You want your students to apply a Biblical perspective to what they study. You’ve heard that assessment can help. So, you want to use assessment.

Question: How can you get started?

Answer: By taking the following self-assessment. Rate each item, using the following scale:

4: Strongly agree • 3: Agree • 2: Disagree • 1: Strongly disagree

___ I understand how assessment impacts student application of a Biblical perspective.
___ I know what type of assessment to use to help my students apply a Biblical perspective.

___ I know what makes a good assessment good.
___ The assessments I give my students are good.
___ I work to make my assessments even better.

___ My students proficiently apply a Biblical perspective to what they study.
___ My students apply creation-fall-redemption-restoration to what they study.
___ My students get sufficient practice in applying a Biblical perspective to what they study.

___ The rubrics I use to score my assessments are good.
___ I use my rubrics effectively.
___ I use my assessment data to modify instruction.

___ I use assessment to help my students apply a Biblical perspective.
___ I have a clear vision for using assessment to help my students apply a Biblical perspective.
___ I want to learn more about using assessment to help my students apply a Biblical perspective.
___ I am committed to helping my students apply a Biblical perspective to what they study.


Now, ask yourself 4 questions about the data:

1. How many 4s, 3s, 2s, and 1s do I have?
2. What satisfies/concerns me about the data?
3. Which items would it be helpful to learn more about?
4. What will I do?

Additional resources:

1. Videos: Teach and assess Biblical perspective, Biblical perspective assessment helps, Assessment helps students value and get proficient at Biblical perspective,
2. Teacher testimonials regarding using assessment
3. Tutorial: Use assessment to help students understand and apply a Biblical perspective
4. Use assessment
5. To learn more about using assessment, explore these 12 questions

Nidhi, a high school student at Christian Academy in Japan, goes to Bible 9 and receives a handout for an assignment:

1. Prompt: Trace one part of God’s creation (music, animals, our intellect, families, etc.) through its creation, fall, redemption, and restoration.
2. Due: Your project must be finished by Tuesday, April 21, at the beginning of class. What “finished” and “turned in” look like will depend on what you do.
3. Purpose: The purpose of this assignment is to help you understand the ideas of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration, and to help you start to see how these ideas apply to everything in school and life.
4. Options: This is intentionally very open-ended. You can make a poster, write a paper, write a song, write a poem, do a dance, write a speech, make a PowerPoint, etc. We encourage you to talk to us about what you want to do. We will evaluate each person’s work on its own merit.
5. Helpful Questions: These questions can help guide your thinking about the part of God’s creation you have chosen. 

Nidhi decides to apply creation-fall-redemption-restoration to nature. During the next 4 weeks, she studies, develops her material into a presentation, and turns in her presentation on April 21.

Her high school principal asks her to give her presentation at the May 19 PTA meeting. Nidhi gives her presentation, using the following visual aids:

Question: Is it OK to teach to an assessment?
 
Answer: Yes. In fact, teaching to an assessment is an effective practice. When I teach, I look at what students are supposed to learn, develop an assessment, and teach to it.
 
Question: So, should I teach to all my assessments?
 
Answer: That depends. Are your assessments worthy of being taught to? If so, teach to them. If not, change your assessments so they are worthy of being taught to, and then teach to them.
 
Question: What does a worthy assessment look like?
 
Answer: Here is a sample essay prompt from English 10: Using the poetry analysis skills we practiced, critique the lyrics of a favorite song (what the lyrics say, how they say it, and what God might think of what they say).
 
Bottom line: Make sure your assessments are worthy of being taught to—then teach to them.

Question: What inspires students learning?
 
Answer: Rigor. Students may not want to admit it, but they enjoy rigorous education. So, make your Biblical perspective assessment rigorous, not easy.
 
Question: What do easy and rigorous assessment prompts look like?
 
Answer: Check out these examples:
 
Presentation

• Easy: Share something you found interesting (2-3 minutes).
• Rigorous: Connect to something you studied this semester in English 10, develop that connection as your project, connect a Biblical principle to the topic, and connect the Biblical principle to your life in a way you can implement and report on. This may be done as an individual (5-8 min. presentation) or in a group (8-10 min. presentation).

Essay

• Easy: For one of the short stories you read, describe the theme (paragraph).
• Rigorous: For one of the short stories you read, identify a theme, analyze how the author uses literary conventions to communicate it, and evaluate it from a Biblical perspective (500 words).

Bottom line: Inspire learning. Inspire students to connect what they study and what the Bible teaches. Give rigorous assessments.

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.

What follows is an excellent example of this type of faith integrated assessment question for 8th grade science (thanks to Kristyn Kamps and Lloyd Dozeman from Holland Christian):

Letter to the Editor: God included fire as part of His creation; its effects can be not only good but necessary. However, wildfires can also create wide scale destruction and death as did the fires of 1910. On January 4, 2002, CNN ran the following story: “Wildfires which were started by multiple lightning strikes early last month continue to burn out of control. They continue to wreak havoc across Australia’s most populated state and are expected to rage into next week. The largest fire has burned about 160,000 acres of bone-dry forest, killed animals, and created millions of dollars in property damage. Nothing good can come of this tragedy…”

Using what you have learned about forest fires, write a reaction to the CNN story using the following format.

• Heading: Your reaction should be addressed to the editor of the article; begin your letter “Dear Editor.” (1 point)
• Paragraph 1: Your first paragraph should explain who you are and why you are writing. (2 points)
• Paragraph 2: Describe conditions that cause wildfires to spread. (3 points)
• Paragraph 3: From what you’ve learned about what God created fire to be (good) and the issues people face when dealing with wildfires (bad), give detailed examples of how wildfires can be BOTH good and bad. (6 points)
• Paragraph 4: Choose a position: either AGREE with the statements from the CNN article or DISAGREE and give 2 reasons for your position. (4 points)
• Closing: Be sure to sign your letter with a closing (”Sincerely,”) and your name. (1 point)

I really like this assessment because it asks the student to apply a perspective to a real life scenario. Since it is a letter to the editor, it is also ready to be shared with others who may have agreed without thinking too deeply that “nothing good can come out of this tragedy…” - this statement reflects the nihilistic view that often pops up in media and needs to be countered by Christians who believe that we have a redeeming God who can bring good out of evil. This assessment asks students to use higher-level skills and apply a faith perspective to the situation.

Are you using these kinds of assessments with your students? Are you willing to share them with others?

Kim Essenburg, English 10 teacher at Christian Academy in Japan, reflects on students 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.
 
All of the authors, it seems, either were born or ended up in situations where they didn’t really belong, or they were missing something, or something went wrong. It’s interesting to note the different responses each author had in their situation. Tolstoy had a primarily Christian perspective, Kafka was nihilist, and Camus was existentialist—each one giving their own reasons for why things were the way they were.
 
I learned from Leo Tolstoy’s “How Much Land Does a Man Need?” that if we are selfish and greedy, it might seem like you’re “living the life” at the moment, but in the end you’ll lose everything (the important things) you have.
 
Both Christianity and existentialism believe that people have the desire to find meaning. In Christianity, we find the true meaning in God and find joy, but in existentialism, people find their own meaning and find joy in that process. I thought it was sad that not all the people have hope and that not all people can feel true joy.
 
I learned a lot about decision-making and finding my place here. We all get left out and feel like an outsider, but I know that I still belong to God.
 
Every piece of literature has a worldview. It may be difficult to find, but if the author has any voice at all, you should be able to find it.
 
I learned that just like “The Guest” we all have to make decisions between two things. I learned that I have to pray to God before choosing the decision by myself because without God’s power, we are all weak and cannot make a decision we won’t regret.
 
From reading “The Bucket Rider” I learned how people who feel like they don’t belong anywhere are suffering because of emotional needs that may be as extreme as the Bucket Rider…. I want to be able to choose to act with empathy towards these people, unlike the coal dealer’s wife who ignored the Bucket Rider.

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.
 
Question: On an assessment, how can you give your students opportunities for choices?
 
Answer: By giving your students opportunities to choose, for example, the type of project, the topic of a presentation, the examples for an essay, and the color of paper for a poster.
 
Here are sample assessments that give students opportunities for choices:

• Science 2: Write a two-paragraph report about a dinosaur of your choice. Include where the dinosaur lived, when it lived, what it ate, what it looked like, its size, how it got its name, who found it, and any other interesting facts you found. Give three examples of how your dinosaur shows God’s creativity and power.
• Social Studies 6: Teach your classmates about the aspect of ancient Egyptian culture/history you researched. Show what the Bible teaches about it and how it connects to you.
• English 10: Compare/contrast how 2 characters from Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country illuminate the Biblical concept of shalom and apply that to a current event or personal situation.

Bottom line: Design good assessments. Give your students opportunities for choices. Today.

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:
 
Presentation prompt (used at the end of first and second semester): Connect to something you studied this semester in English 10, develop that connection as your project, connect a Biblical principle to the topic, and connect the Biblical principle to your life in a way you can implement and report on. This may be done as an individual (5-8 min. presentation) or in a group (8-10 min. presentation).
 
Unit test prompts:
(1) Short story unit (12/100 points): Describe Camus’s existentialism. Be sure to include:

• A definition of existentialism.
• The juxtaposition that makes humanity’s situation absurd.
• The 2 things the author says give meaning, illustrating them from the story.
• A response to “What of truth (from a Biblical perspective) has the author seen, and what has he missed?”

(2) Night unit (6/60 points): What can a Christian say to someone whose painful experience causes him or her to question the existence of a good God? In your answer, be sure to list and briefly explain 3 of the points in the letter “What Can Speak to Our Wounds?”
 
Essay prompts:
(1) Cry, the Beloved Country unit (750-1000 words): Compare/contrast how 2 of the characters from Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country illuminate the Biblical concept of shalom. Next, apply insights gained from your comparison/contrast to a current event or personal situation.
 
(2) Night unit (750-1000 words): How significant a part of what’s wrong with the world is the tendency to disregard the human dignity of others, and how should a Christian respond? Illustrate your answer from literature, history, current events, and your own experience. Be sure to address the relevance of the Biblical concepts of the image of God and the second greatest commandment.
 
(3) Short story unit (500 words): For one of the short stories you read, identify a theme, analyze how the author uses literary conventions to communicate it, and evaluate it from a Biblical perspective.
 
(4) Poetry unit (500 words): Using the poetry analysis skills we practiced, critique the lyrics of a favorite song: what the lyrics say, how they say it, and what God might think of what they say.
 
(5) A Doll's House unit (750-1000 words): What kind of individual are you, why, what kind do you want to be, and what will help or hinder you in becoming that individual? In your answer, be sure to include responses to the following 3 questions:
(A) Who are you spiritually, personality-wise, and culturally? (See below.)

• Spiritually: How does God define you, to what extent do you agree (if not, what’s your alternate definition?), and what practical implications does that have? (Cite the Bible at least 3 times.)
• Personality-wise: How does the Meyers-Briggs assessment define you, to what extent do you agree (why/why not), and what practical implications does that have? (Cite personality information at least 2 times.)
• Culturally: Which of Kohls’ cultural values are strongest for you? Why? (Influence of home culture? Japanese culture? US culture? CAJ culture?) (Cite Kohls at least 2 times.)

(B) How do these aspects of you interact?
(C) How does understanding these things about yourself help you determine your mission in life and how to attain it?