WELLESLEY HIGH SCHOOL (MA) EVOLUTIONS PROGRAM for 2023-2024
The Evolutions program provides an educational environment for students to embrace their curiosity and take ownership of their learning. The program welcomes students who are eager to consider new perspectives on themselves, their learning, and the world. Together they will tackle the rigorous task of building connections across the disciplines of Art, English, Science, and Social Studies to illuminate the complexity of our world. Using this interdisciplinary and collaborative approach, the goal for students is to: synthesize a variety of learning experiences; think critically about the content and themselves; apply objective knowledge to formulate solutions to real-world problems; connect to community; communicate through creation, in writing and by speaking to address unit themes.
Essential to the mission is a commitment to authentic, project-based learning that is grounded in real-world issues/problems, utilizes design thinking, includes student voice and choice, and is grounded in strong academic rigor. Students are also expected to share their understanding with a broader audience through a combination of self-directed, collaborative, and teacher directed projects to demonstrate competency.
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The Evolutions program aims to create a learning community that values:
Collaboration: Evolutions students will demonstrate collaboration by working with a variety of people, peers and adults, by thoughtfully listening, offering contributions, and reaching consensus on difficult problems. Each student must contribute to the overall goal of the group, and will be evaluated by themselves, other group members, and teachers.
Communication: Evolutions students will demonstrate effective communication through a variety of frameworks and media, such as oration, writing, art and active listening. Students will be asked to share and listen to ideas as well as implement claim, evidence, and reasoning skills.
Community: Evolutions students will become a community of learners. Their experiences in Evolutions will be expanded by their learning in and contributions to the broader Wellesley and Greater Boston communities. Within the program, students will learn to practice civil discourse, examine issues of social justice, and learn to be advocates for causes that resonate with them.
Thinking: Evolutions students will be able to use creative and critical thinking about content and problems in order to synthesize ideas and generate innovative solutions. They will also be able to reflect on what they have learned through and its value to their learning journey. Ultimately, Evolutions students will take ownership of their learning by investigating topics, concepts, and problems that are of interest to them. They will see learning as an active pursuit, not a passive series of tasks to complete.
Process: Evolutions students will learn and utilize the design process to go from identifying a problem to executing professional, public ready solutions that demonstrate a clear purpose. Students will learn to give and receive meaningful feedback.
Assessment: Evolutions has a student-centered, growth mindset, and collaborative approach to assessing student learning. An Evolutions student will receive the same core grade for each discipline Art, Science, English and Social Studies that represents their overall growth and achievement up to that point. The grade will be based on achievement of our Learning Standards which includes: regular submission and review of evidence of engagement and learning, regular teacher-student conferences, formative checkpoints, summative products, and structured self-reflection. Individual disciplines may modify the core grade by a + / - based on student achievement. .
At the end of Semester 1 students will complete a mid point synthesis project that will serve as a mid-year checkpoint. In place of a final exam, students develop a capstone project that reflects the year of learning of both content and skill. It is critical to understand that the grading in Evolutions follows a developmental model; that is particular weight will be given to improvements in performance over the course. To that end, a student’s Evolution grade will be based on the engagement and growth a student demonstrates over the course of the term, semester, and year.
All courses are at the Honors level:
199 EVOLUTIONS ENGLISH H ENGLISH 6 credits
299 EVOLUTIONS SOCIAL STUDIES H SOCIAL STUDIES 6 credits
499 EVOLUTIONS SCIENCE H SCIENCE 6 credits
899 EVOLUTIONS ART H ART 6 credits
199A EVOLUTIONS 0 credits