Serving 21st Century Learners

Moving Forward Into the 21st Century:
Considerations to Make the Greatest Impact on Teaching & Learning

(The following essay was an assigned writing asking our school data team to write on something related to where our group should be headed. We had just spent a great deal of time looking at student data K-8 including scatterplots showing the relationship between students’ classroom grades and performance on state-mandated standardized evaluative assessments. As you will discover, I believe that project-based learning can solve many of our woes.)

As much as I would like to advocate having children work in a setting where their abilities match their classmates with little attention given to age or grade, I think this is probably much to aggressive to pursue as even a long-term goal. I also support a student-centered approach where we attend to our children’s social, emotional, psychological, physical, and academic needs. Based upon what I have witnessed throughout my first year here, Glenburn School does a very good job in this regard. I credit class size and dedicated, caring teachers for the creation of such a wonderful school environment. The only area where I would urge a more child-centered approach would be in the middle school where I would suggest a further move towards incorporating middle school philosophy which I believe most of our teachers already want to do. We could begin this process with teacher professional development around this topic using a reading and discussion format. As you can see, I believe a healthy and safe classroom/school climate for all must be in place to get the most out of systemic change.

Given our healthy school climate, in what direction should we move academically? In the context of staff and parents learning about Habits of Mind, we can forge forward following our curricula with a focus on process, skills, and knowledge. I, along with much of the current research, recommend a project-based learning approach with continuous reflection by students and teachers. With this approach, we satisfy expectations of differentiated instruction and provide the 21st century literacy skills now necessary in our fast-changing world. Finding, questioning, and confirming the quality and accuracy of resources, compiling notes and related knowledge, and presenting some type of technology-infused product on a topic in which students have some choice defines project-based learning.

As long as we set high individualized expectations for our students using exemplars and rubrics, our students will see and know the target. They will choose which grade they wish to receive and we will guide them in their quest to get that grade. Essential questions will focus the learning and students will learn to organize and plan their work. These are critical skills that many students miss during their elementary and middle school years.

So you ask, what does this have to do with our charge as members of a school data team? Some of us are concerned about moving towards a standards-based report card while also creating some consistency in teacher quarterly grades that will predict success on evaluative assessments (MEA) and formative assessments (NWEA). As teachers incorporate more and more projects into their curriculum for students to demonstrate their grasp of the unit’s knowledge and skills, teachers as facilitators of these projects will much more easily be able to assess student ability in a standards-based grading format (specifically what a child knows and can do). As a side benefit, students will be compiling their own learning portfolio composed of projects and reflection upon their learning. Students can simply save their work electronically and every once in a while make decisions with the help of teachers on which pieces prove academic progress and achievement of standards/benchmarks.

Any grading system must include student performance, progress, and work habits. Hopefully we can come to a common decision in our school on how to balance these three parts into a students grade so that we can become more consistent in our grading. When classroom grades do not predict success on standardized tests we explore what adjustments in our curriculum and/or instruction will help us focus the learning for this/these individual(s).

In summary, moving to project-based learning at a rate related to teacher ability will help us meet all of our goals. We will all be learning together. What a great way for us as teachers to model being lifelong learners and gain skills as facilitators that students can learn as we model them. We will be building an evolving educational environment which will best serve the needs of students, staff, and families.

Questions that still linger:

• To truly serve all individuals, do we compare students to one another, to themselves (where they are on the learning continuum or meeting state benchmarks), or simply use a skills checklist to arrive at a published grade in conjunction with their personal learning portfolio?
• How do we incorporate the “progress” portion of a child’s grade in the first quarter or so when a child is new to our classroom?
• How can we weigh daily assignments appropriately so the focus is on the assessment of skills shown in the unit-ending project so the classroom grade parallels standardized test scores?
• How do we sort out our grades for performance, progress, and work habits to most accurately present a picture of a student’s ability?
• What will our report cards look like? Is it possible to standardize our report cards from grade to grade so parents can understand what information we are giving them?