A Service for Teachers Who Serve

Curriculum Based Standards of Learning Interactive Web Sites ^©

Description

With the establishment of the Standards of Learning by the Virginia Department of Education and the Virginia Senate, high schools are being required to meet the criteria of a 70 percent pass rate by 2004. State and local funds have been made available to tutor students after school hours. This creates a conflict for those students who work, don’t have transportation to and from the school after hours, and for those students who may be embarrassed or too shy to participate in a group process such as an SOL review session due to low or failing grades.

The creation of specific, content area SOL tutorials and practice tests on the World Wide Web would alleviate these concerns. Our tutorials and practice test questions will reflect, in scope and sequence, those questions developed by the Virginia Department of Education. 

A Home Page will be created that allows for links to all subject areas. Each subject area will have a tutorials page, practice test page, and a help and suggestions page. Department heads will be asked for input concerning types of questions they prefer, format, and how the answers are to be collected and evaluated.

Represented above is an example of the format that is used for the tutorials. The student will click on the answer that he or she believes to be correct. If the answer is incorrect, he or she will be prompted with a hint (see below). The tutorials are devised to be an instant feedback tool. The student can complete the tutorial independent of the teacher; there is no fear of getting the wrong answer because only the student knows the results of each question.

Please click on the picture to see a full view

Notice that the hint appears at the top of the window along with the percentage of questions answered correctly. If the student continues to get the wrong answer, they may click on (help) and will be taken to a site that explains, in detail, that particular concept. If the student chooses the correct answer, they will receive a smiley face and some words of congratulations/encouragement (see below).

Please click on the picture to see a full view

The practice test is designed for the purpose of evaluation. The test is divided up into sections that correlate to the Virginia Department of Education Standards of Learning. For the purposes of this proposal, I have selected the content area of chemistry to demonstrate the advantages of an on-line SOL interactive web site and the SOL designated CH.2.

SOL CH.2

The student will investigate and understand that the placement of elements on the periodic table is a function of their atomic structure. The periodic table is a tool used for the investigations of

* mass/atomic number;

* isotopes/half-lives/nuclear particles;

* particle/mass charge;

* families/groups;

* series/periods;

* trends/patterns: atomic/nuclear radii, electronegativity,

  shielding effect;

* electron configurations/oxidation numbers;

* chemical/physical properties; and

* historical/quantum models.

Represented above is what the student sees once he or she has accessed the Science SOL Practice Test page on the World Wide Web. Each question is correlated to the Standards of Learning as developed by the Virginia Department of Education (see below)

Please click on the picture to see a full view

In the example above, a student clicks on his or her choice and that answer is recorded for that student in a folder marked, "CH.2." The SOL facilitator can monitor the progress of each student in regard to each specific SOL.

A separate page will be established to help the student, teacher and facilitator link to various sites on the World Wide Web. Each SOL criteria will be linked to sites that offer suggestions on teaching strategies, laboratory procedures, and subject/content information.

The development of a curriculum based SOL web site offers a school system the necessary tools to increase their SOL test scores. This proposal gives administrators, teachers, and students more flexibility in the design of tutorials and help sessions by allowing students to study at home, in a library/media center, or in a structured group setting such as a school computer laboratory.