Dear St. Luke’s Families,

What are some concrete measures of student learning?  Multiple-choice tests have their place, but in many ways the best education is a long conversation, in which a series of observant teachers lead their charges on a journey through many intellectual and imaginative worlds. At our grade levels, what do those teachers listen for, what questions do they ask, as they converse with their students?

Does the student understand what they are reading? Can they follow a complex narrative, and then create one on their own? How can the teacher tell if the children are immersing themselves in the invented world of the story? How do we judge the size of their working vocabularies and the grammatical complexity of their spoken and written English, both crucial indicators of intellectual growth in young children?

For a sense of how some of these questions might be answered at St. Luke’s, let us examine the study of mythology in 3rd grade. Students read D’Aulaire’s Greek Mythology by themselves and as a group in class. The teacher constantly pauses to examine crucial words, symbols or details of plot that generate important psychological discussions about a character’s motivations or emotional state.

The students have to re-tell the myth in their own words. They create works of art based on a detail from the story that has been significant for their understanding of its meaning. Finally, they must imaginatively become a mythological figure, and narrate their own life and history to the class. Through this long conversation their teacher is able to hear, assess, celebrate and support.

Teachers know that a child has really understood the lesson if he or she is able to make connections between different disciplines, and between what they have learned in class and the outside world.

One of the beauties of Core Knowledge is that it is constructed precisely to provide students with opportunities to make these connections. In first grade the children study ancient Egypt, and of course as part of this they study the pyramids. Then in math they examine solid geometric figures. Picture the first grade teacher listening attentively to hear the initial glimmers of those curious young minds, joining the dots that connect the study of math with ancient buildings and religions…

This long conversation also flows through the math and science classes. Again and again the teacher asks: can the student move from a concrete example to an abstraction? It is precisely this important intellectual movement that is a crucial strength of the Singapore Math program for instance.

Thus in 4th grade, the students learn to use place value discs to illustrate 4,576 x 4. Then they perform the algorithm on paper. When that is done, they use place value discs to check their answers through division.

Backwards and forwards, between the concrete and the abstract, conversing with their peers and their teacher all the while. And what does this tell the teacher? If the student can manipulate and change the mathematical representation, the teacher knows that the student really grasps the concept. This prevents the regurgitation without understanding of a math procedure.

Finally, take a look at a series of assignments in 4th grade science. They learn to build a complete electrical circuit. Then they learn to read and draw a schematic diagram. Once that task is complete, they then learn how to interpret a schematic, and from that interpretation, they build more circuits!

The classroom that fails to give air and time for this long conversation is a grim affair for teachers and students alike.

–
Dr. Mark Reford
Head of School
St. Luke’s Episcopal School