Competency-Based Instruction

Under competency-based methods of instruction, the question for determining what material to cover next becomes not "Did the teacher cover the material?", but instead "Did the students learn and demonstrate their knowledge of the material to a specific standard?"

Some common characteristics of competency-based education are that teaching and learning is:

• Explicit and clearly aligned with expected competencies
• Criteria driven and focused on accountability
• Grounded in real-life experiences
• Using strategies that are focused on fostering the learners' ability to self-assess
• More individualized, providing opportunities for independent study

Competencies in each subject and level will be identified as required or as elective. Required competencies will be those that fulfill State Core Standards and that are considered prerequisites for more advanced required competencies. It is anticipated that the majority of competencies will be considered required.

Elective competencies will be created to fulfill specific student and teacher special interests and learning goals.

Final and partial transcripts of student grades in specific subjects will be granted based on the percentage of the required (for their grade level and the time spent in a partial year) competencies the student has achieved in that subject area. All students will be expected to eventually achieve at least competency in all required subjects. Therefore, grades will be based on objective measurements for each student's work, independent of other students' achievements. Transcripts will also reflect specific elective competencies achieved by the student.

The initial competency list for each level of curriculum will be created by the Academy's Curriculum Director and the Academy Board's Curriculum Subcommittee in the time period between Charter application approval and the Academy's first staff training date. Competencies will be taken from Montessori (which is already a competency-based approach to learning), units in Core Knowledge and the other the selected textbooks, and the state core curriculum, with input from specific subject matter experts.

Training days have been provided in the school schedule for teachers and staff to learn the competencies, curriculum, pedagogy, and the Academy software as well as to prepare for their specific duties and students before the first day of school.

Additional training and preparation time is scheduled on a weekly basis for Friday afternoons as well as just before the start of each Academy school term. Please refer to the Academy Calendar for the specific dates of staff training and preparation.

With the exception of grade-level-graduation administrative competencies, one per grade, which will have as their prerequisite all required competencies for that grade level, competencies will be generally designed for the subject unit level. Where possible, competencies will be interdisciplinary in nature, sometimes satisfying requirements for multiple subjects at the same time.

Students will work in conjunction with their teacher mentor and at their own pace to pass competencies. The teacher mentor will be responsible for recording student demonstrations of competency in their record as these demonstrations occur and a competency is passed. Students will not be required to pass a large list of competencies at the end of a term or school year, but rather to pass smaller competencies as they gain the skills and knowledge to demonstrate that competency.

Students who attempt to pass a competency and do not demonstrate the skill and knowledge required will be encouraged to use a self-assessment rubric as well as teacher feedback and additional individual instruction in order to learn how to improve their work to a passing level. As appropriate to the requirements of each specific competency, students may re-use revised elements of their previous demonstrations, such as papers written and experimental data recorded, when attempting to retry an attempt to demonstrate a particular competency.

Most competencies will have multiple options for how a student may demonstrate the skills and knowledge required. Teachers will also add further additional demonstration options for specific students who appear to have the proper skills and knowledge, but are otherwise struggling with the format of the existing skills and knowledge demonstration options.

If a student is unable to pass a competency after repeated sincere attempts, teachers will be directed to spend additional time analyzing that competency and that specific student's skills in order to make revisions to the competency requirements, prerequisite competency requirements, and learning resources in order for all students to be properly prepared to work on and pass that specific competency.

Each competency record created will:

• A. Record the skill and knowledge to be demonstrated
• B. Suggest options for how the student is to demonstrate that skill and knowledge in a produced format
• C. Include a list of all prerequisite competencies
• D. Define whether the competency is an elective or is required for a specific grade level
• E. Supply the overall curriculum tie and the State Core standards addressed
• F. Include a list of resources (including contributed group or individual lesson plans, textbook page references, library book references, online resources, etc...) for learning each skill or knowledge set involved in the competency

An example competency:

1. The student must have the ability to measure and record their measurements, and understand the concept of measurement units
2. The student may demonstrate their skill in measurement and their understanding of using measurement units by performing the following:
1. Use a thermometer and clock to record the temperature and time at a specific location of the student's choosing in Fahrenheit and in Celsius over a time period of one week and present to the class their resulting data as a theory that would account for the recorded variations of temperature over time
3. Prerequisite Competencies
1. Understanding Fractions
2. Understanding Greater than and Less Than
3. Telling Time
4. Creating Records
5. Presenting Information Verbally
4. Required for First Grade
5. Utah State 3^rd Grade Mathematics Standard 4, Objective 2 http://www.uen.org/core/core.do?courseNum=5030#2988
6. Available Resources
1. Core Knowledge Series - 1^st grade, March 1998 Edition, pages 294-298 - Measurement.
2. GPA lesson plan, "Using a thermometer and understanding Celsius and Fahrenheit units.", c2009.
3. "New: Measurement: Length, Capacity, and Time", UEN lesson plan #16283, http://www.uen.org/Lessonplan/preview.cgi?LPid=16283
4. "What is a thermometer?", by Lisa Trumbauer, ISBN 0-516-24611-9
5. "Me and the Measure of Things", by Joan Sweeney and Annette Cable, ISBN 0-440-41756-2
6. Cyber Chase television program on Units and Measurements
7. History of the thermometer http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blthermometer.htm
8. How thermometer works http://www.howstuffworks.com/therm.htm/printable
9. Galileo's "thermoscope" http://chemed.chem.purdue.edu/genchem/history/thermometer.html
10. Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit http://chemed.chem.purdue.edu/genchem/history/fahrenheit.html
11. Anders Celsius http://chemed.chem.purdue.edu/genchem/history/temperature.html

Practical Applications

Using practical applications for learning opportunities vs. theoretical work is especially important in elementary education in order to allow the students to continue to be interested in learning. Using practical applications also ensures that the students are able to use the skills and knowledge they have acquired.

Practical applications fit in well with competency-based education. Some subjects are easier than others to use practical applications to learn. The biggest barrier to learning via practical applications rather than theoretical work tends to be the lack of creativity of the teacher and/or the curriculum designer.

For example, cooking is an often used method of teaching fractions. This keeps children interested and involved while learning and being able to demonstrate a new math skill. History can become a dry recital of facts and dates, or those same facts and dates can be used as research material for a period play, or used in historical stories about a time period that children tell to the rest of the class, informing them both.

Using the tools of reading and listening, once those skills have been mastered by the student, should be normal for learning theoretical information. "Hands on" style activities should be the norm for taking that theoretical information and actually using and demonstrating a competency in it. If a taught skill doesn't translate at all into a real world skill, then a curriculum designer should reassess the purpose of teaching that skill and adjust the curriculum accordingly.

The more involved competencies will ideally be designed to create a product for public consumption in an end-of-term festival for parents, peers and the public. Products include a paper for a school academic journal, a science project to display, an artistic display, the performance of a dramatic presentation, a speech, etc.... When creating products for public consumption instead of just student or teacher consumption, students naturally focus on finishing a project they will want to show off, rather than creating a product that is just good enough to be approved by their teacher.

The Academy's festivals at the end of each term are designed to be a showcase to create the "public consumption" result for students. The festivals are also designed as an educational opportunity for students to view each other's work. Students will also create an ongoing record and portfolio of their work products over time. Some of these work products may even become a part of the Academy library for future students to learn from.

Individually Assigned Teacher Mentors

All new Academy students will be initially evaluated against the academy's competency list by their assigned teacher mentor in order to place them at their current knowledge and skill level in the curriculum.

This initial evaluation will take place in an extended interview between the teacher mentor and new student, during which the teacher mentor will ask the student to answer specific questions and perform brief tasks related to the competencies the student's transcript indicate the student should have the knowledge and skills to achieve. The teacher mentor will then indicate in the Academy's record for that student which competencies (and their pre-requisite competencies) they will be considered as having passed.

Emphasis will be made to place students at a level where they will be comfortable with and successful with the skills and knowledge required to pass the initial competencies they are assigned to work on.

As an example, a third grader (level two student) new to the Academy at the beginning of the school year may be evaluated by their teacher mentor as having already passed all level one and prerequisite competencies in most academic areas, but needing to start with some "Math Reasoning" level one competencies, while at the same time being ready to work on some of the more advanced level two language arts.

Enough time has been set aside before the beginning of the first school year in order to enable the large number of initial new students to be able to be evaluated by their assigned teacher mentor.

This will enable their teacher mentor to have direct experience with their individual student's needs as well as allowing the new student to have the correct prerequisite skills to be successful in their initial learning assignments. Teachers will have the administrative flexibility to adjust a new student's initial learning assignments in the event the teacher mentor's initial evaluation needs to be revised.

It is anticipated that the first 2-3 years of academy operation will involve much more review, adjustment, and remediation for the large numbers of new students at the Academy than during later years of operation. It is recognized that the older a student is when they start attending the Academy, the more adjustment time may be necessary.

Tools of Learning

The tools of learning are considered by the Board to be the skills for students to be able to acquire new knowledge on their own. Basic skills such as reading immediately come to mind, but the tools also involve more subtle skills such as logic and rhetoric as children get older. In some ways, because many of the same subjects are covered with an emphasis on the tools of learning as opposed to an emphasis on subject-matter learning, teaching the tools of learning is as much a difference of educational emphasis as it is a difference of content.

Gateway Preparatory Academy's Tools of Learning:

• Reading
• Writing
• Mathematics
• Personal Learning Styles Analysis
• Classical Grammar
• Classical Logic
• Classical Rhetoric

These tools of learning require primary emphasis in levels 1 and 2 and some emphasis in elementary level 2. Teachers will initially require more time to teach self-learning, with less time required to be devoted after students have learned the skills in lower grade levels. Strategic use of paraprofessionals, aides, other school staff, and parental volunteers can maximize the amount of time teachers spent in individual mentoring and instruction and minimize the time spent in simply monitoring students.

Second Language Acquisition

Second language instruction in Spanish and Latin is included primarily to assist students in better understanding language concepts as a whole, rather than just in context of the English language only. Familiarity with word roots used historically and in the sciences will also make it easier for students to recognize the meaning of the more specialized vocabularies used in the sciences and in primary sources when performing research tasks. Learning Spanish in the western United States also provides students with cultural exposure and additional opportunities for communication and skill-use outside of the school environment.