Personalized Learning Notes
February 2021
New This Month
- 4th grade teams presented their enrichment design ideas to a MN Zoo naturalist
- 5th-8th grade teams are recording their podcasts for the NPR student podcast challenge
Scroll down for articles on:
- The Benefits of Play and of Cultivating Curiosity
- Brain-based Learning Strategies
- How to Spend Less Time Grading
- Why Adults Should Learn to Trust Kids
- Disrupting Traumatic Reading Experiences
- 5 Essential Tips for Virtual Teaching
- Ideas for Writing Instruction
Want Students to Be More Creative? Try Adding More Play
- Spark curiosity and wonder.
- Students to think more divergently.
- People to be more open to new ideas.
- Improve empathy.
- Teach students how to collaborate and cooperate with one another.
- Increase student engagement and actually help with achievement.
- Develop a positive classroom culture.
The Benefits of Cultivating Curiosity in Kids
Prachi Shah, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Michigan, found that elevated curiosity was linked to higher math and literacy skills among kindergarteners.
She also discovered that students from impoverished backgrounds with a strong thirst for knowledge performed as well as those from affluent homes.
“At high levels [of curiosity], the achievement gap associated with poverty was essentially closed,” Shah says.
Click HERE to read the full article.
5 Brain-Based Learning Strategies to Boost Learning, Retention, and Focus
Brain-based learning strategies to improve your students’ performance:
1. Set a positive tone from the beginning
2. Establish “turn and talk” time
3. Incorporate visual elements
4. Break learning into chunks
5. Get moving
How to Spend Less Time Grading
Excerpt from Edutopia article from December, 202O by Elena Diaz
4 TIPS TO HELP YOU CUT YOUR GRADING TIME DRAMATICALLY
1. Plan for less grading: I always say to my staff, “If a student writes it down, it needs to be marked—it just doesn’t have to be marked by you.” When you plan your lessons, consider the ratio of activities that require teacher assessment.
2. Grade less: When planning my lessons, in order to decide if something is worth grading, I think about impact and alternatives.
3. Unleash the Power of Rubrics and Feedback Sheets: One of my all-time time-saving favorites is my feedback sheet. It includes the criteria needed for earning each letter grade. To be more efficient, I use the same rubric for all of my students for every topic. Every year, I provide all of my classes with a student-friendly visual version of this sheet and go over what it means. I also model for my students how to use the sheet to grade an essay. The rubric is attached to every assessment, and I use it to grade every open-ended (usually essay) question.
4. Speed Up Your Grading: When it comes down to it, we can only reduce grading workload. We can’t eliminate it, nor should we. So how can we deliver maximum feedback with minimum effort?
The answer lies in training our students to turn a few visual cues into full-feedback messages.
Click HERE to read the full article.
Why Adults Should Listen, Learn, Trust, and Expect More From Kids
"Although adults may not be quite at the level of totalitarian regimes, kids have no or very little say in making the rules," Svitak joked. "When really the attitude should be reciprocal. Adults often underestimate kids abilities. Now we love a challenge, but when expectations are low, trust me, we will sink to them."
Read the Mindshift article HERE, or watch Adora's TED Talk.
5 Essential Tips for Virtual Teaching
As we move toward a hybrid model, it might be helpful to review these tips for your students who will be continuing in DL, provided by Students of History Teaching Resources.
1. Over explain everything!
2. Simplify everything!
3. Make live classes engaging.
4. Dual monitors are a life saver!
5. Give yourself and your students grace.
Read the full article HERE.
Disrupting Traumatic Reading Practices
According to Stivers and Torres, some of the practices that inflict reading trauma are high stakes testing, prioritizing classics, shaming reading practices, and book leveling
What we can do to interrupt trauma:
- Build an inclusive library
- Reevaluate our role and priorities
- Take a look at our policies
- Redefine what counts as reading
To read the full MindShift article by Amielle Major, click HERE
Ideas for Writing Instruction
A few ideas from the Spark Creativity!: A Fresh Approach to Teaching blog:
- Give the writing prompt before reading the story/article
- Practice writing vs. teach writing
- Integrate different types of writing throughout the year, rather than focusing on only one type of writing at a time
- Use writing stations
- Teach claim plus evidence with a detective story
Personalized Learning at STRIDE
Personalized Learning (PL):
Develops self-reflective learners who actively participate in:
Setting learning goals
Designing learning paths
Deciding how to demonstrate learning and growth
Ruth Thom, Personalized Learning Coordinator