that it never had before. In fact, the classroom examples we highlight throughout this book are activities that have occurred as a result of this type of collaborative work. Collaborative teams will need to make the time to include question 4 as part of their ongoing conversations.
Priorities
For many, collaborative teams look at their work with the critical questions as a hierarchical system. Question 1 leads to question 2 leads to question 3 leads to question 4. Question 4 gets assigned the last spot on the priority list for collaborative teams. Similar to this hierarchy, Parry Graham and Bill Ferriter (2008) outline the following seven stages that teams pass through in their development.
1. Filling the time
2. Sharing personal practice
3. Planning, planning, and planning
4. Developing common assessments
5. Analyzing student learning
6. Differentiating follow-up
7. Reflecting on instruction
In our considered opinion, stages six and seven require the dialogue necessary to arrive at critical question 4. If it takes teams time to pass through the prior stages, it is likely that new teams will not get to stages six and seven early in the school year. In our experience, when teams do get to these steps, their conversations are usually more centered on the interventions and not extension or acceleration. This is especially true if the school’s culture does not expect or promote activities around question 4. To avoid this, throughout this book we offer a different way to look at the fourth question, and provide suggestions for how to prioritize it to ensure addressing it does not fall by the wayside. To really develop a plan for question 4 students, teams need to address and discuss question 4 at the same time that conversations begin around question 2, “How will we know if they learn it?” Not only should teams have the traditional conversations about assessments given after instruction, teams would also talk about preassessments prior to instruction.
Resources
Teachers also report that they don’t know what to talk about with regard to question 4. If the resources aren’t at hand and question 4 students are content to work on other things like reading a book or working on other homework assignments during down time, there is not an imminent need to change practice. In fact, we once had a teacher share with us that as long as the gifted students have something to work on, he didn’t need to spend much time thinking about them; they kind of take care of themselves. Even if the student is considered proficient, this is not a scenario we should be proud of; we need to create systems where the needs of all learners are being addressed and commit to overcoming what prevents us from doing so. We don’t want students to “kind of take care of themselves.” We want to push, inspire, and intentionally stretch all students’ learning. The reality is that there aren’t a ton of great resources focused on question 4 students out there to help teams with this struggle. It is our hope that this book provides a wonderful entry point for this work.
Instructional Strategies
While resources on ways to shape school cultures and processes in a way that prioritizes responding to proficient students may be sparse, there are a plethora of individual instructional strategies available from various books, journals, and articles offering advice on how to work with the student who already knows the content. While the following list is not meant to be all-inclusive, it represents the five strategies we feel collaborative teams who are just beginning to work in this area will have immediate success with: (1) curriculum compacting, (2) flexible grouping, (3) product choice, (4) tiered assignments, and (5) multilevel learning stations.
Note that an argument could be made for how each could fit into a different personalized learning element. We will expand on these connections in chapter 3 (page 47). The great news is these are strategies teachers can begin employing in classrooms right away. We provide examples throughout the book showing what this implementation might look like in the classroom.
How to Use This Book
This book is for collaborative teams at all grade levels working in a PLC to better address the fourth critical question—How will we extend the learning for students who are already proficient?—through personalized learning to maximize student achievement and engagement. Implementing the five personalized learning elements may require a significant departure from some traditional methods. To that end, chapter 1 will focus on reframing some common beliefs readers may hold about curriculum guides or maps, the teacher’s role in the classroom, and the nature of collaborative conversations. In chapter 2, we will provide a definition of personalized learning and a detailed explanation of how it meets the needs of high-ability and high-potential students. Chapter 3 will focus on five specific instructional strategies that work well for question 4 students. Chapters 4–8 will each examine one of the five elements of personalized learning and how it will serve your team in extending proficient students’ learning and maximizing their achievement and engagement. Chapter 4 will consider how teachers can intentionally take steps to learn about these students and act on what they know. Chapter 5 will look at inviting, respecting, and considering student voice—their perspectives, opinions, and preferences—and offering students choice regarding the ways they engage in learning. Chapter 6 examines implementing flexibility in mindsets, grouping, and space. Chapter 7 considers how using student learning information can help teachers make decisions about learner growth related to an instructional standard. Chapter 8 explores how integrating technology tools and technology-based practices into daily classroom routines can support personalized learning. Finally, chapter 9 outlines specific detailed steps you can take to make PLC critical question 4 and the five elements of personalized learning a regular part of your collaborative team meetings and classroom practices.
Personalized Learning Stories
At the end of each of chapters 4–8, we provide classroom scenarios based on observations and interviews Mark and Blane conducted for this book, inspired by real teachers’ classrooms across the United States in schools that have begun to implement personalized learning approaches. In these stories, we illustrate one elementary and one secondary example of a personalized learning element in action while also highlighting at least one of the five key instructional strategies for addressing question 4 students. These stories not only illustrate how a teacher might practically use personalized approaches to extend the learning for question 4 students but also show how this can realistically occur in a classroom where a teacher is simultaneously responding to all students’ varied needs.
While we will focus on one main element in each classroom story, the reality is that to fully extend learning, all elements play a role,
