Personalized Learning Notes
December 2020
What's new this month?
- Elective options for 4th and 5th grade students (see below)
- More voice and choice science units completed and under development
- Creative and critical thinking skills activities with 3rd graders
NPR Student Podcast Challenge
ZooMS Enrichment Design Challenge
Frenzy Farm Escape Room
Check out the Flipgrid Blog!
Microsoft Immersive Reader
Let's Teach for Mastery--Not Test Scores
Click HERE to get the InsertLearning Extension
With the extension, you can:
- Insert instructional content on any web page
- Insert questions, discussions, and insight directly into any website.
- When students go to that website, they can respond to those questions and discussions, see that insight, and take their own notes.
- Use InsertLearning to turn any website into an interactive learning experience.
The Google Infused Classroom: A Guidebook to Making Thinking Visible and AMPLIFYING STUDENT VOICE
You might use a key thinking routine such as the one from Ron Ritchhart, Mark Church, and Karin Morrison's book, Making Thinking Visible, "I used to think.....but now I think...."
I have the Google Infused Classroom book if you'd like to borrow it. It has lots of easy to implement ideas.
How Personalized Learning Is Weathering Tough Times: ‘Iterate and Learn’
In this EDWEEK article, the community surrounding the 430-student school has one of highest positivity rates for COVID-19 in the city, 94 percent of its students are Latinx, 4 percent are Black, and 84 percent are from families living in poverty. Instruction is currently all-remote for the K-8 school’s students.
Stewart: "We went from being one of the lower-ranked schools in the district to one of the top-tier schools in the district within three to five years. As we delved into personalized learning, we saw huge increases in student growth where you have 95 percent or more of our students meeting or exceeding growth standards in reading and math."
Empowering Students
Highlights from Marzano's 13 Best Teaching Strategies for Virtual, Blended, and Classroom Instructions blog post by Edmentum's Educations Programs Consulting Team:
Allow students to keep track of their learning progress
“Ownership of learning is key to student achievement. Students need to feel invested in their progress in order to thrive academically.”
Allow students to progress through assignments at their own pace
“Allowing students to progress through the curriculum at their own pace helps them get to know their own strengths and weaknesses, which builds their sense of confidence. Self-paced learning allows students to show for themselves how they best learn.”
Treat all students equally
“by focusing on their potential as opposed to considering deficits first, educators can create an empowering environment and change the paradigm of what students need, both individually and collectively.”
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
Email: support@smore.com
Website: smore.com
Location: Smorino Land
Phone: 555-5555
Twitter: @smorepages