CBE Methods
Competency Based Education
Competency Based Education is a framework for teaching and assessment where the students' learning and progress towards mastery is the center of the learning experience.
Standard Continuum
Students are given a hard copy of the mastery scales within each standard. A standard continuum is a place for students to reflect on their learning pathway. As students build their evidence of learning they can keep track of their thinking and their next steps on the continuum directly. Students then gather evidence to keep connected to their standard continuum for future connections and reflections.
Students annotating their standard continuum to hold their thinking.
Students connecting their new learning to their thinking web.
Students discussing the mastery levels within the standard continuum
Evidence Binder
The evidence binder stores all the students work from the year. Students utilize their evidence binders throughout the day. Students use their reflections on the standard continuum to help them with future decisions about their learning experience. Students are in control over what goes in their binder.
An evidence binder allows for students to operate at their own pace. The student can move to new concepts when ready or revisit old ones that they still want to grow in. Since all work is valued and saved students strive to complete their work or save their evidence to continue on another day.
Thinking Wall
The class thinking wall is a place to store evidence for the entire class to access. Students are welcome to add evidence that they think is helpful or meaningful to build their understanding. This is where I believe a competency can come alive. Students can build connections between skills and are given the opportunity to transfer their knowledge in concrete ways.
A student using evidence on the Thinking Wall to help her support her thinking.
A student self grading to reflect on what she needs to move up to mastery
These thinking walls are changing daily. When students remove evidence it is kept in a folder to be reused at another date if necessary.