It's Coming!

Was I excited to see the post on the Israel Ministry of Education English Instruction Website! It announced the The Literature Module Program for teaching and assessing literature in English in high schools. This new Module, which will be implemented during the next school year, is the first fruit of a new Ministry initiative for reform of the high school matriculation program to encourage teaching and assessing higher-order thinking skills via school-based assessment that will be part of the students’ Bagrut (matriculation) grade.

One of the options of this new literature module is the use of Learning Logs.

"Students will be assessed through a school-based assessment program based on a Learning Log. a journal that shows evidence of the students' learning and skills development. In such journals, students are afforded the opportunity to record, structure, plan, develop and reflect upon their learning."

The Ministry is actually moving ahead to change the character of secondary matriculation assessment from standardized exams aimed at assessing rote learning and simple problem solving to learning and assessment of higher order thinking skills and deep understanding.

This move towards educational reform can be supported and augmented by relevant digital tools. For example, the literature learning logs of students could be built on a system of classroom and student blogs where the sudents could record their thinking, planning and reflections and discuss them with teachers and peers. A system like Warlick's Classroom Blogmeister seems to me well suited to support such learning and assessment.

I dropped a note to the committee planning this unit suggesting the use of digital learning logs. Hope they''ll be willing to give it a try!