Have you been thinking about personalized learning, but not sure where to start? Are you unsure if you think it’s actually better for your students? I just wrapped up my first truly personalized learning unit (and yes, it’s February) on Equations and Inequalities in my high school Integrated Math 1 classroom and wanted to share EVERYTHING with you, including my results!
Timeline
18 instructional days
Process
1. Give a Pre-Assessment
This is a short and targeted assessment to see what students know. Download mine on Equations here.
2. Create Groups
The evening I gave the pre-assessment I sorted my students into 3 groups.
A - Students who had no idea what to do even on one-step equations
B - Students who knew the basics (one and two-step equations), but made some numeracy or on multi-step equation errors.
C - Students who showed complete mastery
Make a slide or doc with the grouping so you can display it and communicate it clearly to students.
My personal experience: In one of my classes of 38 students, my breakdown was as follows. Group A, 18 students. Group B, 14 students. Group C, 6 students.
3. Find Material
You need to find accessible and engaging materials for all three groups. I think this is the part that deters most teachers, but the internet and websites like Khan Academy and IXL have made this pretty easy!
My personal experience: Group A would be working with me so I didn’t need to worry about their material as much (we did a worksheet one problem at a time on white boards). Group B worked on multi-step equations first on Khan, then practiced on IXL. When they scored an “80 smart score” on IXL they earned “credit” for that assignment by placing a sticker on our class tracking board. I assigned Group C material for the next unit and encouraged them to work at their own pace using their tools (the internet) to help. Blow is a picture of my assignment log in my google classroom.
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| Google Classroom Assignment Log |
4. Display and Teach Expectations
Make your behavior and work expectations clear to students. Have accountability for the work and consequences for misbehavior. Below is a picture of the slide I showed to students to make sure I was communicating my expectations clearly.
5. Teach Unit
Decide on your pacing for the unit. My school is on a modified block schedule so I did the split only on block days. On the other days we worked as a whole class due to my chromebook issue (24 chromebooks and 38 students in class).
Group A (students with me): They had a white board and we went through a worksheet one problem at a time until they showed mastery. Then they switched to working on the computer
Group B: Started on the computers working on our Khan and IXL assignments. When they scored an “80 smart score” for that assignment they got a sticker on our tracking board (shown below) which then correlates to their grade. When the groups switched, they worked on a worksheet and I checked their answers.
Group C: Stayed on the computer the whole time. I encouraged them to get as far into the next unit as they could. These are mainly students who are highly motivated and on-task workers. I didn’t have any behavior or work issues with them.
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| Assignment Log Tracker |
I had Groups B and C move to the back of the classroom and move their chairs to the other side of their desks so I could see their computer screens while Group A came to the front to get instruction from me.
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| Groups B and C in the back with screens facing front, Group A in front working with me on a worksheet |
6. Assess
The moment of truth! How did my students do? I’m about to share my data with you! But first, you have to understand my situation…
I teach two periods of “at grade level” 9th graders. They all passed 8th grade math. They received the personalized learning unit described here.
I teach four periods of “below grade level” 9th graders. They all failed 8th grade math, some also failed 6th and 7th grade math. They received regular whole class instruction for the entire unit (since none of them new how to solve equations on the pre-assessment).
My personalized learning unit students had an average score of 74.9% on their summative assessment for the unit. My regular whole class unit students has an average score of 60.1% on the exact same assessment.
While both groups can’t truly be considered “equal” since they have very different starting points, I find this data to be intriguing and supportive of the personalized approach.
7. Reflect
Was personalized learning better for my students? Was it better for me as a teacher? Is this reproducible for future units? How could I improve this unit? How could I improve this process?
So many questions after trying something new in your classroom! Here are my big takeaways of this personalized learning unit:
1) I think my students felt more respected as learners.
My students enjoyed knowing that they were getting the help they needed or the freedom they wanted to work where they were. I feel like our classroom culture grew more positively over the course of this unit and they could no longer make comments like, “I already know how to do this” or “You never taught me this.” Personalized learning removed that barrier in my opinion, freeing up more time and mental availability to learn content.
2) I feel like I lost some productivity.
It’s hard to monitor students when half are working with you and half are on the computers. Not many students finished all of the assignments on the computers and I expect more than a few were “wasting time” when their groups were on the computers. This may be a cost of personalized learning, but do the benefits outweigh them?
3) I would like to try it again.
Our next unit is systems of equations and it’s new to every student so I won’t have as well defined gaps in learning to create different groups. My plan is to group students according to how they do on formative assessments and split the class that way.
I feel proud and accomplished that I tried something new and excited that I even saw some success! Stay tuned for more on my journey!
