What is Personalized Learning?
Personalized learning is an approach where teachers work with students to set goals, engage interests, and support individual areas of growth. As part of this process, students, teachers, and families collaborate to develop a personal learning plan to record goals and track progress.
A personalized plan can be similar to an IEP. It sets goals based on strengths and needs of each student as a unique learner and details services and supports to achieve those goals. Unlike an IEP, however, a personalized plan isn’t only about helping a student who has fallen behind in math reach a grade level target. The personalized plan can also work on goals where a student is learning beyond grade or age level expectations, as well as exploring areas of interest that may not be covered deeply (or at all) by state standards and tests, like the history of indoor plumbing, or advanced astrophysics.
What does Personalized Learning look like?
Personalized learning involves small groups or individual students spending more time on tasks and activities that are based on their personal plans, rather than following a blanket curriculum that covers a subject. Existing curriculums can be incorporated into a personalized learning environment, but students and teachers will focus more on areas of the curriculum that are goal-related, using the personalized plan to determine what to focus on.
One of the ways to incorporate personalized learning is with the use of online learning platforms. There are a number of platforms that assess students and provide data to show what they know and what they need to work on. Many platforms then offer multi-subject individual online practice games and activities for each student while tracking their progress. The data collected can then be used to give individual or small-group mini-lessons to address areas of growth and expand on areas that students were particularly interested in.
In order to have a strong personalized learning environment, it helps for class sizes to be small, with teachers having more time to focus on each student and meet regularly with them to set, assess, and adjust goals. While possible with a larger class of 15+ students, it’s a lot more work for the teacher to maintain each student’s portfolio, run small groups, and provide the support needed for success. A smaller class size means more time with each student, and a more personal experience.
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