 |
 |
(Re)Designing Learning Environments
School of Environmental Studies
LEARNING
|
|
Each fall, about 200 11th-grade students from Minnesota’s ISD 196 begin their two-year experience at the School of Environmental Studies. Half of the incoming students each year are admitted in a competitive selection process; half by lottery drawing. Students are drawn from the district’s four large, comprehensive high schools (their “home” high schools).
PDF:
Application information
|
| | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Learning at SES is different from what students experience in their home high schools. Orientation for incoming students includes a mini-course in “Foundation Skills” deemed essential to success. These include collecting and analyzing data, public speaking, field writing, and working productively in groups.
The core of the curriculum is “thematic studies,” an interdisciplinary course combining English, science, and social studies. The course meets three hours per day within the house and is team-taught by the three house teachers. Teachers build each trimester’s curriculum around a different environmental question: “What is the role of humans in nature?” or “What is the relationship between humans and water?”
In the fall, juniors participate in a pond profile for the neighboring city of Egan. Working in teams, they collect and analyze water samples from local ponds and research the history of the area. At the end of the trimester, they produce a technical report and present their findings to the city’s water resources department.
PDFs:
Foundation Skills
Pond Project Checklist
|
|
| | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Assessment of the pond profile is authentic; there are no multiple-choice tests at the project’s culmination. Technical reports are reviewed by student peers and by teachers; the oral presentation is assessed by teachers and by officials with the city of Egan. And each student evaluates his or her own contribution to the group’s overall work. This approach is typical of how student work is assessed at SES.
“We don’t give any tests. All our assessments are essays, papers, projects or reports or skills that students develop. The product is the important assessment. For example, with the pond studies project that we do, the product is a technical report. It has to be well written (in a technical way), they have to be able to collect, analyze and present the data. All of those are skills they will use many times in their lives. They begin to develop those skills here. The assessments are more effective than tests. Tests tend to be the kind of things you take and move on. You don’t move on from what you learn here -- you take it with you.”
--Tom Goodwin, Teacher
|
|
| | |
|
|
While centering on environmental themes, learning at SES also encompasses technology and the arts. Elective courses like multimedia production and outdoor photography allow students to express themselves and create products that add value to the community: among them, a video promotion of the zoo’s new monorail system.
PDF:
Course Offerings
|
| | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Heading into its eighth year in fall 2002, the School of Environmental Studies can point to success across a range of criteria: over the years, student attitudes and behaviors at SES have been shown to be more positive when compared to students in other district high schools and in the rest of Minnesota. And SES test scores on the ACT academic tests exceeded state and national averages.
PDF: Quantitative Data
|
|
| | |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
| |
| Learning
|
| |
| |
| |
|
|
|
