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As their English teacher, it is my responsibility to prepare my eleventh grade students for both the Reading and Writing sections on the Pennsylvania State Standardized Assessment. That means I must make sure students are ready to answer an array of reading comprehension questions, grammar and mechanics questions, short constructed responses, and long five paragraph essays. How would I best prepare students to do all those things? It seemed simple. For the past three years, I’ve done what many teachers do because it seems to be the most sure-fire way of increasing student scores. I bombarded them with practice questions, sample responses, test-taking tricks and tips—even getting “creative” and making a game out of it. I wanted to think I was doing the right thing-- that I was giving students the best shot at success. What I didn’t want to acknowledge included all of the valuable class time I was using, the disinterested looks on students’ faces, and the minimal levels of improvement by the end of our practice days. Did they pick up some useful tips? Did they learn to write by a formula for maximum points? Did they see some typical grammatical errors that were favorites of the PSSA creators? Sure. But did they learn anything that was of real value? Did any of those practice questions result in meaningful, relevant learning? Did they take away something that could transfer to life outside of the classroom? Probably not. Coming to this realization, how could I ethically continue a practice that was not in my students’ best interests? And if I wouldn’t continue this kind of test preparation, what would replace it? And how would I find a replacement that met the requirements of the test but also resulted in meaningful learning on the part of my students?

Instead of focusing test-preparation energies on skill-and-drill practice questions with little meaningful learning gains beyond the test itself, teachers can utilize an alternative that engages students in relevant skills assessed on the standardized test, while also developing critical 21st century skills. That alternative is [|Challenge-Based Learning]. Through research funded by Apple Computer, the challenge-based approach to education is defined as a "collaborative learning experience in which teachers and students work together to learn about compelling issues, propose solutions to real problems, and take action...reflect on their learning and the impact of their actions, and publish their solutions to a worldwide audience." In the challenge-based approach to learning, students become active participants in the learning process-- selecting [|challenges], generating questions, setting goals, collaborating with peers, developing solutions, reflecting on their experience, and sharing the results with others. Most importantly, the [|topics] are student-selected, meaning students have the opportunity to focus on a [|relevant] issue in need of real solutions. Lastly, the culminating activity joins students with others in the learning community and allows students to have a lasting impact. Throughout this process, students are learning basic literacy skills, like reading and writing, assessed on the standardized test-- but they are gaining so much more. They are strengthening their media literacy while becoming creators, collaborators, and problem-solvers in a digital world.