Common Principles for Uncommon Schools

Horace Planning Backwards

A Teacher’s Reflections on Creating Curriculum

A big issue for me is maintaining a focus while leaving room for the serendipitous. Much of the good teaching I have done has involved seizing the moment and running with it. For example, a student will have had experiences or an insight that I did not anticipate when planning the unit. Something impacting the curriculum will happen in the

Assessment Terminology: Key Concepts for Shared Understanding

Habits of Mind Habits of mind include such things as knowing where to find more information, asking original questions, reflecting on and learning from experience, understanding how to collaborate, and seeking out multiple points of view. These kinds of habits are at the heart of education, but are not easily demonstrated through testing. High-Stakes Tests High-stakes tests mostly or totally

Horace: Planning Backwards Published: June 10, 2002 By: Topics: Assessment, Planning Backwards

Balancing Content with Thinking Goals: One Picture of Curriculum

Teachers at the Parker School in Fort Devens, Massachusetts created their own curriculum template, juxtaposing “texts and resources” that describe content area knowledge with “tasks and activities” that elicit key skills they want students to practice: responding to text, creating new work, and performing or demonstrating their understanding. All the year’s projects in every content area reflect the school’s Essential

Community, Politics, and the Neighborhood

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

Horace: Planning Backwards Published: December 11, 2000 By: Topics: Assessment, Exhibitions, Planning Backwards, Portfolios

Developing Curriculum in Essential Schools

If curriculum is to reflect the goals of a school and the needs of its students, it makes sense for teachers to develop it them-selves. But how might they do it, and when? And is it better to adopt or adapt materials ‘off the shelf’ or should students and teachers be creating curriculum together? Five math and science teachers are

Graduation Standards Go Public: A Different Way

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

Horace: Planning Backwards Published: December 11, 2000 By: Topics: Assessment, Exhibitions, Planning Backwards, Portfolios

High Standards for Essential Learning Demand a Mix of Measures

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

Horace: Planning Backwards Published: December 11, 2000 By: Topics: Assessment, Exhibitions, Planning Backwards, Portfolios

How the ATLAS Communities Structure a Curriculum

The Atlas Communities project has put together a design tool (forthcoming) that suggests using the following categories in planning curriculum: Generative topics . . . * Are developmentally appropriate. * Are broad and complex. * Are interesting to students and teachers. * Are important for understanding responsible citizenship and the disciplines. These criteria can help you make decisions about what

Middle College High School, Space Science Overview

All of the New York Performance Consortium schools have created overviews for each of their courses. These overviews demonstrate students’ learning goals, the assessments that they will complete, and the New York State Standards for Learning that they will master as a result. Educators across the Consortium have developed scoring rubrics in all areas of the curriculum. These scoring rubrics,

Horace: Planning Backwards Published: June 10, 2002 By: Topics: Assessment, Planning Backwards

One Community Action Research Project and the Standards It Met

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

Horace: Planning Backwards Published: December 11, 2000 By: Topics: Assessment, Exhibitions, Planning Backwards, Portfolios

Personalization, High Standards and the Assessment Debates

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

Resources for Curriculum Development

Technological Resources The Homework Page. Information of value in researching school projects is at http://www. tpoint.net/Users/ jewels//homework.html Global Education Resources. Contact http:// www.clark.net/pub/peace/ OED1.html Kid Lists. Anchors to 82 sites children and their parents might enjoy. Contact http://www.clark.net /pub/journalism/kid.html Awesome Lists. Innovative sites with practical value and professional expertise. Contact http://www.clark.net/ pub/journalism/awe-ie.html Educational Resources. Online resources and projects for students

Southern Maine Partnership’s Local Comprehensive Assessment System, Draft 3.0

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

Horace: Planning Backwards Published: June 10, 2002 By: Topics: Assessment, Exhibitions, Planning Backwards, Portfolios

Teachers and Students Making Curriculum Together

Dan Drmacich at Rochester’s School Without Walls developed the following guidelines for his staff to use in constructing learning experiences. 1. Brainstorm. Teachers and administrators, students, and small groups should list all topics, issues, themes, and problems that students would like to learn about (depending on course flexibility). Don’t limit your brainstorming by eliminating what normally are regarded as irrelevant

The Senior Project: Demonstrating Academics Alongside Life Skills

Schools around the country have turned to Senior Projects as a way to synthesize and demonstrate a student’s intellectual as well as life skills. Typically, such projects arise out of students’ individual passions or interests and are mentored by an outside expert in the field. At Henry M. Jackson High School outside Seattle, students spend an entire year pulling together

Horace: Planning Backwards Published: December 11, 2000 By: Topics: Assessment, Exhibitions, Planning Backwards, Portfolios

Using a ‘Project Design Template’ to Develop Curriculum

Teachers in all Gorham, Maine schools now prepare at least one project using the design template that follows (which is still in draft form). “It’s meant to help teachers organize their classroom practice in ways we hope will result in increased understanding,” says John Newlin, a social studies teacher at Gorham High School who serves as a district coach to

Valid and Reliable? Test Your Own Task

Teachers who like to use activities or projects to bring instruction to life may also assume that such activities make valid and reliable assessments of what a student understands. Not necessarily, warns Grant Wiggins in his 1998 book, Educative Assessment — but it’s simple to check, using these two questions: 1. Could the student do well at the task for

Horace: Planning Backwards Published: December 11, 2000 By: Topics: Assessment, Exhibitions, Planning Backwards, Portfolios

What Makes a Curriculum Team Succeed?

The way a group goes about developing curriculum together has a great deal to do with its eventual success, according to ethnographer John Watkins, who has evaluated several lengthy curriculum development projects involving teams of teachers. Watkins describes several factors he says typically influence their progress, or lack of it: * the way teams use outside resources, learn the content

Where to Go for More Resources for Responding to Calls for Accountability

Fairtest: National Center for Fair and Open Testing The advocacy heavyweight for alternatives to high-stakes standardized tests, FairTest offers a resource-rich web site, The FairTest Examiner quarterly print newsletter, and a variety of publications devoted to critiques and alternatives within the testing reform movement. Don’t miss the website’s Assessment Reform Network, which will connect you with local movements supporting fair,

Which Assessment Works Best? A Matching Test for Educators

Match the statement at the top with the appropriate method from the list at the bottom. (Some methods may apply to more than one item) 1. I want to figure out how to improve my teaching in my classroom. 2. I want to figure out how to revise my classroom curriculum. 3. I want to figure out how to place

Horace: Planning Backwards Published: December 11, 2000 By: Topics: Assessment, Exhibitions, Planning Backwards, Portfolios
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