Dan Beerens, vice president of learning services at Christian Schools International, focuses on Christian education in his blog Nurturing Faith. In this blog entry, he makes a case for quality faith integrated assessments.

If one of the most important things in a Christian school is to nurture faith through the ability of a student to apply a Christian perspective (or worldview) to contemporary life, then we should make sure that our assessments are top notch and will drive our instruction. Additionally we need to make sure that the assessments involve the higher level thinking skills of application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Read More...

Kim Essenburg, English 10 teacher at Christian Academy in Japan, reflects on student learning results.
 
Here are sample student answers to the final question on my English 10 short story test: What else did you learn this unit that you did not have a chance to show on the test? I think understand that everyone has a perspective and that it’s important to connect literature and the Bible. Read More...

You want to help your students better connect what they study and what the Bible teaches. You know that assessment helps your students learn, so you want to give your students good assessments. Specifically, you want to give your students assessments that give them opportunities to make choices—because you know making choices helps your students get engaged. Read More...

Kim Essenburg, English 10 teacher at Christian Academy in Japan, responds:

I use assessments to see how well my students are connecting what they study and what the Bible teaches—and I use assessments to give my students practice making connections. I give a total of 9 Biblical perspective assessments. I assess content/Bible connections in 2 of 4 presentations, 2 of 9 unit tests, and 5 of 8 essays.
 
Here are the prompts for my 9 assessments: Read More...