Innovative Education in Vermont
Exploring innovative, personalized, student-centered school change
Rather than trying to get students to care about existing PLPs, some schools are revamping their PLP process to start with what students care about. They are asking students to pursue their passions by crafting projects based on their personal interests and deepest curiosities.
The new recipe that is emerging: start with a cool personalized project and then build the PLP around it.
We wish we could hand you the one right way for students to reflect on their personal learning, on a silver platter. It sure would make the rest of the year a lot easier, right? But there are as many ways for students to reflect on their PLPs as there are students, so the best we can do is show up with these SIX SPECTACULAR STUDENT EXAMPLES.
Roll tape!
Students at Fayston Elementary School worked hard this year with their team of teachers, not just to implement personal learning plans (PLPs), but to understand them to such a level that they could tell their stories. Using the digital tools Adobe Voice and Explain Everything, students crafted video explanations of their individual PLP projects to share with their families at student-led conferences.
5th and 6th graders from Fayston Elementary School took their personal learning plans (PLP) in extraordinary and unexpected directions this year. All because of trust, dedication, and team work by their teachers.
This livecast of a presentation at the Dynamic Landscapes conference exemplifies the approach. You will hear students presenting the nuts and bolts of the PLP process with ownership, eloquence, and insight. The attendant educators, Amy Jamieson and Jason Stevenson, provided behind the scenes scaffolding and support while making sure that students were front and center.
As a new year dawns, are you thinking about self improvement? A Personal Learning Plan (PLP) is a great way to plan and document your professional growth, provide a framework for reflection, and gain a better understanding of how to make PLPs most useful for your students.
Vermont’s Act 77, the Flexible Pathways Act, mandates that every student in grades 7-12 statewide have a Personal Learning Plan or PLP. And that’s about the extent of the instructions. As to how this can be accomplished?
The field is wide open.
Continue reading “Checking in on personalized learning around Vermont”
In my experience as a teacher and administrator, I noticed a pattern to goal-setting in my school and classroom. We would do some good goal-setting at the beginning of the year and then at some point during the dark depths of winter I would realize that I was too overwhelmed or embarrassed to try to resurrect them.
There were some notable instances when goals were powerful for students, though.
In those cases I saw the potential of goals to cultivate so many important things in my students: self-direction, a sense of efficacy, and a connection to schooling, to name a few.
Continue reading “What makes for good goal-setting in a PLP?”
It’s Day 3 of the 2015 Middle Grades Institute, a gathering of more than 200 Vermont educators all passionately invested in technology-rich, student-centered educational change. And with the Act 77 deadline requiring a Personal Learning Plan for every student in Vermont grades 7-12 coming up in November, talk around personalizing learning and capturing evidence of personalized learning are at the forefront of everyone’s minds.
Let’s hear from four schools attending MGI about their engagement with the personalized learning process, as they spend their first week of summer planning for the coming year.
Continue reading “4 educators reflect on personalized learning”