Personalizing learning is an assessment shift.
We seek out relevant and authentic issues, contemporary formats to demonstrate learning, and identify audiences to share their work. Students use scoring tools to guide their process, gauge growth over time, and determine next steps.
Personalizing learning is an instructional shift.
We step back and review how we are building capacity in self-direction, curiosity, and impact. We can apply the four attributes to develop opportunities for students to express their voice, co-create and design, recognize the significance of socially constructing learning, and discover who they are as learners.
Personalizing learning is a relational shift.
We celebrate the inclusion, equity, and respect that is demonstrated. A culture that encourages each member of the school community to aspire for an environment that harvests the seeds of ideas and nurtures them to grow with an eye to the future of the entire culture as well as to the benefit of each individual.
Voice
In a personalized learning culture, each member is seen as a respected and valued participant. Empowerment comes from an environment in which students recognize the power of their own ideas and recognize the shift that can happen by being exposed to others’ ideas. The atmosphere is one of discourse in which multiple perspectives are encouraged.
Increasingly more open to share their thinking.
Reflective prompts to consider for VOICE:
- In what ways do you invite students to express their thoughts and opinions?
- In what ways do you create an environment of safety for students to respectfully disagree with one another (and you)?
- In what ways do you give students the opportunity to advocate for a position?
- In what ways do you encourage students to raise questions that are skeptical or out of the box?
Co-Creation
Co-creation is an invitational act — one that signifies respect and trust in others at the design table. Regular participation and engagement in co-creating performances and actions constitutes an opportunity for students to flex their innovative and creative muscles.
They are the actors not merely the recipients of innovation, adaptations and change. This suggests a collaborative relationship among learners when they sit down at the design table to imagine, strategize, and draft new ideas and actions.
Thinking interdependently to construct and take actions on ideas.
Reflective prompts to consider for CO-CREATION:
- To what extent do you provide choice for students in WHAT they can pursue (e.g., question, topic, or idea)?
- To what extent do you provide choice for students in HOW they can pursue it (e.g., collaboration with peers, consulting outside expertise, seeking out and using resources)?
- To what extent do you provide choice to learners for HOW they demonstrate learning (e.g., selection of forms for performance, public vs. private audience)?
- To what extent do you provide the opportunity for learners to develop checkpoints and monitor progress in relation to their goal?
- To what extent do you create exhibitions for learners that focus on what they learned — about the topic and about themselves?
Social Construction
Learners build ideas through relationships with others as they theorize, investigate, and develop in pursuit of a common goal. Social construction occurs as learners seek out information, ideas, and perspectives to guide task development by consulting experts or peers who have intimate knowledge of the topic and using others as a sounding board to work through ideas or roadblocks.
There is real power in feeling that you are not alone, a sense of camaraderie when you are working to cause a change, create a performance, or build a prototype. Learners also share the results of their work— their creations, synthesis, and conclusions — to guide others, illustrate thinking, and offer perspectives.
Building networks and connections to seek out and share expertise.
Reflective prompts to consider for SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION:
- In what ways do you encourage students to seek others to help give their work more meaning?
- In what ways do you offer opportunities for students to seek outside of the expertise that is within the classroom?
- In what ways do you provide students with the opportunities to test their ideas and see whether they hold up to the scrutiny of other’s perspectives?
Self Discovery
Our ultimate aim is for learners to become self-directed and capable of managing themselves in a variety of situations. This comes about as learners uncover how they navigate through the challenges they’ve set for themselves: how they start making sense of a problem or how they generate an idea, how they handle the frustration of not getting it quite right for the umpteenth time, and how they work through revisions or dead ends by analyzing what happened.
They develop the capacity to articulate areas of strength and concern and view this as a proactive opportunity to grow. Learners need to know enough about themselves to be able to make wise decisions as they navigate through the turbulence of a rapidly changing environment.
Reflecting on learning and gaining insights through self-knowledge.
Reflective prompts to consider for SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION:
- In what ways do you provide students with the opportunity to reflect on their learning and how it affects who they are becoming as a learner?
- In what ways do you provide the opportunity for students to know more about the ways that they learn best?
- In what ways do you provide the opportunity for students to see the growth of their work over time?
- To what extent do you create exhibitions for student performances or products that focus on what they learned — about the topic and about themselves?