How proficient are you with proficiency-based learning?

#vted weighs in again on twitter

proficiency-based learningIs your school implementing proficiency-based learning?

It’s an idea that’s taking hold all over, so some folks from Vermont’s education community wrestled with the opportunities and challenges presented by implementing proficiency-based learning.

What’s #vted twitter chat?

If you’re new to twitter, check out our twitter tips for educators, and find out more about Vermont’s twice-monthy #vted twitter chat. Last year, #vted weighed in on proficiency-based graduation requirements. This year they took a wider-angle view and looked, not at the end point but at the beginning: how to implement proficiency-based learning.

They began the chat in another new way as well: with a pre-chat self-assessment. It assessed profiency with proficiency-based learning, of course.

If you’re looking for more information on how proficiencies and standards-based learning are being implemented in Vermont, two #vted educators shared these amazing resources:

Emily Rinkema, writing for the blog CVU Learns, penned the heartfelt and honest post This SBL Thing is Freakin’ Hard:

…Scary things are also happening in our classrooms. Students are asking about grading changes, challenging new practices, and misinterpreting our words. Teachers are struggling with new strategies, stumbling over explanations, and making mistakes with new technology. In other words, learning is happening for teachers.

Educator and Rowland Fellow Jeanie Phillips shared the rubric that her district is working with for proficiencies, in the form of a Google site:

proficiency-based learning

How is your school grappling with proficiencies? What are some of the challenges that have come up?

Audrey Homan

Audrey Homan is a Vermont-based digital media producer, and producer of The 21st Century Classroom podcast. She's worked in non-profit communications for more than a decade, and in her spare time writes tiny video games and mucks about with augmented reality and arduinos, ably assisted by five dogs. Interviewing students and yelling in PHP are the best parts of her job.

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