Key Terms Defined
Throughout the curriculum resource pages, several important terms that may not be familiar with all readers are used frequently. What follows is a comprehensive glossary of these terms. You can click on the alphabetical range (below) to find the term you want, or just scroll through the whole list!
Key Terms
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Academic Expectations: Part of Community Expectations - these are the cognitive skills that the we have identified as critical for every child. In order to graduate, every student must be able to demonstrate a minimal level of competence in these skill areas.
Academic Level: Courses listed as Academic are meant for students who favor a more generalized content and skill preparation. Students who take academic courses may be planning on attending college, immediate post-high school employment, the armed forces, or some other choice.
Advanced Placement: Advanced Placement (AP) programs are extremely rigorous and have separate, year-end assessments that are associated with them. AP courses have a weighted average of 1.2 which is figured when deciding a student’s class rank at the end of the year. While entrance into AP courses is open to all, success is dependent on a demonstrated commitment to the type of extremely rigorous academic skills and effort needed for the completion of these programs.
Alternative Assessment: Assessment strategies that extend beyond content based tests to reliably measure a variety of skill demonstrations and applications.
Anchor Sets/Benchmarks: Samples of student work aligned with the levels of proficiency described in the assessment scale.
Assessment Scale: A credit continuum – Pass/Fail, 0-100, A-F, Insufficient, Sufficient, Proficient, Excellent, etc..
Assessment Standard: How well a skill must be demonstrated to earn a level of credit.
Assessment Task: A task or assignment that requires the learner to be actively involved in the demonstration of a specified skill to be successful. This task is for the PURPOSE of demonstrating a skill for feedback, grading or credit.
Analytic Rubric: A rubric that descriptively describes each element in the standard across each level of the standard.
Authentic Assessment: Assessment strategies that mirror how work would be judged or applied in real world applications of the selected skill.
Civic Expectations: Part of Community Expectations - these are the social and attitudinal attributes that the we have identified as critical for every child. In order to graduate, every student must be able to demonstrate a minimal level of evidence that they have applied or understood these attributes.
Community Expectations: These are the academic and civic expectations that we expect every child to demonstrate as evidence of a successful journey through the Oxford High School program of studies.
Course Purpose: A statement that describes how a specific course fits into the progression of knowledge for that content area or in the broader plan of learning for all students.
Course Goals/Enduring Understandings: A listing of the specific knowledge and skills that students should be able to retain as a result of taking a course. It is assumed that if someone passes a course, they should be able to demonstrate that they have met these goals and demonstrated these understandings.
Course Assessments: Measurements for course specific activities. Unlike skill rubrics which will be used in many different courses (writing for example) these assessments are specific to one course or a specific teacher's instructional design.
Credits: A unit of measurement usually associated with "Carnegie Units" that are used to determine the time spent in a class and the successful completion of that class. 1 credit usually is associated with a full-year course while .5 or a half credit is associated with a semester course.
Curriculum Alignment: The degree to which what is taught at Oxford High School builds specifically on what is taught in earlier grades in Oxford and also the degree to which it supports what the Connecticut State Department of Education suggests should be taught at the same level.
Electives: A course that a student chooses to take because they want to.
Expected Performances: The most specific level of learning measurement in all courses. These are literally what things a student is expected to know or be able to do if they have successfully achieved the Course Goals/Enduring Understandings and are listed in all state curriculum documents as well as in our course guides.
Holistic Rubric: A rubric that generally describes levels of achievement or proficiency – may include judgmental language and usually requires training or anchor sets for reliable implementation.
Honors Level: Courses that are marked Honors are designed for motivated students who are interested in challenging content and who are on a definite college-preparatory pathway. Honors courses feature rigorous content, deep conceptual thinking, more extensive writing expectations and are excellent choices for college bound students or for others who want to build these critical skills. Additionally, Honors courses have a weighted average of 1.1 which is figured when deciding a student’s class rank at the end of the year.
Department: Known in most high schools as departments, Departments at Oxford High School are groups of teachers that meet to plan and improve instruction. These teams have a content focus (like language arts or math) but are charged with working with other Departments to ensure that every student is successful in every part of their high school program.
Mission Statement: A statement written by key staff that describes the purpose and focus of the school. All work done in a high school should be consistent with the purpose expressed in the mission statement.
Minimum Expectations: Part of a performance standard. The minimum expectations are the lowest level of attainable skill that merits credit or promotion. It is expected that each school will describe these expectations for each of their primary goals for learning and then focus their resources to ensure that as many students reach them as possible. In Oxford's rubrics, the Minimum Expectation is expressed as a score of 1 and the associated term Minimal.
Performance Assessment: An assessment that requires some element of hands-on performance for the learner to be successful with associated scoring criteria.
Performance Standard: A scale of how well a student needs to perform a task in order to receive credits. (Same as Assessment Standard).
Rubrics: A collection of specific learning criteria that are organized in such a way to make it easier for the students and teachers to evaluate the student work.
Skills and Competencies: What a student should be able to do (skills) and know (competencies) in order to be successful.
Units/Instructional Activities: These are teacher or course specific plans for activities that will be taught or used in the appropriate classes to achieve the learning goals/expected performances for that course.
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