Middle School - Stonehill

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Middle School

Overview
The Middle Years are a challenging time of transition for learners as they move from childhood to adolescence. This is a crucial period of personal, social, physical and intellectual growth, of uncertainty and questioning.

Through the Middle Years Programme, designed for students aged 11 to 16, teachers extend the academic teaching by helping students develop critical thinking, solve 'real-life' problems, develop knowledge of local and global issues, communicate ideas, engage in public debate and express creativity through action. Through this process, students develop a certain independence and maturity, learn to manage time and multiple expectations and become aware and confident of their academic and personal development.

The Stonehill Middle Years Curriculum
The Stonehill Middle Years Curriculum has at its core the eight traditional subjects: maths, arts, sciences, physical education, languages, humanities and technology.  Most parents have been taught these subjects as discrete areas of knowledge with little attention given to the interconnectedness of learning that is essential for an individual to be effective in the modern world.

The Stonehill Middle Years curriculum uses concepts called the "areas of interaction" as lenses through which to look at learning in each subject. Because these lenses can look across subject areas they can be used as themes for teacher and student to explore the connections in learning.

Environment, health and  social education, and homo faber (man the maker) are the three "areas of interaction" that link such subjects as technology, maths, arts and science.  Health and social education spans physical education, humanities and language. Clearly, based on these areas of interaction, topics from real life can be explored using a transdisciplinary approach.

Community and social service is the fourth area of interaction.  All areas of knowledge are needed by the student to move outside of his personal domain into the wider world around him. Consequently, community and service gives the student a chance to use all of his learning to solve real world problems.

Approaches to learning is the fifth and final area of interaction. Students can use this area of interaction to think about the deeper questions associated with what and how they learn. They can examine, for example, how they know what they know in maths and ask how that is different from what they know in history. They can think about issues of good and bad. Such as, 'what is good  science and what is bad science' - the answer to which will be different from the answer to 'what is good history and what is bad history'.

At the heart of the Stonehill Middle Years Curriculum  lies the personal project. This is an opportunity for students in the final year of the programme (Grade 10) to explore a question of personal interest. The student is guided in the inquiry by a member of faculty and uses the skills and knowledge learned in the programme to create an original piece of work or artifact. A project journal is maintained in which the student documents the process from conception through research to initial design to implementation, testing, redesign and production. The student must emphasize at least three areas of interaction in this project and be reflective in explaining his/her approach. Significantly, it is the journal with its written expression of how the process was carried out which is assessed, not the final product.

Assessment
Assessment in the Stonehill Middle Years programme is criterion referenced. All students are marked against a set of independently written and accepted criteria  which is dependant on the subject being learned.  In the early years of the Middle Years Curriculm (Grades 6, 7 and , teachers are allowed to modify the criteria to reflect the maturity and the understanding of students. However, in Grades 9 & 10, the external criteria must be followed, with consistency of the marking of student work being assured by using a moderation system.

In accordance with this system, the school develops a set of assessment tasks in each subject area. Samples of student work are selected for review and sent to an external moderator. The moderator then checks the task designed by the school to see if it is effective in assessing the criteria being examined, and also checks marking of student work to ensure that points awarded are consistent with the rubric (scale) for that criteria.  Stonehill then gets feedback from the moderator on two levels:

    * Appropriateness of the tasks used to measure the criteria.
    * The effectiveness of grading of student work.   

The school uses this information to adjust tasks for future years and to guide teachers towards more effective grading.