![\"peer](\"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/PLPs.jpg\")
<\/a>Students at two Vermont schools have begun\u00a0working together as “Portfolio Partners” to curate evidence, reflect on their growth, and prepare to share their learning with a wider audience.<\/p>\nHere’s how it works.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Why peer partnering?<\/h2>\n
Robyn Alvin, an educator at Stowe Middle School, in Stowe VT, shares\u00a0why she feels so strongly about creating time for peer-to-peer connections:<\/p>\n
“While students get feedback from their teachers whether they want it or not, they naturally and consistently look for feedback from their peers. When we as their teachers, organize the structure of lessons to allow for, and expect, collaboration between our students, they will naturally be more engaged.<\/p>\n
As the REAL Framework <\/a>supports: “…when students are strongly engaged they are successfully involved in tasks of high intellectual quality and they have passionate positive feelings about these tasks”. <\/span><\/p>\n We want our students to be engaged and fluent in high order skills like analyzing and synthesising, so why not utilize their interest in working directly with peers?”<\/span><\/p>\n At Peoples Academy Middle School, in Morrisville VT, 7th and 8th\u00a0grade students work\u00a0\u00a0together as “Portfolio Partners” to prepare for their upcoming Portfolio Fair. Partner pairs\u00a0help\u00a0each other select and upload photos of original artwork, and\u00a0provide feedback on each others’ reflective writing.<\/p>\n In addition to teacher conferencing and classroom opportunities, students at Peoples Academy\u00a0have time during their flexible Friday schedule to work with a peer.<\/p>\n Partners review each other’s progress from the week, and give each other feedback, tips, and technology help. Partners also use a learning scale to measure their Scholarly Habit of persistence throughout these four weeks. Prior to the Portfolio Fair, partners will be given time to practice their portfolio presentation skills with each other and become proficient with their presentation before they go “live”.<\/p>\n Honoring students as partners in this work is not limited to Peoples Academy. Another school in the district, Stowe Middle School, provides their students\u00a0many guided opportunities to give each other feedback.<\/p>\n One example is their student-led assemblies where a committee of 6th grade students, led by their teacher, select exemplary PLPs and invite the creators to present to the entire middle level.<\/p>\n Stowe Middle and Peoples Academy teachers are now in the initial stages of collaboration to make cross-school peer-to-peer partnerships happen.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Building on the success of past experiments\u00a0connecting students outside the classroom walls to provide peer feedback<\/a>, representatives from\u00a0each school’s leadership team met to coordinate peer-to-peer connections. They did so using Google Hangouts, the same technology their students will be using.<\/p>\n The two schools are tapping into a district-wide Proficiency-Based Learning initiative by\u00a0sharing a common set of learning targets for both scholarly habits and transferable skills.\u00a0This will focus the work and provide a common language for reflection.<\/p>\n Peoples Academy is using this scale on evaluating transferable skills:<\/p>\n And Stowe brought their\u00a0Mission Related Goals menu<\/a>:<\/p>\n I sat in on a peer partnering session at Peoples Academy, circulating the room, checking in on partner progress. One student, Kate, had her\u00a0\u00a0iPad browser open to the definition of the word turbulent. Curious, I asked about the word and what made her interested in its definition.<\/p>\n Kate shared she had clicked on her My Future tab and was reminded of her results from the Meyers Briggs survey she took last year as a 7th grader. She wanted to understand better why the results showed her as 80% turbulent. She was a combination of curious and self-reflective as she tried to make sense of this data she hadn\u2019t visited in over a year.<\/p>\n Kate suggested to her teacher that\u00a0the class taking the survey again, even though it was time consuming, to see if and how she and her classmates had changed. Her teacher\u00a0agreed the time spent on the survey would be well worth it since the results provide a window into ways to explore growth and change over time.<\/p>\n “Learning-edge cultures create a hunger for, rather than a dread of, assessment and feedback. This happens when assessment and feedback is challenging and supportive, connecting with the students\u2019 understanding of where they are trying to go and why\u2014and what will help them to get there.” The Learning Edge<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Standard 3-part story-driven post: 1) what it is, 2) what it looks like in a school, 3) how to do it in your school<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[229,62,325,1357,225,1356,250,1358,632,573],"class_list":["post-11797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-google-hangout","tag-paml","tag-personalized-learning","tag-personalized-learning-plan","tag-personalized-learning-plans","tag-plp","tag-plps","tag-portfolio","tag-portfolios","tag-stowe-middle-school"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11797"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11797\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31506,"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11797\/revisions\/31506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}What peer partnering looks like<\/h2>\n
![\"peer](\"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/File_003-1-e1488974899663-225x300.jpeg\")
<\/a>PAML’s 7th & 8th Grade PLP portfolio requirements:<\/h3>\n
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How else can peer partnering work?<\/h2>\n
![\"peer](\"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/File_000-838x1024.jpeg\")
What can peer partnering look like between schools?<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/IMG_2258.jpg\")
How it works:<\/h3>\n
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What structures this work?<\/h3>\n
![\"peer](\"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/paml_habits-e1489417789544.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"peer](\"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/stowe_goals.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nWhere can peer partnering lead?<\/h3>\n
How do you create opportunities to tap into the power of peer feedback?<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"