Personalization: It's the word on the tip of everyone's tongue in education right now, but honestly, how many of us know what it really looks like? How often are we able to truly personalize instruction on the individual level? I mean differentiating assignments for several different small groups of students within a class is challenging enough. How can we consistently tailor our teaching and assignments to each of our individual students, especially when we might see up to 120 of them everyday?
I read an excellent article from Edweek.org this week entitled, "Defining Personalization: Students As Agents and Teachers As Coaches," in which the author explores a number of key aspects of what it means to truly personalize instruction. The author related personalization to differentiation and explained that in a truly personalized classroom, "students become active agents involved in determining what they learn (content), how and how fast they learn (process and pace), and/or how they demonstrate their learning (work products). In this personalized learning approach, teachers become group facilitators, personal coaches, and support specialists." I thought that definition was succinct and easily transferrable, and it reminded me of a conversation I had with a colleague this week.
I had sat down with an English teacher one day this week to beat around these ideas of personalization a little bit, as she has been wanting to develop personalized learning pathways in her junior and senior literature classes but wasn't sure where to begin. I told her I thought the two main ways I see to personalize instruction are by skill level or by interests. A tool like USA Test Prep (which, incidentally, is fairly cheap) can make developing personalized learning pathways based on skill level fairly easy. Students can be given a pretest within the system on a certain set of standards, and once done, with the click of one single button, the teacher can assign each student a set of practice activities based on their individual weaknesses as demonstrated on the pretest. It's individualized, it's focused, and it's needed, but it's not very likely to save a student who is unmotivated and bored with school. To do that, personalization based one interest, the harder of the two options in my opinion, is the way to go. The Edweek article ends by describing a number of schools who are doing this at the district or building level, including one that offers free training and resources to any school or team wanting to explore their program for themselves. It's available here: http://info.summitlearning.org/program/program-requirements/
I read an excellent article from Edweek.org this week entitled, "Defining Personalization: Students As Agents and Teachers As Coaches," in which the author explores a number of key aspects of what it means to truly personalize instruction. The author related personalization to differentiation and explained that in a truly personalized classroom, "students become active agents involved in determining what they learn (content), how and how fast they learn (process and pace), and/or how they demonstrate their learning (work products). In this personalized learning approach, teachers become group facilitators, personal coaches, and support specialists." I thought that definition was succinct and easily transferrable, and it reminded me of a conversation I had with a colleague this week.
I had sat down with an English teacher one day this week to beat around these ideas of personalization a little bit, as she has been wanting to develop personalized learning pathways in her junior and senior literature classes but wasn't sure where to begin. I told her I thought the two main ways I see to personalize instruction are by skill level or by interests. A tool like USA Test Prep (which, incidentally, is fairly cheap) can make developing personalized learning pathways based on skill level fairly easy. Students can be given a pretest within the system on a certain set of standards, and once done, with the click of one single button, the teacher can assign each student a set of practice activities based on their individual weaknesses as demonstrated on the pretest. It's individualized, it's focused, and it's needed, but it's not very likely to save a student who is unmotivated and bored with school. To do that, personalization based one interest, the harder of the two options in my opinion, is the way to go. The Edweek article ends by describing a number of schools who are doing this at the district or building level, including one that offers free training and resources to any school or team wanting to explore their program for themselves. It's available here: http://info.summitlearning.org/program/program-requirements/
Personalization is a key buzzword right now and many schools are trying to sway in that direction where classrooms promote the differentiated learning style so all students can learn in the way and in the time that suits them best. Unfortunately in my district, there are many students who if given the option - would sit and do nothing. They aren't interested in anything school related which makes differentiation very hard. I try and try to find some way that they can understand and enjoy learning in FCS. Hopefully your experience is much more successful! It's great to see that you are collaborating with other teachers in order to help this way of learning be a great tool in your classrooms!
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