learning. A middle school team uses student pretest results for student placement in stations that ultimately determine whether they earn entrance tickets to an upcoming assessment. A freshman English teacher employs a system in which students have ten goals to complete in ten days. Each goal requires different cognitive and collaborative skills, and students choose to work on the ten goals in the order of their preference, based on their ability. A high school social studies teacher uses a game where high-achieving students have forty-eight to seventy-two hours to complete a mission, which allows them to learn more about the Roman Empire. A high school science team develops an assignment where students choose their own final assessment tool while the teacher checks their work against certain benchmarks along the way. Teachers in this district are using a great variety of ways to lead students toward clear objectives while allowing already-proficient students to learn in a more personalized manner.
We’ve seen such classrooms and can attest that, if you walked into each of these classrooms and talked to the teachers leading these activities like we have, you would also feel the passion of both the students and the teachers that comes from this type of learning environment. If you talked to the students, you would learn that this type of learning makes time in class go quickly and doesn’t feel like learning. You would also learn that in these environments, learners perform just as well as—if not better than—in traditional classrooms such as those we described previously. Not only that, but students are being challenged, feel a great deal of efficacy, and are highly engaged. Perhaps not surprisingly, these students also stretch themselves further than their teachers might have been able to stretch them. Such a learning culture encourages a mindset that students can grow their intelligence and stretches the limits of what might be traditionally expected of students. And, the beauty of it is that the stretching and growth are internal; students are achieving because they want to. All of these classroom examples we describe are based on real examples we have seen or learned about through our conversations with educators from all over the United States. We describe all of them as examples of personalized learning.
Personalized Learning
A theme that runs through each of the ideas, instructional strategies, and stories in this book is that of personalized learning. Throughout this book, we will seek to define personalized learning and to examine the five elements we have identified that comprise it: (1) knowing your learners, (2) allowing voice and choice, (3) implementing flexibility, (4) using data, and (5) integrating technology. As we will discuss further in chapter 2, students today have grown accustomed to personalization in most aspects of their lives, as advances in technology increasingly adapt to our preferences and needs. It only makes sense that we would adjust our approaches to teaching to similarly reflect personalization of students’ learning to challenge and engage them. When working with students who are of high ability and high potential (and all students for that matter), a key piece to the planning process is the need to allow room for the student to determine his or her own learning plan. This type of thinking and release of responsibility are firmly aligned with the elements of personalized learning. To us, the best platform to incorporate this work and make this vision a reality in your classroom, school, or district is not to go about this work alone but rather to use the well-established Professional Learning Communities at Work™ model.
The PLC Model
As authors, we first learned about professional learning communities (PLCs) when education giants Rick DuFour and Robert Eaker’s book Professional Learning Communities at Work: Best Practices for Enhancing Student Achievement (1998) was published. Thanks to this book and the calculated efforts of educators it has influenced to share best practices, many schools are regularly functioning as PLCs.
According to DuFour, Rebecca DuFour, Eaker, Thomas Many, and Mike Mattos (2016), PLC work is “an ongoing process in which educators work collaboratively in recurring cycles of collective inquiry and action research to achieve better results for the students they serve” (p. 10). School leaders start this process by convening the staff and working through collaborative approaches to determine their mission, vision, values, and goals. Experts suggest thinking about the foundation of a PLC as resting on four pillars—the mission, vision, values, and goals (DuFour et al., 2016). When building leaders focus on why they exist, articulate a compelling and understandable sense of direction for the work, identify the specific actions the group will take to achieve the mission and vision, and determine how they will know whether or not students achieve success, the likelihood of success magnifies (DuFour et al., 2016). Following the development of these four key pillars, teams use the three big ideas and the four critical questions of a PLC to make their work come alive.
The Three Big Ideas of a PLC
According to DuFour et al. (2016), the three big ideas of a PLC are:
1. A focus on learning
2. A collaborative culture and collective responsibility
3. A results orientation
These three big ideas do not represent a program, a series of documents, or a project to complete. They represent a way of thinking and doing business in a school. With the first big idea, we ensure that we, as educators, are willing to examine everything to ensure that nothing is misaligned with promoting high levels of learning for all. Big idea number two ensures a collaborative culture exists. This means that all staff members, regardless of assignment, are on a collaborative team that shares norms; common goals driven by timely, user-friendly, and relevant information regarding student learning; common frequent meeting time during the school day; and protocols to guide the work. Members of a team are committed to holding each other accountable. Big idea number three ensures that team members regularly seek out evidence for student learning and use this information to improve the practice of the individual teachers and collaborative teams as they work toward goals, and to respond to the needs of students through intervention and enrichment.
The conduits to much of this work are the four critical questions of a PLC. By examining the four critical questions, teams are doing the necessary work to ensure that they are embedding these three big ideas of a PLC into their practice.
The Four Critical Questions of a PLC
In PLCs, grade-level or same-subject collaborative teams spend considerable time and energy discussing the four critical questions (DuFour et al., 2016).
1. What do we want all students to know and be able to do?
2. How will we know if they learn it?
3. How will we respond when some students do not learn?
4. How will we extend the learning for students who are already proficient?
These questions become the focal point and driving force for collaborative time, as members work to ensure that they are constantly discussing and considering them. This ongoing cyclical process utilizes data to inform the team’s work and ultimately ensures all students learn at high levels.
While all four questions and the work of a PLC are important for this book, this fourth question is our focal point. We seek to provide a way for teams to address students who are already proficient when they walk into the classroom or who quickly gain proficiency early on in an instructional unit or lesson. There are a few different ways that you will hear educators refer to this population, including:
■ Students who already know it
■ Students who are already proficient
■ Students who need to have learning extended
■ Question
