PLE at Your Fingertips
Personalizing Learning at Lincoln Academy/Hairston Middle
cheerPLEF's Pep Talk
As the end of the semester draws near and a new year begins, resolutions abound. In our personal lives, most of us resolve to lose weight, manage stress and reduce debt. Yet our professional lives as educators is the one area in which we fail to resolve to make changes. Simply put, a resolution is defined as a firm decision to do or not do something.
This year I challenge you firmly decide to do something different as an educator. Not a huge sweeping change, but something small that may impact your students in a big way.
Just a small adjustment in applying aspects of personalized learning can be the difference in moving from a proficient to distinguished educator.
What do we most often need to adjust in our teaching practice? There are many different ones for different people, but one in particular is perspective. The inventor of Play-Doh saw only one purpose for it - to clean wallpaper. His sister-in-law discovered a totally different purpose which at first seemed frivolous but proved to be a hugely successful venture. If you're stuck on there only being one way to use the tablet (substituting it for paper) or integrate personalized learning (moving desks around) maybe you need to think a little more creatively and see if your colleague or PLEF can provide specific ideas on which to integrate this initiative into your classroom.
Remember, we're all just one small adjustment away from making personalized learning work. Refer to the PLE Navigator and identify the modification you need to be successful in this venture.
Go on, I won't rush you.
Orange Down, White Up!
Keeping the tablets with "Eyes On Teacher" simply runs down the battery, hindering instruction when it is needed the most.
Pure Facts About VARK!
Did you know that...
VARK is about modal preferences which are a part of the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator and VARK is structured specifically to improve learning and teaching. David Kolb’s Experiential Cycle is a model of cognitive processing – how we process learning in the brain whereas VARK is about our preferences for taking information into the brain and communicating them “outwards”. Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences Theory is another cognitive model and it includes some of the VARK modalities as “intelligences” and extends that list to at least five other dimensions. Sometimes the link between VARK and these theories appears to be quite strong but VARK has its own focus, rationale and strategies.
Significant differences are shown in the Read/write dimension of VARK. The figures are 15.6% for Read/Write single preferences for students and 20.9% for teachers. The Kinesthetic figures are 11.7% and 12.4% respectively. There is also a difference between the proportion of single modes and multimodes. Students have 37% of their profiles in single modes and teachers 43%. Correspondingly, students are more multimodal – 63% to teachers’ 57%.
Motivation is a separate and significant part of learning. However if learners are using modes that are a strong part of their preferences they are more likely to be motivated than if they have to use modes where their preference is weak. That makes common sense!
Concluding Thought
It is obvious that choosing to teach a student in ways that he or she does not prefer to learn would be rather strange. (Like forcing young children to eat broccoli!). And that is where VARK is helpful. It indicates the ways in which students prefer to learn. It does not say anything about how teachers teach. And, remember your learning preferences (VARK) are only a part of your learning style.
© Copyright Version 7.8 (2014) held by Neil D. Fleming, Christchurch, New Zealand.
"Making It Personal" Hornets' Spotlight - Danielle Whitaker
This month's Making it personal spotlight goes to not a teacher but the School Social Worker, Mrs. Danielle Whitaker. She Currently SSW @ Lincoln Middle and Eastern High School. Has served as SSW for GCS for 5 years.
Whitaker spends out supports PLE weekly by sending out strategies for teachers at Lincoln to support "knowing the learner". She is also:
- Faculty Advisor for
- SMART (Drug Free Schools Student Mentor Program)
- Leading Ladies @ Lincoln
- Alum: NC A&T (Undergraduate) and UNC-Chapel Hill (Graduate)
- LMS Leading Ladies are currently working on a Service Learning Project “Operation: Gratitude” in support of our troops. They are using their tablets to complete research on the historical aspect of war and deployment. They are also creating a Leading Ladies Edmodo page which we hope to have it completed before Christmas break, if not by early Jan 2015. Yay!
- She Loves Duke Basketball, even though I attended UNC!! Lebron James is her favorite NBA player, no matter what team he has chosen (lol)!!
"My passion is working with students and helping bring out the best in them. Whether it is exposing them to new things or learning the current trends from them; I get joy out of just being in their presence.Spend most of my free time with my husband of 10 years and our beautiful baby girl Mckenzie (10 mths old)!!"
THIS SECTION IS ONLY FOR THE SUPERSTARS!
Feel free to contact me!
I am truly passionate about this thing called Persoanlize Learning, if you truly want to get there, I can help! Let me know what and when and I'm there!
Email: bellglw@gcsnc.com
Website: ple.gcsnc.com
Facebook: facebook.com/theplefs
Twitter: @cheerplef