lesson plans. Materials and todos are not fully copied today — re-attach important files on the new curriculum, or prefer Import from Lessons when last year’s calendar already has everything attached.
What's next?
- Import a curriculum from lessons — turn past calendar lessons into topics
- Apply a curriculum to your calendar — generate lessons or copy topic content into existing ones
- How to organize lesson plans — practical planning habits (blog)