Our class has been participating in PL, or Personalized Learning, which is a classroom
experience in which all students pose their own question, problem, or challenge
that is of interest to them and then design a self-plan to explore this inquiry
and share their learning with others. PL is an experience designed for participation by all students at every grade
level. The PL framework is a response to the new Common Core State
Standards and the changing curriculum to provide students with more
opportunities to be successful in the world they will live and will work in as
adults. The PL experience is designed to help students develop
District 25’s Habits of Mind (HoM) as they apply these habits to learning that
is personally of great importance and interest. PL is a framework and a
philosophy but not a curriculum. It
is a series of skills in a problem-solving and inquiry-based process. The skills students are
learning leading up to and within this experience are skills they can apply to
all learning. Students have been learning
to document their thinking, develop independent problem-solving and
investigation skills, and participate in self-reflection and self-assessment,
all of which will help them grow as learners. This framework extends
itself to all subject areas in our day and these are skills all students need
to develop throughout their education.
Throughout the school year we have been implementing and
practicing various steps of the PL process during our regular class
instruction, to prepare the students for the PL experience (referred to in
class as our Wonder Project) that we began in February. The first of these
skills that we began practicing back in October involved documenting and
reflecting upon student learning.
Students had numerous opportunities to document what they were learning
in science and social studies by drawing and creating models, recording
observations, and explaining their discoveries in short films. These activities
helped the students to become more aware of their own learning and made the
concepts more concrete.
Performing effective research was another skill that we
focused on. The students learned how to
evaluate websites and perform key word searches. I gave students links to a
variety of real websites. They had to use a checklist (looking for information
like website publisher, date of publishing, information accuracy, presence of
biases, etc.) to determine if each website was authentic and a reliable source
of information. I also posed research questions for the students to answer.
They were required to determine which key words would help them to find their
answers in a Google search. This was very challenging for the students, but
proved to be a helpful learning experience for when they began their own
independent research projects.
After that, the class began thinking about and discussing
their passions, fascinations, and interests. Students filled out interest
surveys to help them find out more about their own curiosities. Next, we
focused on types of questioning. The students learned about open and closed questions and practiced identifying them. Closed questions are those with either a yes/no response, require only a few words to answer them, or can be answered using information from only one
resource. Open questions, on the other hand, require students to use multiple
resources to gather information and then they must draw conclusions to come to
an answer. These types of “open”
questions are what students modeled their own questioning on during the next
part of our PL process.
In late February students began documenting their curiosities
and wonders. They filled out an entry in their Wonder Journals every time that
a new wonder popped into their minds. These wonders ranged everywhere from why
people can see in color when many animals cannot to how bows make an arrow
shoot. The students really had some fascinating wonders! After a week of
wondering the students had the opportunity to select one curiosity that they
wanted to research. The only requirement was that their wonder needed to be an
open question that would require multiple resources in order to find an answer.
Once the students determined which wonder they wondered about the most, they
began the research phase of the PL process.
The students independently researched their topics, making
sure to document their learning on note-taking sheets and record their sources.
They used a variety of resources including books, websites, online
encyclopedias, and various educational videos. Some students even had the
opportunity to ask an expert questions and received detailed responses. The
children were responsible for finding their own resources, which proved to be
difficult and frustrating for many. However, I was so pleased with their
perseverance and they quickly learned where to look to find reliable and
helpful information. After several weeks of researching, the students
synthesized the information they gathered and began the difficult process of
deciding how to present what they learned to their classmates.
Once the students were finished with their researching, they
met in pairs to give each other peer-critiques. Each student had the
opportunity to share the information that they learned and their plan for
presenting it to the class. The partner then asked questions to increase his or
her understanding and to help the other student further develop his or her
plan. This process helped the students to determine if further research was
needed and guided their plan for presenting their newly gained knowledge.
Recently the students have been
making presentations to the class and teaching us some incredible information
about a variety of topics. I have been taking photos and videos of these
projects/presentations and will be posting them on our class website as the students finish presenting.
We have seen everything from posters and models to Explain Everything videos, and Keynote presentations. I am so amazed by the students’ final products and
even more impressed with the process they have gone through! They have worked
so hard and learned so much not only about their topics, but about themselves
as well.
