Every May for the past 10 years, Lamoille Union Middle School’s Team Extreme launches an integrated unit. This year found them shifting and building upon past successes to include the goal of giving students access to their growth and skills progression in a brand new way.
“The IDU almost changes you in a way, it makes you a better learner. I think it prepares me for high school in a way that core classes can’t do that.”
This five-minute video gives you a window into what students think about this May 1st launch. You will hear the perspective from these LUMS 8th graders who have already experienced this “massive project” and then at the 2:40 mark, Chris Bologna from Team Extreme explains the shift in assessment practices taking place this year. Think Three Pillars. Think transferable skills, think mastery tracking of proficiencies, think student self-assessment, think the power of data in the hands of learners to set goals… and so much more.
The results?
“These proficiencies helped me get better in self-direction because that’s not usually something I would think like oh school, I need to do self-direction but it changed how I would do that, so I definitely noticed a difference with involved citizenship.”
When students gain access to feedback that asks them to continue responding to assessment until they get it right and when they can see the results of their achievement graphically, the increase in learning is significant. Don’t just take it from me (or from research), listen to Tara describe what this shift in assessment practices did for her:
To find out more about the Team Extreme VT IDU makeover, read Chris Bologna’s blog here. One of the takeaways from an informal team debrief in June was the notion of running next year’s classes all through one master Schoology course. As a result, students can easily track their growth in transferable skills from all of their classes, even when the intentional integration can’t take place. Game changing!
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