Personalized Learning Profiles

Personalized Learning Profiles

The Spark

Today, I was reading THIS article from EdWeek about what's next for education.  I wanted to reflect here, to document these ideas before I lose them in the busyness of the day and time of year.

My mind started running after reading this quote:

      At Harvard’s Education Redesign Lab, we’ve been exploring the idea of personalized      student success plans for several years. These plans are both a diagnostic tool that captures students’ academic progress, interests, strengths, and nonacademic needs and a concrete plan for action that must happen inside and outside of school.

My Half Baked Idea

My school colleagues and I have been talking about assessment plans, digital portfolios, and students understanding themselves as learners.   What if, I created a google slides template that could be pushed out in all classrooms.  The title of this template would be something like, "Leela's Personal Learning Profile, Fall 2020."  The names and dates will change, of course.  Slides can include elements of our assessment plan:

1. Interest inventory
2. Multiple-intelligences survey/inventory
3. SEL skills self-reflection
4. Work habits self-reflection
5. On-demand writing sample 
6. Reading recording (via FlipGrid or RAZKids)
7. K-3 Words Their Way diagnostic
8. K-1 Various ESGI assessment components
9. Math diagnostic, CGI Problem, or Math Performance Task

Thinking Through Process

The slide deck would be the template, checklist, etc., that the teachers could use to progress through their assessments.  They could hide the slides that they don't want students to see or respond to yet or they could copy the slides they want students to complete on the day they want them to complete it.  All of this could be pushed out through google classroom, so each student gets their own copy of the appropriate slide/slides. The potential problem with pushing out one slide at a time versus hiding slides, is that teachers would then have to compile the slides to create a complete "Personal Learning Profile."

The various performance tasks would be followed by a slide with a rubric and a reflection where teachers and/or students could evaluate and summarize where they are and next steps for learning.  At our school, we write narratives for student progress, this slide could help inform the narratives that teachers write.  They could just copy and paste the information on these reports.

I think it's important for students to engage in this process with their teachers.  They will engage with it at various levels depending on their developmental level, but it's okay for them to see their progress.  We want to promote growth mindset, so we really want to honor that there is NO SHAME wherever you are in your development, just next steps.  They might engage in this level of assessment and reflection as a summative process 3 times a year.  The first time is baseline, the second time is the winter interim, and the third time is the EOY summative reflection.  

I'm visualizing using this process along side and to support the portfolio reflection process.  For the winter interim and the EOY summative students and teachers could add various project and work samples to back up (or maybe contradict) their performance on the above diagnostics.  These can be stored in a digital portfolio (possibly a google site they add to year after year) for the students and parents to keep track of during their time in school.  It could also serve as evidence for teams to evaluate as we are looking at the intervention/SST/Assessment processes.

Needs for Implementation

1. Outline of process
2. Agreement on assessment and rubrics
3. Training on both (1 & 2)
4. Understand how to integrate google slides, google classroom, and the portfolio (google classroom)
5. Clearly articulate how this will help teachers communicate progress on narratives.
6. Make it a part of the PLC & team planning process.
7. Making the slide deck.  I wonder who might be willing to help develop these slides - engage the PBIS Leadership team and the Instructional Leadership Team.  
8. Differentiate slide deck by grade or developmental levels/ranges.

Okay, please help me flesh this out more.  I'd love questions, suggestions, and feedback!