authors hope to spark a movement in all districts, schools, and individual classrooms throughout North America, in which conversations about engagement, extension, building on learner strengths, and pursuing all learners’ interests are standard. When engaging in this work, it will be important to have a common vocabulary with your collaborative team members as you move forward in your own learning. From time to time, you may need to pause and review the foundation for this work. As you reflect on what you know about PLCs and collaborative teams and learn more about personalized learning and strategies for teaching question 4 students in the upcoming chapters, we offer a quick cheat sheet for remembering key concepts connected in this book. Everything in this book centers around the following.
■ One goal:
1. Extending learning for question 4 students to maximize their achievement and engagement
■ Two key philosophies:
1. Professional learning communities
2. Personalized learning
■ The three big ideas of a PLC:
1. A focus on learning
2. A collaborative culture and collective responsibility
3. A results orientation
■ The four critical questions of a PLC:
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?
■ The five elements of personalized learning:
1. Knowing your learners
2. Allowing voice and choice
3. Implementing flexibility
4. Using data
5. Integrating technology
■ The five instructional strategies for question 4 students:
1. Curriculum compacting
2. Flexible grouping
3. Product choice
4. Tiered assignments
5. Multilevel learning stations
Being clear on these items will keep you grounded while you work toward addressing critical question 4 of a PLC through personalized learning.
Collaborative Team Discussion: PLC Critical Questions
Without exceeding 100 percent for the four critical questions, what percentage of your team’s time do you spend in each of the following areas (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? What was your highest number?
What was your lowest number?
What surprised you?
What percentage did you place for question 4?
When They Already Know It © 2018 Solution Tree Press • SolutionTree.com
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CHAPTER 1
Reframing
It is human nature to integrate new information into existing mental models (Senge, 2000). Our personal experiences as students, our teacher preparation and experiences, and the test-driven memories of our most recent history all influence our consumption of new information. However, piling new on old doesn’t allow our minds fresh thinking opportunities. Instead, adding new to old simply adds more quantity to the boundaries and parameters of our original learning that already confines us. Thus, for the subject at hand, we offer the following mental models to reframe your thinking to prepare you to engage with the personalized learning ideas and accompanying strategies we will discuss in this book.
For us, the path to personalizing learning required us to reframe our thinking around three areas: (1) curriculum maps, (2) the role of the teacher, and (3) collaborative conversations. In this chapter, we will look at each of these areas and discuss how reframing them enables us to extend learning for students who have demonstrated proficiency with the instructional content. You may have already been thinking of these items in ways that resemble what we describe in our reframing; we are not suggesting everyone reading this book will need to change their thinking or that we are offering thoughts others have never considered. If you read one reframing idea and you are already doing it, you can enjoy knowing you’ll need to expend less mental energy on that idea and move to the next.
Reframing Curriculum Guides or Maps
Many of us remember our first days of teaching and entering our first classroom or new teacher induction program with wide eyes, eagerly anticipating direction on what we would be expected to teach students. The three authors of this book all had very different experiences in their first roles, and we suspect that everyone reading this book can relate to one of the three. One had a very detailed curriculum map and pacing guide that teachers were expected to follow in great detail. Another was handed a one-page document and the district-approved textbook for the course. He found that the one-page curriculum document was simply a list of the chapters in the book and was told to teach it however he saw fit. The third was given a detailed curriculum map and pacing guide but was informed that this was just a guide and that he had plenty of freedom to make it work for him. Three brand-new teachers, three different guidelines, and three different sets of expectations.
We propose that you and your collaborative team have a conversation and add those to whom you report in order to gauge where your school or district falls within these three scenarios—or perhaps there are other scenarios we haven’t considered here. Your collaborative structure and curriculum expectations are unique to you. Before you continue, please review your curriculum map and any school or district non-negotiables that could impact your classroom actions.
In many school districts, we have seen very specific curriculum maps that lay a foundation for a guaranteed and viable curriculum. A guaranteed and viable curriculum ensures that every student, regardless of the teacher, principal, or school he or she is assigned to, has the same opportunity to learn from a highly effective teacher because schools set the systems in place to ensure this occurs. This includes determining the most important standards to be taught across grade levels and courses that are tied to an established and aligned
