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"BUT
WHAT MARK DO I GIVE THEM?"
PLANNING AND ASSESSING TO ENHANCE STUDENT LEARNING
Background
Freyberg is a large
urban high school described in our prospectus as "providing a
challenging and supportive environment to enable students to develop
their own special talents and skills for lifetime learning."
Integrated Studies at
Freyberg High School began through a research programme funded and
staffed by a joint agreement between IBM, Massey University, the
Education Department and Freyberg High School from 1986 – 1989. When
it began the project started with sixty-five Year 9 students in two
Integrated Studies classes. By 1989, there were three Year 9 classes and
three Year 10 classes. Initially, four core curriculum subjects:
English, Maths, Social Studies and Science, were integrated into a
theme-based programme. However as more classes became involved, in
practice it was difficult to implement and a modified version evolved.
The decision was made to combine the delivery of English and Social
Studies as Integrated Studies and include elements from other areas when
possible and appropriate.
Since 1989 Integrated
Studies has become an approach to learning for all students in the
junior school. In 1990, as a result of the positive outcomes of the
research and with the support of both the school and parent community,
the programme was fully accepted into the school’s charter. In 1992, a
significant portion of the Health curriculum was incorporated into the
Integrated Studies programme.
To complement the work
in the classroom the programme uses field trips and computers as tools
to develop student learning. Year 9 and Year 10 teachers are responsible
for delivering these core curricula areas for a period of eight hours
per week. Classes are timetabled into computer labs and the library as
well as classrooms.
Where are we now?
With the growth of the
Integrated Studies department at Freyberg High School we have become
aware of the need to formalise common assessment procedures. In the past
there was little formalised common assessment. There were only four
tests: Social Studies, English, Graphing and Word Processing. A variety
of other assessment methods were being used by individual classroom
teachers. This made it difficult to track individual student progress
because there was very little useful common data. A number of factors
contributed to making assessment a focus of our programme development in
1998. A visit by ERO in 1998 confirmed the need for common assessment
policies. ERO acknowledged that we had made some progress in
formalising assessment procedures but that we needed to apply these
procedures to a wider variety of assessment tasks. ERO also suggested
that all departments should begin assessing and reporting against
achievement objectives. The publication of the final Social Studies
curriculum statement and the full implementation of the English
curriculum and allocated parts of the Technology curriculum statement
also meant that new assessment procedures had to be developed and
adopted. Clearly defined achievement objectives were presented in the
documents and we were required by school management to develop
assessment procedures to monitor student progress in relation to them.
The availability of
both time and funding through the Curriculum Integration Professional
Development Contract gave us the opportunity to focus on this. We
decided to enter into the contract because it gave us time to develop
the programme we were working on and past involvement in both English
and Social Studies contracts had already proved invaluable in terms of
our own needs.
As part of a school–wide
approach to the teaching of Technology our department had been given
responsibility for the delivery of specific Technology achievement
objectives. After much consultation the School Curriculum Committee and
the Technology Coordinator decided that technology would be taught
across the curriculum, not as a stand-alone subject. Aspects of
Technology were allocated to option subjects, Science and Integrated
Studies. Information technology was already being addressed by the use
of computers in our programme. We were also given responsibility for
Strand B: Technological Capability, and Strand C: Technology and Society
at Level 5. Our existing Year 10 programme already focussed on
changes in technology and society in Term II. We decided to devote Term
II of our Year 10 programme to a Technology investigation by students.
We used the Technology curriculum document and the Culture and
Heritage strand of the Social Studies document for planning, because
Culture and Heritage has the specific achievement objective relating to
technology and society. The Contract team made the decision that we
would use the Social Studies Inquiry process as our benchmark assessment
because we recognised that it had much in common with the Technology
achievement objectives. The English curriculum achievement objectives
would be used as a basis for assessing students’ communication
skills.
With this in mind we
were ready to explore new directions for the programme.
The case
study process @ Freyberg High
School
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