Personalizing Learning: Empowering Students through Goal Setting and Progress Tracking

In today's ever-evolving educational landscape, personalizing learning has become a game-changer. 

Gone are the days of the one-size-fits-all approach. Now, it's all about tailoring education to meet the unique needs and aspirations of our students. How can we make it happen? Well, we've got two powerful tools in our arsenal: goal setting and progress tracking. By incorporating these strategies, we can create an environment that unleashes the potential of every student, fostering growth, motivation, and continuous improvement. Ready to dive in? Let's explore the magic of personalizing learning through goal setting and progress tracking.

Embrace Individuality in the Classroom

Imagine a classroom where each student gets to pursue their passions and interests. That's the essence of personalized learning. As teachers, we shift our focus from being the center of attention to empowering our students to take ownership of their education. It's time to embrace their individuality and create an environment where their unique strengths and interests can flourish. For example, consider offering students choices that align with their interests, sparking their curiosity and engagement.  Whether it be choice in process or product, empowering students with the ability to make decisions that affect their learning can revolutionize their experience in the classroom.

Empower Students with Goal Setting

Now, let's talk about goal setting—the secret ingredient to personalizing learning. Think of how powerful it may have been in the past when you set personal goals and worked relentlessly to achieve them. Our students can experience that same sense of purpose and drive. By involving them in the goal-setting process, we empower them to take charge of their learning journey. Encourage students to set meaningful, specific, attainable goals. For instance, students might set goals each time they meet to conference about writing, allowing them to choose something they need to work on, over time giving them a list of writing skills that they have targeted and improved on. By setting goals, students gain clarity, focus, and motivation to strive for success.

Track Progress for Continuous Growth

Now comes the exciting part—progress tracking. As teachers, we can help students monitor their progress toward their goals. By providing opportunities for reflection and self-assessment, students develop a deeper understanding of their strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement. Encourage students to keep records of their work, maintain portfolios, or use digital platforms to document their progress. Implement regular check-ins and conferences to discuss their achievements, challenges, and strategies for growth. Progress tracking allows students to see how far they've come, make adjustments as needed, and celebrate their milestones along the way.

The Rewards of Personalizing Learning 

So, what's in it for you as a teacher? 

a. Student Motivation: Personalizing learning through goal setting and progress tracking ignites intrinsic motivation. Students have a clear sense of purpose, witnessing their progress, and feeling a sense of accomplishment. This fuels their engagement, persistence, and enthusiasm for learning.

b. Differentiated Instruction: Personalizing learning allows us to tailor our instruction to meet individual student needs. By understanding their goals and progress, we can provide targeted support, challenge, and resources. It's about meeting students where they are and guiding them toward success.

c. Student Ownership: Goal setting and progress tracking empower students with a sense of ownership and agency over their education. They become active participants in their learning journey, making choices that align with their interests and goals. This autonomy nurtures their sense of responsibility and self-directed learning skills

d. Growth Mindset Development: Through progress tracking, students develop a growth mindset—a belief in their ability to learn and grow. They become more self-aware, reflecting on their learning process and embracing challenges as opportunities for growth. This mindset sets them up for lifelong learning and success beyond the classroom.

e. Personalized Support and Feedback: Progress tracking enables us to provide personalized support and feedback to our students. We can offer specific guidance aligned with their goals, identify areas where they need additional support, and celebrate their achievements. It's about fostering a supportive and collaborative learning environment.

As teachers, we have the power to transform education through personalizing learning. 

By embracing goal setting and progress tracking, we empower our students to take ownership of their education, fuel their motivation, and foster continuous growth. Let's create classrooms where students' individuality is celebrated, goals are set, progress is tracked, and success is within reach. Together, we can unlock the full potential of every student and make personalized learning a reality.

High Hopes - Acceleration & Blending Learning

High High Hopes - Acceleration and Blended Learning

(4-5 minute read)

Imagine a classroom where every student feels confident and excited about learning, where struggling students get the support they need to keep up with their peers, and advanced students are challenged to reach their full potential. This is the promise of blended learning and acceleration.

Echos of this promise can be heard in one of our favorite pop songs:

Had to have high, high hopes for a living

Didn't know how but I always had a feeling

I was gonna be that one in a million

Always had high, high hopes

Mama said

Fulfill the prophecy

Be something greater

Go make a legacy

Manifest destiny

How many of our students feel these lyrics echoing deep in their souls as they walk into our classes each day? High hopes to fulfill the whispers of prophecy that bounce around in their smiles, thoughts, and dreams?

In Panic At The Disco's hit song "High hopes," the group's lead singer, Brandon Urie, sings about a person who is euphoric about his future. He is determined, empowered, and ready to take on a seemingly uncertain world.

Think back to your years in school. How many "High hopes" did you carry with you as you walked the halls, worked in groups, and delivered those uh-mazing book reports to the class? High hopes carry us through so many of life's good (and not so good) events.

Self Efficacy

John Hattie's famous meta-analysis of classroom influences may be familiar to you. In it, he synthesized and ranked a variety of common practices or influences. Out of 256 entries, Hattie ranked self efficacy as the eleventh most important factor (click on link to left for full view). The .96 affect size attributed to self efficacy basically means that the more self assured and optimistic a student is in their abilities, the more likely they will be to succeed in school. A .96 is nearly two years worth of growth in one calendar year!

So how can we help grow these kid's high high hopes? Former Stanford Psychologist, Albert Banduras created a visual to help crystalize our thoughts around. In the image below, you can see that self efficacy can be bolster and is made out of four fundamental experiences: direct experiences, vicarious experiences, social persuasion, and physiological feedback. As the linked article (above) states, "High self-efficacy has numerous benefits to daily life, such as resilience to adversity and stress, healthy lifestyle habits, improved employee performance, and educational achievement."

All students should feel these high high hopes and it can't happen in a classroom that doesn't personalize learning experiences. It may sound like a tall order, but it doesn't have to be.

Experiences are just that. The experiences our students bring with them as they enter our campuses. However, these experiences are also based on performance outcomes. What have they done in the past and how successful have they been at those tasks. Practice becomes an important component to this part of self efficacy. Students who practice a skill, become better at it and feel better about the skill and the actions performed within the skill. This category is the largest indicator of students success (more on this in a bit).

Vicarious Experiences are experiences students see being performed. So when teachers practice (model) a skill in front of the students and verbalize those actions, students still pick up tid-bits and build self efficacy. Watching is less beneficial than doing, but it is still beneficial.

Dr. Banduras

Social Persuasion is when a student is performing a task and they receive positive feedback as they move through the steps of that performance. Verbal persuasion like this is affective with any age, however the effects diminish the older a person gets. So, being authentically positive with younger students can help build that self efficacy that we mentioned earlier.

Physiological Persuasion is connected to the student's psychological and emotional states. However, Dr. Banduras states that the states themselves are not as important as how the person perceives the state they are in. If a student is distraught but has high high hopes of getting past that stressor, then they will be less affected by that moment than a student who doesn't perceive that hope.

As you've probably guessed by now, what all four of these component have in common is the support that teachers can give during a lesson to help build student efficacy brick by experiential brick.

Because blended learning lessons are flexible and can allow for personalization of the process, product, and/or content, we believe that student efficacy can be combined with research based, gap-filling actions like acceleration to propel all students into the high hopes stratosphere.

Blended Learning and Acceleration: Supporting Super High Hopes

Before diving into our example, let's refresh our memories about blended learning and acceleration. Blended learning is an instructional approach mixing face-to-face teaching with digital tools, creating personalized and engaging learning environments. Acceleration gives students struggling with upcoming content a head-start by previewing new concepts and vocabulary, helping them keep pace with their peers (Tomlinson, 2014).

In acceleration, students are often given previews of content the day or week before the content is delivered to the rest of the class. In other words, students may be pulled into small groups to learn an upcoming skill or concept or be given time to learn new vocabulary terms. When they are exposed to the lesson with their peers, accelerated students have likely experiences ALL FOUR of the aforementioned self efficacy "chunks" that are in the image above.

Sample Unit

Now that we're up to speed, let's check out what blended learning and acceleration might look like in a 3rd-grade math classroom.

As you read the following lesson, please take note of the blended, accelaration and self efficacy components!

Fractions, Unite!

Picture this: our 3rd-grade class is starting a new unit on fractions. The teacher, a real-life superhero, wants every student to succeed. Here's how blended learning and acceleration can make that happen:

1. Assess students: The teacher identifies students who may struggle with fractions using assessments, classroom observations, and that good ol' teacher intuition. They may use diagnostic assessments, such as pre-tests, to gauge students' prior knowledge and identify learning gaps (Guskey & Jung, 2013). The teacher can tailor instruction based on where the students struggle, increasing the likelihood of success (Tomlinson & Imbeau, 2010).

2. Preview content: Before the fractions unit, our fantastic teacher offers struggling students access to digital resources, videos, and adaptive math platforms to introduce basic fraction concepts and vocabulary. By pre-teaching key vocabulary and concepts, students have a foundation to build on as new content is introduced (Walpole & McKenna, 2007). This strategy also increases students' confidence and motivation, as they feel better prepared for upcoming lessons (Graham & Perin, 2007).

3. Differentiate instruction: As the unit begins, the teacher employs blended learning strategies to create personalized paths for all students, including those who received acceleration support (Dabbagh & Kitsantas, 2012). One approach is the station rotation model, where students rotate through various learning activities. Differentiation allows the teacher to address students' individual strengths and weaknesses, promoting a deeper understanding of the material (Tomlinson & Imbeau, 2010).

Imagine a 50-minute math block:

• Warm-up (5 minutes): Students complete a quick fractions-related activity to get their brains in gear.
• Station Rotation (3 stations x 15 minutes each):
  • Station 1 - Teacher Table: Students work with the teacher on guided activities at their level, with targeted support for accelerated students. Activities might include using manipulatives to model fractions, working on fraction word problems, or comparing and ordering fractions. The teacher can use strategies like questioning, cueing, and prompting to help students develop a deeper understanding of the content (Van de Walle, Karp, & Bay-Williams, 2013).
  • Station 2 - Technology Station: Students use digital tools like interactive fraction games, online manipulatives, or adaptive platforms tailored to their needs and progress. These tools can help students visualize and explore fractions in a fun and engaging way (Clements & Sarama, 2016), fostering a deeper understanding of the concepts.
  • Station 3 - Independent Collaboration: Students work in pairs or small groups on hands-on activities, like creating equivalent fractions with manipulatives, solving real-world fraction problems, or exploring fraction patterns. Collaborative learning encourages students to share ideas, articulate their thinking, and learn from each other (Gillies, 2014).

4. Provide support: Throughout the unit, the teacher continues offering extra practice and guidance to help accelerated students solidify their understanding and keep up with class pace. This might include providing additional resources, offering targeted feedback, or setting up individual or small group conferences to address specific concerns (Wiliam, 2011).

5. Monitor progress: Our fearless teacher regularly checks in with students, assessing their progress and making adjustments as needed to ensure accelerated students stay on track. They might use exit slips, quizzes, or performance tasks to gather evidence of learning, and then adjust instruction accordingly (Black & Wiliam, 2009).

The Journey Begins

By combining blended learning and acceleration, our imaginary 3rd-grade teacher creates a personalized, inclusive environment where every student can thrive. With the right strategies and a touch of digital magic, all students can shine in the classroom.

So, fellow educators, are you ready to bring the power of blended learning and acceleration to your classroom? By embracing this dynamic duo, you can help all your students stay on pace and reach their full potential. With creativity, dedication, and a dash of digital wizardry, you'll be well on your way to creating an inclusive and engaging learning environment that empowers every student to succeed.

High high hopes!