So you want to understand Latin America’s problems: poverty and illiteracy, overcrowding, earthquakes, and political instability (that’s right, war). Can Latin America overcome these problems? Is the United States helping Latin America all it can? What is behind these problems? One key topic we need to understand is the land itself. We will become three teams of experts exploring three
Discuss behavior patterns as reflected in the insect world, in animals, in hurnan beings, and in literature. Be sure to include references to your course work over the term in Inquiry and Expression, Literature and the Arts, Social Studies, and Science. This may include Macbeth, the drug prevention and communication workshop, Stephen Crane’s poetry, “A Modest Proposal” and other essays
Your final exhibition to demonstrate mastery of the material of these two courses for the first semester will be divided into two parts. The first part is a research paper. The second part is the final examination. Together these constitute 25% of your grade for English and 20% of your grade for World History. 1. For the research assignment, write
By Ron Berger (Heinemann, 160 pages, $17.50) BUY NOW! reviewed by Laura Flaxman More than ten years ago, when I first saw Ron Berger present a portfolio of his students’ work and explain the process behind these beautiful and impressive artifacts, I was struck by this master teacher’s combination of skill, passion, energy and humility. An Ethic of Excellence: Building
Figure 1: Essential Questions to Shape a School’s Curriculum Figure 1: A Botany Unit Designed Around Essential Questions Figure 1: A Project in Factoring for First-Year Algebra Students Figure 1: Asking Essential Questions about AIDS Figure 1: Homo-Insectivorous and the Dilemma of World Hunger What are the aims of a high school curriculum? Getting to a clear answer is the necessary first step in rethinking
Take a stand with CES! Commentary on this statement, links to more resources, and an action kit of advocacy tools, including an online petition, sample press releases, Op/Ed, letter to the editor, and methods for communicating with lawmakers can be found on our website. We urge you to sign the petition, alert your colleagues and friends, and join the CES
Recently, a local reporter asked me if No Child Left Behind did more good than bad. I was sitting at my desk with a reporting folder for our district’s upcoming NCLB audit. We had already spent countless hours putting together data to illustrate our decisions. In fact, we hired a consultant to strategize ways to “make the grade” with the
by Grant Wiggins What is essential must be experienced as essential. Essential facts and theories are only understood as the results of one’s own work; they are not self-evident notions learned through words as “knowledge,” but the residue of effective performances–Habits of Mind. When they are coaching students to engage in collaborative inquiry, teachers need to insure that essential habits
Embedding assessment into classroom instruction entails setting clear objectives for what students will be learning, and then designing both activities that will get them there and ways to tell whether they did. If teachers do this, they can use class discussions and project work as a means of assessing what their students know without using conventional tests. In this 90-minute
What is an exhibition? This issue of Horace features reflection, analysis, critique, description, and arguments from six Essential school educators. Their work provides compelling examples of how diverse schools—elementary and secondary, rural and urban, public, charter, and independent—employ exhibitions for four key purposes: to ensure engagement among students, staff, and the larger community to assess student learning and, therefore, school
by Joseph P. McDonald, originally published in 1992 by the Coalition of Essential Schools The CES Exhibitions Project of the early 1990s produced a range of work that continues to inform the practice of using exhibitions as a “360 degree” method of transforming teaching and learning, community connections, school design, and assessment. Among that work was this paper coupling the
Imagine a classroom of constructive chaos: a group of students is busy as they monitor their work. Another team of students is on the other side of the room redesigning their experiment. They seem frustrated, but are motivated to make their third trial work. In another corner, a student is explaining an article to his research partners that can really
How can a school ensure that its graduates are meeting community standards? Seniors at Maine’s Yarmouth High School help teachers design a year-long seminar course that explores a series of interdisciplinary topics (like “race, culture, and identity”) from the perspectives of science and humanism. Working alone and in groups, they read and discuss texts and pursue their individual research. At
What’s not on the test? Teachers, students, and parents are drawing new attention to the vital skills and habits that most state tests ignore — and asking for more and richer ways to show what they have learned. A group of New Jersey fourth-graders spreads a map on the floor and calculates with a bar scale how far they must
Schools Francis W. Parker Charter Essential School 49 Antietam Street Devens, Massachusetts 01434 phone: 978.772.3293 www.parker.org Greenfield Center School 71 Montague City Road Greenfield, Massachusetts 01301 phone: 413.773.1700 www.centerschool.net Leadership High School 400 Mansell Street, Suite 136 San Francisco, California 94134 phone: 415.841.8910 www.leadershiphigh.org Mission Hill School 67 Alleghany Street Boston, Massachusetts 02120 phone: 617.635.6384 www.missionhillschool.org School of the Future
Eleventh and twelfth grade students in “Academy X,” a leadership and humanities academy at Sir Francis Drake High School in suburban Marin County, California spent nine weeks researching the school facilities crisis that faces not only their own area but the whole state. Working in groups, the students researched the facilities problem by meeting with school officials and state policy-makers
In many classrooms in many schools people have ideas on the way that schools should be run. Over generations our ancestors have developed ideas on what a good learning environment is. This idea is strange because it has never been questioned. And why not? Japan is leaving the U.S. behind in productivity as we speak. Why does this happen? Some
What do we want high school students to learn? The most revealing answer can be had by looking at what we expect from them when their time is up. What students know and what they can do, after a course is completed or a high school career ended, is in many ways a reflection of what their schools have expected
Educators in the Coalition of Essential Schools share a commitment to the idea that they need to assess students’ progress to help students keep learning and to help teachers keep getting smarter about how to teach. There is also a large degree of consensus among Coalition educators that standardized tests cannot be the most important element in an assessment system-because
From the CES Common Principles: Students should have opportunities to exhibit their expertise before family and community. The diploma should be awarded upon a successful final demonstration of mastery for graduation—an “Exhibition.” The school should honor diversity and build on the strength of its communities, deliberately and explicitly challenging all forms of inequity. An “Exhibition” is a demonstration of mastery
Structure and Logistics Are more appropriately public; involve an audience or panel. Do not rely on unrealistic and arbitrary time constraints. Offer known, not secret, questions or tasks. Are more like portfolios or a season of games, not one- shot. Require some collaboration with others. Recur-and are worth practicing for and retaking. Make assessment and feedback to students so central
Greenfield Center School (GCS) students have a long history of engaging in meaningful projects as the culmination of their studies. Once students have completed these projects, they own their learning; they understand it deeply and can explain how it relates to themselves as well as to their community. In addition, we believe that these presentations raise standards. Projects are presented
Reclaiming Assessment: A Better Alternative to the Accountability Agenda by Chris W. Gallagher (Heniemann, 160 pages, $18.50) Reclaiming Assessment: A Better Alternative to the Accountability Agenda argues that centralized accountability mandates have stifled local schools from designing context-appropriate assessments for their own students. The “Nebraska Story,” the centerpiece of Chris Gallagher’s provocative book, offers a portrait of one state’s decision
To help schools involved with Maine’s Learner-Centered Accountability Project, staff from the Southern Maine Partnership (S.M.P.) and participating schools have created a comprehensive assessment system model. S.M.P. schools are in the process of integrating this model into their assessment systems. Level I assessments are the multitude of assessments typically used in classrooms: vocabulary quizzes, study guides and other demonstrations of
If equitable achievement is our goal, we must have authentic assessments that are reflective of our community’s expectations and meaningful to our students and to us. Such assessments require a systemic commitment from which we start with our school’s mission and plan backwards to support and rethink curriculum, structures, support systems, tools, and day-to-day decisions. We need to be prepared