PDL Classroom Tour - Washam

This morning I had the honor of being led on a PDL (personalized digital learning) tour by wonderful students at JV Washam who showed me their own classroom routines. (I can't recommend student-led tours enough!)

Each teacher I saw personalizes for their students according to their own teaching strengths as well as the needs of their students at that time. They model growth mindset for their students. One student pointed to the wall and said "my teacher hung those posters in the wrong order, but then when she realized her mistake we fixed it." I loved that the teacher modeled for her class that mistakes are part of learning and growing and involved them in fixing the mistake together.

To begin making the most of our digital devices to personalize learning at Piedmont, here is a procedure to follow, based on what I saw and learned:

1. Set the stage: create an inviting atmosphere in your classroom with comfortable lighting and seating and focus on students’ social and emotional needs first. (see "Setting the Stage" images below)
2. Practice working with flexibility and student choice. Create and explain rules for each new thing, then practice frequently for short times (quick activities).
3. Choose a unit of curriculum to personalize.
4. Gather ready-made high interest resources accoridng to skill. Place them as hyperlinks in 3 columns on a Google doc. Each skill gets its own doc. The doc can contain links to TES (blendspaces) lists of videos, activities, etc. This will be the hardest work. Use files and tools others have made. Get help from PLC partners if possible. Do one unit a year so you don't overtax yourself.
5. Have students pretest. Share the results of the pretest with each student. Have them write their score down and know what score is needed for mastery.
6. If a student achieves mastery level scores on each skill pretested, they can compact out. Others will work either from column one, two or three. Based on how they do, they now know which skills they need to work on . They only need to do the work for the column or doc they are deficient in.
7. Have students complete a goal setting worksheet for that unit based on their pretest scores.
8. Students work while you circulate and help one on one. When you get more comfortable that students will be on task, you can teach a mini lesson during this time to students who need it.
9. Go easy on yourself. It will not go as smoothly as a teacher controlled classroom at first but don't give up.
10. When students mess up, reteach and create buy in. Spend time on the relationship and helping them see the big picture.

Washam teachers all said that Switching to This method ELIMINATED many behavior problems in their classrooms.

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Here are some photos with the takeaways geared toward things you can adapt for your classroom from how they do PDL at JV Washam.
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Don't be put off by the elementary nature of some of these images. They can be adapted to appeal to older students easily.

Setting the stage: Atmosphere Plus Procedural,Social, and emotional learning

Students work on a soft rug on their choice of activiy to demonstrate mastery. They stay focused because the task is interesting and their choice. They persevere because they have set their own learning goal.

Your students could design their own selfies with their IB learner profile trait as their headline. They choose font and you print, as Ms. Mise-Wilson's class did here.

When the tap light is on, students know NOT to approach the teacher with questions (she is working with a student or group and cannot have interruptions)

This is important if you do choose to have one of the various activities students work on during the class be a mini lesson taught by you.

Social and emotional learning is essential and continuous. If students are to be trusted they must first be taught what to do and not do and agree to that.  Students want more control and choice so it's an easy bargain for them.

Click on any image to expand it 
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Included are images of brain breaks, "morning meeting" requests, emotional self regulation, rules for sitting in a PL Choice classroom, etc. 
Any time you spend on this you will get back in greater buy-in and more efficient class the rest of the year.

Tools of Personalizing Content- Playlists, Pathways, PLayways...

Below a student is creating a Flipgrid video to teach her classmates. This student's tablemate admitted that her friend was very nervous before recording so she was writing out her script first to make sure she told all she knew. Others in the class chose to show mastery with a dfferent task from a choice board.

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Math: Mystery Picture is a self correcting activity. Students access it via the teacher's google classroom and as they work the 20 problems, pieces of the picture appear with each correct answer. The teacher bought it on TPT. The teachers say that highly engaging tasks, whether they be practice or creation are essential.

Below are images of the tools used to personalize: choice boards, Google Classrom instructions, hyperlinked google docs, handouts, slideshows, and such. Each classroom used different tools. 

To relieve teacher stress, the admin did not do any walkthroughs first quarter, second quarter they ONLY gave compliments, and then third quarter they moved into coaching and feedback. That way teachers knew they had a whole quarter to make mistakes and tweak the experience.
One teacher said she felt a little bad like she was using the kids as guinea pigs but that she could not be happier with the results. 

What I think is important to learn about that is that all growth and improvement has an element of risk. If you want to improve the learning experience, experimentation is unavoidable. Refusing to do it because of fear ends up hurting the students more than trying and needing to regroup.
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This poster shows Bloom’s taxonomy in a new way for student buy in to move to higher level work

This poster helps students focus and move-Students said the teacher points to symbols o the B3 chart and they move accordingly.

Students work to have a chance to remove sticks. This hand made game is a motivator.

Students put a light on the desk of a fellow classmate who is showing Leadership

Related posts:
http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/piedmont-pd/learning-from-elementary-school
​http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/piedmont-pd/classroomingredients
http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/piedmont-pd/automated-personalization
http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/lesson-ideas/sites-for-your-students