Personalized Learning: Beyond the Buzz Words

For years the biggest buzz word in education has been differentiation, in reference to tailoring instruction to meeting individual academic needs. Recently with shifts in instruction to align with Common Core Standards/ 21st Century skills more buzz words have been popping up: personalized learning, individualized learning, blended learning... how are all of these terms related to differentiation and how do they REALLY look in action?

Let's start with some definitions that can help us demystify the buzz words. According to the National Education Technology Plan personalization is the big umbrella that individualization and differentiation fall under. While differentiation still means providing content access for varied levels of academic need, individualization is now being described as the pacing of a lesson supporting an individual student's needs. Beyond all of this, personalization also includes providing student choice in learning. As you can imagine, providing truly personalized instruction is no easy task. One of the best parts of my job is having the opportunity to brainstorm and then support teachers in the implementation of new strategies and tools that help to personalize instruction.

What does personalized math instruction look like in our district?
We serve a diverse student population with a wide range of learners, and therefore personalized instruction is crucial to ensuring success for all of our students.

Our math teachers have implemented a variety to tools and strategies that support this. We currently have district work groups looking at identifying essential standards, and then unpacking those standards to establish learning goals within units of study. The two main strategies that our teachers are using to personalize instruction in order to support all students in accessing the learning goals are blended learning and integration of high quality tasks. 

Strategy 1: Implementing High Quality Tasks
Task selection is crucial to reaching learning goals. Over the past two years our Math Cadre has worked with the Campbell High School District with an emphasis on how to select, design and implement high quality tasks. Strategically selected/developed tasks have embedded differentiation with a low floor (entry points for all) and high ceiling (deeper application of concepts). Experts like Dan Meyer and Peg Smith have guided us through this process and helped develop a wealth of expertise in this area. Please continue to pull on me and your cadre members as a resource for using the following task sites:

• Formative Assessment Lessons: Try to implement several of these tasks a year as aligned with your learning goals/major units of study.
• Mathalicious: Promotes critical thinking around real-world applications.
• Illustrative Mathematics: CCSS aligned instructional and assessment tasks.
• Inside Mathematics: Problems of the Month and Performance Assessments
• Robert Kaplinsky Lessons and Dan Meyer 3-Act Math: Students engage in inquiry based problem-solving with relevant topics
• Visualpatterns.org: Using geometric growth patterns to provide natural context for algebraic reasoning

In addition to working on task selection, our math cadre has also done a significant amount of work on questioning strategies. Choosing the right questions to either assess or advance student thinking while engaging in a task with students allows for differentiation; providing supports and extensions all within the conversations you have with students. Want a crash course in questioning strategies? Ask me or a cadre member... we even have a planning tool that will help you anticipate the different approaches and plan your questioning accordingly!

Strategy 2: Blended Learning 
Many CUSD teachers are implementing blended learning in order to personalize instruction for our students. Blended learning is defined as a mix of face-to-face and online instruction. Blended learning also allows for more targeted instruction, with teachers being able to pull small groups, strategically plan their grouping as heterogeneous or homogeneous, and incorporate intervention and enrichment into their lesson design.

Just a couple of tools/Strategies that support personalized learning in the blended station/rotation model:

At Campbell Middle School, Margaret Hulgrave has been using EdPuzzle in order to do an in-class flip of instruction, where students receive direct instruction online and she is able to use her time with students to pull small groups for intervention and/or going deeper with application of concepts. EdPuzzle allows you to take any video and embed questions (multiple choice or open-ended), include voiceover clips and more!

Recently Pedro Garcia (CMS) and I built a Hyperdoc on Integer Concepts to use with his 6th grade students. The Hyperdoc reviewed the concept, gave students an opportunity to apply their learning, and provided an extension activity that went deeper with the standards. Hyperdocs are more than just a Doc with links, they are a mechanism for transforming instruction through providing an engaging ways for students to access content at their own pace and with choice.
Jamie Strand (Sherman Oaks) created an awesome Hyperdoc to provide her students with choice while reviewing the concepts of GCF/LCM.

When implemented effectively, blended learning allows teachers to individualize content by allowing students to work at their own pace in a way that is not possible with stand and deliver instruction. Are you a CUSD teacher ready to start implementing blended learning stations? Come join our learning circles on Tuesday 11/15, 11/29, and 12/13- you can register at pd.campbellusd.org... there are 4 spots remaining!