How to align your own teaching materials with the curriculum and local emphases

In Finland, teaching materials have not been inspected in advance since 1992, when the pre-approval of textbooks was abolished. According to the Finnish National Agency for Education, what matters is the teacher’s own judgement of the material (Maaseudun Tulevaisuus 2023). Nobody checks on your behalf that a material leads towards the curriculum objectives. The responsibility sits with the school and ultimately with you, and it becomes concrete when you make the material yourself.

That is not a bad thing. Self-made material starts from the needs of your own group, which is exactly why many teachers prefer making their own (Opettaja magazine 2019). This guide walks through how to connect your own material to the curriculum’s objectives, contents and assessment criteria without the workload getting out of hand. The examples come from the Finnish curriculum system, but the same logic applies wherever a curriculum defines objectives and assessment criteria.

Start from the objective, not the topic

Materials are often born topic first: photosynthesis is on tomorrow’s schedule, so I’ll make an exercise set about photosynthesis. The topic, however, is only half of the material. The national core curriculum lists objectives and core contents for every subject, and assessment is tied to the objectives, not the topics.

The difference shows in the exercises. The same photosynthesis topic produces a very different set depending on whether students practise using concepts, working investigatively or applying knowledge to everyday life. When you pick the objective first, the exercises and later the assessment hit the same target.

A practical habit is to write into the material which objective it serves. The note takes a moment, but it makes reusing the material next year and sharing it with a colleague easier: anyone can see at a glance where in the teaching the set belongs.

Assessment criteria tell you what the exercises should practise

The Finnish Education Evaluation Centre (FINEEC) found in its extensive evaluation that assessment practices vary between schools and that the same competence can earn different grades in different schools (Atjonen et al. 2019). The criteria for final assessment in basic education have since been made more precise, specifically to improve equal treatment of students (Yle 2020, Finnish National Agency for Education).

For anyone making materials, the criteria work as a checklist. If a criterion requires the student to interpret and apply, but the exercise set only practises recall, the material and the assessment never meet. Material built on the criteria makes assessment easier and fairer for the student: lessons practise what gets assessed.

Local emphases are part of the curriculum

The national core curriculum is only the foundation. In Finland, each municipality or school prepares a local curriculum on top of it, refining the objectives and adding its own emphases: the language programme, weighted-curriculum education, optional studies and local contents. The neighbouring municipality’s curriculum is not the same as yours.

Publishers’ materials are made to the national level, because the same book is sold across the country. In material you make yourself, the local emphases fit in, and that is one of the strengths of making your own. You can usually find your municipality’s curriculum in the ePerusteet service, the same place as the national core curricula.

AI does not know your curriculum unless you show it

More and more teachers make materials with AI. The national AI recommendations by the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture and the Finnish National Agency for Education state that the education provider guides the use of AI and that staff review the outputs before use (Finnish National Agency for Education 2025). The responsibility for curriculum alignment stays with the teacher when AI joins the work.

A general-purpose AI writes fluent text on almost any topic, but it does not know what your municipality’s curriculum emphasises or which criteria competence is assessed against. That is why it pays to give the curriculum to the AI as the basis of the work, rather than trusting the result to land right by chance.

In Bruukki, the curriculum is already there

In Bruukki you do not need to copy the curriculum into a prompt by hand. Once you set your school in Bruukki, it automatically recognises your school’s curricula based on that information, including your own municipality’s or school’s local curriculum. The service covers the Finnish national core curricula for basic education, general upper secondary and vocational education, plus over a thousand local curricula. You can check in the settings that the right curriculum is selected, and the workspace admin can pick shared curricula for the whole workspace. If your school is not set yet, you can add it in the settings. Bruukki can use the curriculum based on your school information.

When you create a material, choose the subject and grade level. Based on them, Bruukki picks the objectives, contents and assessment criteria that match exactly the right studies and uses them as the basis of the suggestion. You also see which part of the curriculum a suggestion is based on, so checking is quick. The AI suggests, you decide what goes to your students. We cover the feature in more detail in the release news post.

Check your old materials against the curriculum too

The same works in the other direction. If you have materials accumulated over the years, you can bring them into Bruukki and ask for an assessment of how the material matches the objectives, contents and assessment criteria of the selected curriculum. You get suggestions on what to edit so the material takes the curriculum into account even better: is a core content area missing, do the exercises practise the competence the criteria describe or only recall, and do the local emphases show.

Working material does not need to be thrown away. Most of the time the fixes are small: some exercises change, a perspective gets added, and the rest is fine as it is. The vocational education guide describes the same routine from the angle of a curriculum reform.

Where to start

There is no need to go through the whole syllabus at once. One way is to pick the next teaching period, open its objectives and assessment criteria in the curriculum and build one material on top of them. Another natural start is to take one well-used old material and check it against the curriculum. Once the routine is familiar, you can repeat it for the following periods. Along the way you build a material bank whose curriculum links are ready for next year too.

If you want to try what making materials looks like with the curriculum as the foundation, try Bruukki for free. We warmly welcome feedback from teachers, so do tell us if something does not work.

Sources

• “Markkinat tekevät sen”: Opetushallitus ei näe tarvetta palauttaa oppimateriaalin ennakkotarkistusta. Maaseudun Tulevaisuus, 21 October 2023 (in Finnish).
• Atjonen, P. et al. (2019). “Että tietää missä on menossa”: evaluation of the assessment of learning and competence in basic and general upper secondary education. Finnish Education Evaluation Centre, publications 7:2019 (in Finnish).
• Finnish Education Evaluation Centre (2020). Evaluation of the functioning of the final assessment criteria in basic education. (in Finnish)
• Finnish National Agency for Education. Assessment of learning and competence in basic education. (in Finnish)
• Finnish National Agency for Education (2025). National AI recommendations for early childhood education, teaching and training published. (in Finnish)
• Hyvä oppimateriaali syntyy oppijan saappaisiin astumalla, ja opettajilta se luonnistuu. Opettaja magazine, 22 February 2019 (in Finnish).

Read next: curriculum reform in vocational education: how to update your teaching materials and differentiation in language teaching without doubling your workload.