Personalized Learning, Where do We Start?

In just one year it is amazing how far our school has gone with personalize learning.  As we begin year 2 as PL coaches, we reflect on how we got started and moved as a school towards personalizing the learning for our learners.  

Common Language

While there can be many learning pathways, our school landed on creating norms and common language around teacher seminar(direct instruction with the teacher), collaborative groups(2-4 people working together on a common goal), and independent flex.  Each grade level spent time discussing and practicing each pathway.  On the first day teachers guided the learners in a conversation about what a teacher seminar would look like, sound like, and feel like. After discussing the rationale for choose to learn from a teacher seminar, learners went on to learn content in a teacher seminar.  The most important part of the guided practice came at the end of lesson when learners reflected how effective the teacher seminar was for them.  They answered the questions, “Were you able to meet the learning goal? Did you feel engaged?  Were you able to stay focused?”  In the next day of class it was the same format but the class discussed, practiced, and reflected on collaborative groups.  On the third day of class the class was guided through discussing and practicing independent flex.  Finally, on the fourth day of class the learners chose to engage in the content through teacher seminar, collaborative groups or independant flex, and of course reflected on their experience and learning. Here is an example of how 8th grade modeled pathways with learners.  8th grade PL INTRO

Naming the learning process gives learners an opportunity to reflect upon and own their learning.  Even if learners do not have an opportunity for choosing their pathway, when the teacher names the method or strategy they are using to help the class meet the learning goals, the learners develop metacognition of the process.  

Pathways through Classroom Space

Learners sitting based on where there are in the research process 

How does your classroom space reflect the experience you want learners to have?  This simple question gets to the heart of how important it is to think strategically about how you design your classroom space. These are the four things we asked all teachers to consider:

1. Design not decorate: most classrooms are cognitively distracting.
2. Consider how the space creates multiple pathways: use flexible seating that is conducive to seminars, collaborative groups, flex groups, and independent learning.
3. Use the walls as a canvas for learning: think of your class as vertical and not just horizontal.
4. Leave room for learner input: they have ownership and can see themselves in the space.

The teachers in our school ran away with these ideas and transformed their classrooms, see what we mean from this presentation SV Space      

Learner Profile/Reflection

Our school has learners track their learning preferences, academic progress, and goal setting in advisory. Advisors use the schoology advisory page to assign documents that gather this information to the learners. Advisors check in with learners and conference with them about their learning profiles.  Academic Check In     Learning Preferences   Learner Success Journal    

One of the best entry points to personalizing the learning is by implementing ongoing reflection for the learners. Reflection is really processing the learning so it should happen at all points in the class.  Reflection requires learners to think about what they know, don’t know, and what their next steps should be.  Learners can reflect independently, in small groups or as a whole class.  Our class begins with a learning goal and ends with learners reflecting on their understanding and effort they put in to reach that understanding.  This allows learners to track their effort and self-regulation and then compared to how they do on the assessments. 

Example of learners reflecting on the daily goal with evaluating effort and understanding 

Data for the learner to reflect on, how their effort scores related to their test results

Here are other reflection prompts that can be used to help process the learning:

-How is this similar or different to ____________________________________?

-How does this part relate to the whole?

-What perspectives were represented?  What perspectives were left out?

-Explain the relationship between__________________ and ________________________.

-Tell a story that illustrates________________________________________.

-What does this new learning make you think of?

-What can you do with this information?