The WESS Way
“The WESS Way”
West End Secondary School
Andrew Wintner || Principal
Rick Evans || Assistant Principal
Michele Balsam-Moga || Assistant Principal (IA)
Compassion, Creativity, Resilience, Wonder
This document serves as an explanation and codification of the way we do things at WESS.
High Quality Student Work || Guiding children toward the creation of high quality work is one of the main reasons we are here, and improving the quality of student work on a day-to-day basis is our major focus for the ‘25 - ‘26 school year. High quality work is defined by its complexity, its authenticity, and its craftsmanship. Complex work requires “higher-order thinking by challenging students to apply, analyze, evaluate, and create during daily instruction and throughout longer projects.” Authentic work “demonstrates the original, creative thinking of students” and “uses formats and standards from the professional world, rather than artificial school formats.” Authentic work “contributes to a larger community” and “often connects academic standards with real-world issues, controversies, and local people and places.” Work demonstrating craftsmanship has an “attention to accuracy, detail, and beauty” which is most often produced “through multiple drafts or rehearsals with critique from others.”
Expeditions || An expedition is an interdisciplinary study which “includes guiding questions, kickoff experiences, case studies, projects, lessons, fieldwork, experts, service learning, and a culminating event that features high quality student work.” At WESS, expeditions occur two to three times a year, and teachers develop case studies in their classes which connect to the expedition. Each grade team is expected to have at least two 6-12 week expeditions (at least one per semester) that include these features.
Case Studies || A case study is meaningfully different from what is often called a unit. The term case study can refer to two things: 1. a case study is “an approach to research [which uses] a narrowed topic as a window into big ideas and concepts” that is “usually incorporated into projects and learning expeditions” and 2. a case study is “a structure itself, outside of a project or learning expedition—a focused investigation that does not require (as a project does) a culminating product.” Case studies “give broad topics a specific–often local–context. The specific context enables teachers to translate required standards on broad topics into learning targets that are meaningful to students in the context of a locally specific case study.” Even if the grade team is not on expedition, teachers are still expected to teach through case studies.
Learning Targets || Learning targets are “goals for lessons, projects, units, and courses” which are “derived from standards and used to assess growth and achievement.” All learning targets begin with the phrase “I can” because learning targets are for students, not teachers or administrators. Learning targets are introduced at strategic points in a lesson or a sequence of lessons, and students often self-assess and track progress toward their mastery of learning targets in lesson debriefs. Learning targets use “concrete, assessable verbs (e.g., identify, compare, analyze)” and “are specific, often referring to the particular context of a lesson, project, or case study.” All lessons must have at least one daily learning target that includes a DOK 3 or 4 verb, but lessons can have multiple learning targets, so they might not all be DOK 3 or 4. Each Long Term Learning Target must be assessed at least three times per marking period; at least one of those assessments must be summative.
Mastery-Based Grading || Also called “standards-based grading,” mastery-based grading is based on the belief that “all students can meet high standards, given support.” Because of this philosophy, students at WESS “have multiple opportunities to make and show progress toward learning targets through multiple quality assessments.” Each formative and summative assessment is tied to the specific Long Term Learning Target(s) it assesses, and each assessment is given a score of 1 to 4. A 4 describes exemplary, high-quality work that exceeds the standard(s) being assessed and that demonstrates “sophistication and craftsmanship.” A 3 demonstrates mastery of the given target(s) according to the rubric. A 2 represents work that approaches mastery but which demonstrates gaps in understanding. A 1 is a ‘not yet’ grade which is given to work that “does not demonstrate substantive progress toward meeting the standards.” All grades are reported on Jumprope.
Re-engagement || Re-engagement is a key part of the WESS grading policy because it gives students multiple attempts to demonstrate mastery. After receiving a grade from a teacher as well as substantive, actionable feedback, students are invited to revise and/or reattempt their work and/or performance. It is our goal to ensure that students who are not yet meeting grade-level standards have the opportunity to do so several times over the course of the marking period. Reengagement is not extra credit; students must revise and/or reattempt the original assignment by implementing revisions based on their teacher’s feedback. Projects, papers, and other long-term summative assessments (AoLs) are eligible for reengagement; exit tickets, quizzes, and other formative assessments (AfLs) are not. Re-engagement must be completed within 2 weeks after the marking period ends. No new work will be accepted or graded after this window closes; at this point, grades become final. More details can be found in the grading policy.
Guiding Questions || A guiding question is a component of an expedition, a case study, and a lesson which is meant to drive and focus inquiry. At WESS, grade teams create guiding questions for their expeditions, and individual teachers create guiding questions for their case studies which are tied to the larger expedition guiding questions. Guiding questions should be open-ended and allow for multiple justifiable answers. Some examples from WESS expeditions include: How are we better together? How should we overcome division and act in times of crisis? How does the concept of rights vary across time and place? How can societal transitions be made equitable? This latter question, for example, can be answered by different content areas. In social studies, students may study the effects of industrialization upon workers and the resulting labor movements; in English, students may read Orwell’s Animal Farm, Achebe's Things Fall Apart, or Satrapi's Persepolis; in science, students may study the effects of climate change on people, society, and the planet; in mathematics, students may analyze data related to the correlation between socioeconomic status and public health outcomes; in physical education, students may study the relationship between sports and civil rights movements.
Habits of Work || At WESS, we measure mastery of habits of work (HoW) and character learning targets separately from academic learning targets. Our habits of work are based on the four core values of our school: wonder, creativity, compassion, and resilience. They allow students to track their own progress toward embodying those core values and reflect a student’s interactions with others, their care for community spaces, their progress toward completing high-quality work, and the ways in which they make that progress.
Checks for Understanding (Formative assessments) || Checks for understanding “track what students understand and can do throughout a lesson. As a result of this ongoing assessment, teachers and students make adjustments to what they are doing to ensure that gaps in understanding are addressed and that students who have mastered concepts may comfortably move on to another learning task.” Checks for understanding are ungraded, informal, and quick – they are a tool for teachers to help them adjust the lesson as necessary to meet the needs of students.
Assessments for Learning (Formative assessments) || An assessment for Learning (AfL) is a graded task that a teacher uses to determine a student’s progress toward mastery of a Long-Term Learning Target. Tasks like exit tickets, written responses, oral assessments, or early drafts of a longer-term project can be used as formative assessments. All AfLs are graded using clear, student-friendly rubrics. You are encouraged to co-construct rubrics with students. AfLs should be paired with glows, grows, and next steps for individual students so they know what to work on as they move toward mastery.
Assessments of Learning (Summative assessments) || An Assessment of Learning (AoL) is a summative assessment occurring at the end of a case study or expedition which is meant to assess a student’s mastery of one or more Long Term Learning Targets. Assessments of Learning often require several days or weeks to complete, and students create drafts, receive feedback and critiques from teachers and peers, and revise their work to create a high-quality work product. After an AoL is completed and assessed, students have the opportunity to reengage to demonstrate mastery. All AoLs are graded using clear, student-friendly rubrics. Even though AoLs occur at the end of a case study or expedition, all students should be given rubric-aligned feedback in the form of glows, grows, and next steps so they know what to work on as they move forward in their studies.
Kick-Offs || A kick-off is a special event (often requiring a special schedule for the day) in which teachers and students build basic background knowledge of the expedition, build excitement, and introduce expedition guiding questions and learning targets. Kick-offs can be in-school or out-of-school, and they occur at the beginning of every expedition. Kickoffs are meant to “build background knowledge,” “raise questions rather than answering them,” and they “end by revealing the guiding questions and an opportunity for students to debrief by forming connections to the questions and brainstorming ways to pursue answers.”
Field Work and Experts || At WESS, grade teams plan “fieldwork and research experiences” such as “interviewing experts who come to the classroom to speak about case study topics” or venturing out of the building to “collect data.” Field work is meaningfully different from a field trip. Field work should help “students to become experts in the topic” of the expedition or case study by allowing them to “do research at the fieldwork site and use the techniques of inquiry used by professionals in the field.” Teachers also plan “research experiences” such as “interviewing experts who come to the classroom to speak about case study topics.” Experts are found by using our parent body and other community members or sometimes by reaching out to local institutions and universities.
Field Experiences || Field experiences are distinct from field work in that students are not engaged in ‘work’ explicitly related to the expedition; instead, field experiences bring students into the city for activities, shows, and other events that enrich their lives and coursework. For example, students in an English class studying drama might travel downtown to see a show. Field experiences should connect to academic coursework.
Presentations of Learning || A presentation of learning (often abbreviated to PoL) is a “culminating grade-level or schoolwide event in which students present high-quality work to the school community, families, and members of the greater community…. It is a public exhibition of student learning in academics and the arts that feature student work and student reflection on learning.” PoLs “can include presentations, original performances, and demonstrations. The events enable students to articulate their learning and achievement and demonstrate college-and career-ready skills to an authentic audience.” PoLs occur at the end of every expedition. Students should be encouraged to create invitations for specific people to attend their PoLs (family, friends, staff, etc.).
Models, Critique, & Revision || Models, critique, and revision are all necessary elements in producing high-quality work because “students are often unclear about what they are aiming for until they actually see and analyze strong models.” Models are “exemplars of work used to build a vision of quality within a genre.” Critique lessons allow “students and teachers [to] work together to define the qualities of good work in a specific genre or to think about the ways all students can improve their work through revision.” On assessments of learning, students have the opportunity to reëngage before and after a teacher’s assessment; the latter is called “reengagement.”
Standards-Targets-Assessments (STA) Plans || STAs are one method of planning a case study that asks teachers to identify the standards to which they are teaching, the learning targets that students will be expected to master, and the formative & summative assessments (AfLs & AoLs) that students will work on in the case study. STAs help teachers ensure that their case studies are standards-aligned, that all learning targets have assessments, and that daily learning targets are coherently aligned to long-term learning targets.