Personalizing Learning

In this week's module we learned how and why it is important to personalize learning for our students.  I love this quote from our textbook: "personalization...allows teachers to increase a student's chances of engaging with learning materials, mastering learning materials, and applying learning materials..." (Graham et al., 2019, section 4.0). It is only natural for students to want to study topics that they are interested in and/or that are relevant to their present lives or futures. 

Personalization engages students by 1) tailoring learning to their personal interests, needs, and goals, and 2) giving students some control over their learning. Let's discuss the first point. How can we customize learning to our students' interests and needs - by asking them what their interests and needs are!  I would use something like this first-grade learner profile to find out how my students like to learn and what kinds of topics I can use to better engage them in learning. I like the examples from the textbook in which occupational interests are integrated into math problems to make them more appealing to students (Graham et al., 2019, Table 4.3).

Another way to personalize learning is to provide choice boards or playlists to students. These tools allow for learners to make their own path. Some options include letting learners 1) select the order in which they complete activities; 2) choose enrichment activities after required ones are completed; or 3) complete activities of their choice until mastery is reached (Graham et al., 2019). 

I really enjoyed putting together a Pocahontas choice board for a first-grade unit on important people in Virginia history.  The rows of my choice board table include different ways that students can learn (visual, auditory, or kinesthetic), and the columns give different levels of review (remediation, review, and enrichment). I would explain to my students that each activity has a point level of five or ten points, and that they need to earn ten points. I would also have the students tell me their planned path before they begin, so that I can support them and match them up with partners as needed. 

Reference

Graham, C. R., Borup, J., Short, C. R., & Archambault, L. (2019). K-12 blended teaching: A guide to personalized learning and online integration [eBook]. EdTechBooks.org. http://edtechbooks.org/k12blended

Flipping My Classroom!

I really enjoyed this assignment in which we had to "flip" our classroom and create an engaging, captioned video for students to watch outside of class time. I created an Edpuzzle video about Arthur Ashe for my first graders to learn about his life and achievements and answer four assessment questions. Then when we gather as a group, we can discuss what we learned and compare him to other important people in the history of Virginia.