Behind the Scenes: Creating Curriculum in NUITEQ Snowflake

The quality of curriculum depends on the skillsets of the team. NUITEQ's Content Team includes current and former educators fluent in multiple languages who have a thorough understanding of pedagogy, and the science of both teaching and student learning. That knowledge is used to create engaging lesson plans, videos, and activities that support active learning.

Each NUITEQ Snowflake lesson plan includes instructions for activating prior knowledge, how to incorporate the materials into direct instruction, suggestions for independent practice and differentiation, and follow-up activities. The NUITEQ Snowflake Curriculum Team also creates supplemental materials such as worksheets, anchor charts, and hands-on activities, that enhance the NUITEQ Snowflake lesson activity. Each lesson is holistically reviewed using the rubric in the figure below to ensure that the curriculum standards are met, instructions are clear, additional resources are helpful, and the visual design is appealing.

Image: NUITEQ Snowflake Lesson Activity and Plan Rubric

The NUITEQ Snowflake Curriculum Team collaborates on creating new standards-aligned instructional videos. which can be found on the NUITEQ Snowflake Educational K-12 Content YouTube channel. Each video starts as a script that introduces and unpacks the curriculum standard, defines important words, and describes real-world applications. The video script then adds examples that scaffold the taught standard and concludes with a summary of what students have learned as illustrated in the figure below. 

Image: The NUITEQ Snowflake Video Workflow Script

The script is then shared for video production, where it is turned into an engaging, animated video featuring a diverse cast of characters and locations. Recurring characters include the teacher Laura and the students Owen, Mia, and Max who travel the world to learn about different topics. For example, Mia travels to Brazil to summarize rational and irrational numbers in this NUITEQ Snowflake video.  

Image: Mia Summarizing Rational and Irrational Numbers in Brazil

NUITEQ Snowflake also is proud to support Spanish-speaking students and teachers. The Education Specialists on the team are dedicated to creating curriculum-aligned educational curriculum in Spanish.

NUITEQ's Spanish Curriculum Team produces curriculum that is culturally relevant to Spanish-speaking audiences. This process includes rigorous review to ensure that each part of the lesson activities is developed effectively and accurately while incorporating audio and visual aspects that are recognizable to the student population.

The bilingual team works to ensure that all curriculum is applicable to the audience for which it is designed. Peer review is an integral part of the process, as accuracy, cultural relevance, and pedagogical soundness is evaluated. For example, Jason travels to the forest to describe mathematical operations in Spanish in this NUITEQ Snowflake video.

Image: Jason Describes Math Operations in Spanish  

"Teachers appreciate the thorough NUITEQ Snowflake Lesson Activity plans, videos, and supplemental resources. The printable worksheets and standard-aligned videos elevate the Lesson Activity from a singular game to a comprehensive instructional experience. In a recent training, teachers shared a NUITEQ Snowflake Science lesson on animal adaptations that they used with their students the very next day. Students were learning about different biomes, the animals that live in the biome, and the adaptions those animals have for survival. They then created their own creature influenced by the animal adaptations."

To learn more about NUITEQ Snowflake Curriculum design check out this NUITEQ Snowflake Webinar and this How To Use NUITEQ Snowflake Lesson Activity.