Family & Community Alternative Learning
Charter Schools Best Practices

Conservatory Lab Charter School

Making Learning Visible

Topics:	Instructional Practices Developing, refining, and documenting curricula
Mission:	The CLCS will engage all children by using the Learning Through Music Curriculum model to ensure every child's academic, creative, and social success, as validated by qualitative and quantitative measures.
Goals:	1. To share research and best practices related to documenting and supporting individual and group learning
Summary:	Community and Measurement. Conservatory Lab Charter School works with Making Learning Visible, a collaboration between Harvard’s Project Zero and several district and charter public schools in Massachusetts. The project seeks to emphasize the group as a powerful learning environment as well as document how and what children learn in a group setting for future analysis and reflection. Through this project Conservatory Lab Charter School brought together charter and district educators to learn from one another about group learning and documentation, share their innovative practices in these areas, and collaborate across the boundary between charter and district schools. The project consisted of monthly seminars, visits to schools, documentation exhibits and events, close work with a core group of schools, and final retreats/conferences for ongoing participants. All participants learned about the complex dynamics of group learning, how to document that learning while “in process” as well as the final product, and to exhibit the documentation in meaningful, thoughtful, provocative, and powerful ways. For two years, Harvard’s Making Learning Visible (MLV), a project of Project Zero (PZ), served as the key collaborator for the work. The Massachusetts Charter Public School Association (MCPSA) played a role in that it provided support in the area of planning and grant and report writing, and it facilitated communication with Massachusetts charter schools. In addition, PZ secured private foundation funds to complete much of its portion of the work, making the project more extensive than it would have been with funding from a single source. The Conservatory Lab Charter School secured funding from the MA Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to fund a portion of this project.
Partner(s):
Dates:	01/01/2005 01/01/2006
Contact:	Diana Lam, Head of School (dlam@conservatorylab.org/617.254.8904)
Resources:	Documentation Summary (pzweb.harvard.edu/mlv/documentation/page.cfm?project_id=11&group_id=12) Workshop Session Materials Professional Development Sessions School Visit Program Conference Presentations
Federal Charter Schools Program Funds?	Yes

Back to Best Practices List