NARRATIVE

Students demonstrate their learning through performance-based assessments and have opportunities to develop self-assessment and self-monitoring skills. Students at W.E.S. have multiple opportunities to demonstrate their STEM learning through performance assessments while presenting their STEM learning to a range of stakeholders within and outside of the school.

Students enjoy a variety of methods to express their ideas. Beginning in Pre-K, we assist students in various ways to show what they know including, but not limited to, journal entries, wiki projects, project-based learning, and verbal presentations. Presentations of these ideas and projects are conducted to our stakeholders through many venues including competitions, radio broadcasts, web pages, live feed apps, the local newspaper, social media, parent meetings, city/civic meetings, the annual Art and STEM Expo, and opportunities as simple as hallway presentations.

Through the Seesaw app students have multiple opportunities to document their progress, set goals for their growth, and share it with all of their families. Students demonstrate their knowledge visually, orally, and through writing to show how they have met a lesson or personal goal. They are able to elaborate on their thinking and express their conclusions. Using a teacher-created STEM pre and post-test, we can determine how students understand the concepts and terminology involved in STEM education. We also allow time and opportunities for self-reflection as well as discussion and feedback among peers. By using presentation and collaboration assessments we encourage students to offer positive feedback as well as ways to improve upon projects and processes. We encourage students to have a growth mindset when it comes to giving and receiving feedback and using it in ways to develop communication and collaboration skills. Rubrics are used often and provide students with feedback in both individual and collaborative projects and activities.

Strengths: Winfield City School System has many stakeholders that are involved in driving instruction with performance assessments. These educators, administrators, and students enjoy using self-assessments, rubrics, and presentations to demonstrate learning.

Opportunities for Improvement: Winfield City School System has several opportunities to improve in this standard. Embeddedness is the area of greatest weakness for the school system. Currently, the school hosts many teachers that provide wonderful opportunities for performance assessment, but we also see a nervousness from teachers in regard to performance assessment. Winfield plans to provide proper professional development to help this STEM standard flow seamlessly throughout each classroom.