This year, students at our junior high school will begin capturing and documenting their learning in a series of portfolios. This will provide an opportunity for reflection on the previous term and allow students to curate evidence of their work in areas such as the Design Thinking Process, Structured Programming, and Computer-Assisted Design. Students are enrolled in a new ‘course’ through Schoology, where each of these areas is presented as an assignment. In these assignments, students will be prompted to answer questions, share screenshots, and extend their learning.

Students will have class time at the end of each term to look back and add new artifacts to their ongoing portfolios, which will span from grade 7 to grade 9. There is also an additional portfolio space in Schoology where students can share their showcase work beyond these three areas. We hope to see students celebrating and sharing their successes from our classes, extracurricular activities, and learning outside of school.

Students who continue with the STEM Innovation Academy High School will be able to use these portfolios as evidence of their knowledge and skills toward three high school credits: The Design Process, Structured Programming, and Computer-Assisted Design. This is made possible through a partnership and agreement between our junior high and high school, which has been thoroughly vetted by both to ensure the work is comprehensive and provides ample evidence of achievement.

These introductory credits are just the beginning. Students will be able to build on these skills with more advanced course credits in high school. Those who earn the three credits in junior high will have the option to take our introductory high school course, Sparkade, or advance directly to more sophisticated 20-level courses.

Students will begin adding artifacts to their new portfolios in January 2025, and we look forward to seeing how these portfolios evolve, providing opportunities for our STEM students to reflect on their growth over time.

This post has been reviewed and edited through https://chatgpt.com/
Changes made to the original post by the Ai:

Key Changes:

1. Clarity: Slight tweaks were made for smoother flow and clarity. For example, “allow students to curate evidence of their work” was slightly rephrased for simplicity.
2. Grammar: Fixed a few minor grammatical issues (e.g., “were students” to “where students”).
3. Consistency: Standardized “Computer-Assisted Design” and used consistent capitalization (e.g., “Schoology”).
4. Spelling: “Achievement” was spelled correctly in the second-to-last paragraph.
5. Structure: Small adjustments to sentence structure for a more professional and engaging tone.

Feature image for this post was created using the “WordPress Ai Featured Image” button.