The learners are well aware of the benefits of personalized learning. Watch this: Alina and Ashley!!!
Once learners reach a point of meeting a standard they reflect and add to their learner profile. They consider what they discovered about how they learn. We ask them to contemplate on the progress they made towards meeting the goals they set at the beginning of the unit. For instance, once learners read, discussed and wrote an essay on To Kill a Mockingbird, we also asked them to identify the strategies that helped them grow as a reader and writer. They express what they learned about their reading and writing process. Considering a learner’s approach to reading we might ask the following: did you access visuals, audio or summaries to help your comprehension? How much of a text did you read at a time? Did you find post-it notes, interactive bookmarks or other reading strategies helpful? If you got stuck or distracted how did you work through it? We ask similar questions when it comes to writing. Some examples are as follows: What did you learn about your writing process? How did you feel starting the essay mid-way through the book? Which brainstorming, outlining and drafting techniques did you try? 
All of this reflection helps learners continue to create their own learning pathways. They are not simply following the teacher's instructions, they are working side by side with us to be active participants in their education. After learners reflect, we always conference with them to discuss what/how they learned. These conversations also allow for us to encourage learners to outline the course they took to meet a standard. Throughout this personal reflection process we believe it's important for individuals to move forward with purposeful learning.
Connecting to the Learners' Passions
While learners reflected with us one on one, the other learners continued working toward meeting another standard(9.9.8.8 As an individual or in collaboration, create a multimedia work, a remix of original work and the work of others, or a piece of digital communication for a specific purpose ). Once again, each learner had a choice in how he or she wanted to demonstrate meeting the standard. This approach was similar to what individuals did at the start of the school year, we just required that they use a multimedia platform to “show what they know”. We created an essential question that related to the unit/standard. We asked: How is one impacted, influenced, or inspired by their community? Learners could choose their own way to answer this question. Anxieties were higher the first time learners tackled voice and choice to this degree. Notably, the second time around, we witnessed a dramatic decrease in anxiety and a highly visible increase in engagement and energy around the work. They were ready to embrace this creative process as an active participant.
Connecting to the Learners' Passions
While learners reflected with us one on one, the other learners continued working toward meeting another standard(9.9.8.8 As an individual or in collaboration, create a multimedia work, a remix of original work and the work of others, or a piece of digital communication for a specific purpose ). Once again, each learner had a choice in how he or she wanted to demonstrate meeting the standard. This approach was similar to what individuals did at the start of the school year, we just required that they use a multimedia platform to “show what they know”. We created an essential question that related to the unit/standard. We asked: How is one impacted, influenced, or inspired by their community? Learners could choose their own way to answer this question. Anxieties were higher the first time learners tackled voice and choice to this degree. Notably, the second time around, we witnessed a dramatic decrease in anxiety and a highly visible increase in engagement and energy around the work. They were ready to embrace this creative process as an active participant.
In the past we outlined entire projects for learners. In retrospect we see that we had done all the critical and original thinking. The result is a group of learners just checking off the steps in order to complete the task. Now we are assisting learners as they do all the inventive thinking and problem solving. The most rewarding part for learners is the invitation to tap into personal areas of interests and passions. One group of learners came running into class with more enthusiasm than we have ever seen regarding class work. They created a web cartoon and plan to carry it out long after the project parameters. They were motivated by the choice they had in their project and have a goal to gather followers and expand their vision. They came in during lunch, put in extra time on weekends and beamed with excitement around the ideas they went after. Other learners also investigated topics around personal interests such as sports, fashion, music, art, literacy, the environment, community service, gender equality, racism and distribution of wealth/social class. One learner even focused on how society paints this image of perfection using makeup. Indeed, our learners continue to inspire us in ways we never could have imagined.
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| The faces of engaged learners. |
We were excited to present at the Minnesota Middle School Conference on personalize learning, check out our presentation: Personalized Learning Snapshot
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| Our "pillars" for Personalized Learning. |
