Assessment and Problem-Based Learning

The school schedule was redesigned this year in order to accomplish two purposes.  First, we set out to maximize student learning using the best available research on how the school schedule affects students.  The second goal was to set aside periods of time for our teachers to further hone their skills through professional development and collaboration with their peers.  What I would like to do over the course of the year is share the topics and themes we are working through as faculty.  

Our first meeting focused on Problem-Based Learning.  We are committed to making teaching applicable for students and a problem-based approach does this.  Mr. Riddle leveraged his experience as a teacher and administrator to guide the faculty through the topic.

In many ways, the driving force behind problem-based learning is the increasing use of and access to technology in schools.  Shannon Forest is striving to be a part of an education narrative for the 21st century by encouraging the use of technology in the classroom in order to create opportunities for innovation, global connections, collaboration, teamwork, and multi-disciplinary learning.  The following video explains these goals further:

Our second faculty development session focused on student assessment.  Education generally gets this wrong, and we want to get it right at Shannon Forest Christian School.  

What we don't want:

Instead, Mr. Riddle emphasized two types of assessment: summative and formative.  Summative assessment usually takes the form of a test and is completed after instruction and used to determine a student's competency.  Formative assessment is ongoing throughout the school day and takes the form of frequent reviews, observations, activities, and general feedback.  As a school, Shannon Forest is seeking to move away from the concept of assessment as judgment and competition or as a way to obtain grades and to move toward a vision of assessment as a reflection that can improve classroom instruction.  Useful assessments should determine if students can use their learning - not just regurgitate information or facts.  With this information in mind, SFCS teachers, administrators, and staff are working to improve the effectiveness and use of assessments in the classroom.

"What is assessed signals what is important to learn.  How it is assessed signals how it should be learned."

Jay McTighe

Blessing Leads to Service

At Shannon, service is an integral part of what we do.  We purposely build opportunities for our students to serve.  Occasionally someone will ask why this emphasis on service and so I thought I would write an answer.  The short answer is that serving others is part of our calling as disciples of Jesus.  Starting in Genesis 12,

“I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.  I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

Our blessings are not meant to be held on to but passed along.  We love because we have been loved.  We give because we have received gifts.  We serve because we have been blessed.  Our greatest example is that of Jesus who said of himself, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10.45)

Peter states it plainly, “Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.” (1 Peter 4.10)

At its core, service is about character development.  Humanity is flawed and nowhere is this more evident than our intrinsic selfishness.

Any parent, or anyone who has worked with children, knows of the phase of development called the terrible twos.   Cognitive scientists explain this phase as a result of children learning for the first time that other people are separate identities from themselves and as such, don’t always share the their wants and desires.  Until this point, toddlers view their wants and desires as being universal.  Now they have to recognize that this is not the case.  How do they learn this?  They test the boundaries.  They look for areas where wants and desires conflict with those of someone else, and they test it repeatedly to identify the boundary. 

In many regards this process continues the rest of our life.  A perennial complaint of parents of teenagers is that they act as if they are the center of the universe.  Service is the best way to help us breakout of this tendency.  In serving others we recognize our blessedness.  Service creates gratitude.  Service creates compassion.  Service creates character.