There was a lot of interest in my last post about Standards Based Grading and Reporting at SLA, so I thought I would share more from that session from different disciplines.

I should also mention that, while these standards were developed at SLA as a kind of pre-emptive response to Common Core, they were more heavily based on the written standards of our respective professional organizations than CCSS. English teachers, for example, pulled from the NCTE standards.

Additionally, we are in our second year of implementing standards-based systems at the school, and the process is definitely still being tinkered with (as all good educational systems are). Below are the five categories that our history discipline uses in their classes. Note that it overlaps two categories with English — “Discussion” and “Research.” Science uses “Research” as well. Should we streamline our language across disciplines? Or maybe make them less similar, to emphasize the difference in each version of the skill? Is it a problem that “research” is also one of our school’s core values, but other values on that list aren’t included as categories for standards?

Just a few questions to get your brain started. I feel very lucky to be in an educational setting where we get to tackle these ideas. Without any further ado:

History Standards

The SLA History department focuses on five main areas for the standards at each grade level: Sources, Research, Perspective, Discussion and Content.  Throughout the four years at SLA the skills gained in one grade spiral forward to the next course.  By graduation, the goal is for students to develop the ability to effectively analyze primary source documents, research independently, express the impact of perspective and bias in history, meaningfully contribute to classroom discussions, and evaluate the connections between the modern world and history.  Assessments for this work are embedded within the day-to-day coursework, as well as within the quarterly benchmarks.