Personalized learning. It feels. Overwhelming.
I have always been the type of teacher who values control. I have structures in place and we follow them everyday. Warm up, notes, assignment logs, gradual release of responsibility up the wazoo. Can you relate? But I’m feeling entrigued by more online and personalized learning. So I’ve decided to explore the world of online learning to create a more personalized plan for my students.
I have 40 students in a class and 24 computers so I have some limitations when it comes to 1:1 technology, but I want to give it a try. Today I set up my google classroom and this week I’ll have kids log in with our classroom code and we’ll see what happens from there! I really liked this blog post from Matt Miller (Ditch That Textbook) titled, The Google Classroom Quick Start Guide.
My plan is this:
- Get all students into my google classroom account
- Link google classroom to Khan Academy and create IXL accounts for my students (Thank you Westminster High School for buying licenses for everyone!)
- Start personalized learning stations with the students scoring 3s and 4s (As and Bs). This will allow me to work with a smaller group of students who are not quite getting it.
- Start with a goal of once a week. We have block periods on Wednesday and Thursday and I will start there. 30 minutes during the block period.
Some questions that are coming up for me:
- Will the students who are scoring 3s and 4s (As and Bs) get too far ahead? What do I do then?
- How will I ensure they are completing the work on their own? What will be the accountability piece?
Online material
Khan Academy. It actually has some great stuff and seems way more user friendly than last time I used it. This article was very helpful to help me get a feel for the type of information I will be able to get from my students. This article has helpful tips if you want to use it as classroom practice. And this article was helpful for self-paced practice tips! I think I will do somewhat of a hybrid of both of these.
There are typically 4 practice problems in each practice section on Khan. I’ll be asking my students to score 75% on a practice before moving on to the next practice. Khan gives them the option to attempt any practice again.
IXL. I’ve heard great things from other teachers about IXL. They feel their students are engaged and enjoy the immediate feedback. Other teachers require students to get a “smart score” of 80 before moving on so I’ll start there too.
