Understanding Pathways
This article explains the concept of Pathways. It includes definitions of all terms and links to relevant Pathway articles.
Last updated 2 days ago
Understanding Pathways
- There are two Types of Pathways in Planner:
- A Primary Pathway is a direct path to graduation. It includes all of the requirements needed to graduate as mandated by the State or Board of Education.
- A Secondary Pathway is a specialization path that students can choose based on interest or educational needs. Examples may include a focus on STEM, Health Sciences, ROTC, Culinary Arts, Performing or Visual Arts, etc.
- Pathways have two setup components:
- Requirements: a list of all of the courses, subjects, and grade-level requirements needed to complete a Pathway. Pathway requirements are mandatory for both Primary and Secondary Pathways.
- Refer to Add Pathway Requirements and Edit Pathway Requirements for additional help.
- Scaffolding: a visual representation of the grade-level specific requirements within a Primary Pathway. This is the block structure (i.e., scaffolding) students see when they go to My Course Plan to select their Courses. Only Primary Pathways have scaffolding.
- Refer to Create and Edit Pathway Scaffolding for additional help.
- Requirements: a list of all of the courses, subjects, and grade-level requirements needed to complete a Pathway. Pathway requirements are mandatory for both Primary and Secondary Pathways.
- There are two Types of Requirements:
- Subject Requirement: a required subject that can be taken at any time (i.e., 3 Science credits or courses)
- Grade Requirement: this requirement must be met at a certain grade level (i.e., English 1 as a 9th grader)
- It is best practice to add all of the Subject requirements first and then add the Grade requirements. For example, if the Pathway requires 4 English credits to graduate, those are added as Subject requirements. Then you can add a Grade requirement of an English course in grades 9, 10, etc. You can also be more prescriptive by making the requirement be English 1 in 9th grade, English 2 in 10th grade, and so on.
- Each type of Requirement (Subject and Grade) can be either Courses or Credits:
- Courses: refers to a specific course (i.e., you need 22 courses to graduate regardless of the number of total credits).
- Credits: refers to a number (i.e., each class is worth a certain number of credits and you need a total of 22 credits to complete the Graduation Pathway).
Refer to Getting Started in Course Planner to begin creating Subjects, Courses, and then Pathways.