Susan Dachenhausen's Personalized Learning Portfolio

Learner Agency is vital to learners to not only have choice in their education, or learning experiences, but empowering learners to use their voice as they advocate for themselves to be successful now and in the future. As students progress through school and gain more experience in using their choice and voice, they can really set the tone for becoming successful by allowing learners time to reflect, analyze, and choose the next steps to enhance their learning. There are many ways to promote learner agency within the classroom. Some of those strategies are engaging learners with choice, collaborating with others, having opportunities for self-reflection, providing opportunities to promote creativity. With learner agency, the ownership of learning shifts from a teacher-centered approach to a learner-centered approach. Learners are able to take charge of their learning, while the teachers become the support and resources to aid in their learning experiences. A teacher can promote a learner to take ownership in many different ways.

Differentiation in learning
Flexible Seating
Conferencing and Self-Reflection
Project Based Learning

"Learning that is characterized by learning agency recognizes learners as active participants in their own learning and engages them in the design of their experiences and the realization of their learning outcomes in ways appropriate for their developmental level. As such, learners have choice and voice in their educational experiences as they progress through competencies. Harnessing his or her own intrinsic motivation to learn, each learner strives to ultimately take full ownership of his or her own learning." (Cooper, 2017).

STRATEGIES FOR IMPROVING LEARNER AGENCY

PROJECT BASED LEARNING

Inspiring Inquiry states that Problem-based learning is based on the messy, complex problems encountered in the real world as a stimulus for learning and for integrating and organizing learned information in ways that will ensure its recall and application to future problems. (Inspiring Inquiry)

Project Based Learning helps with Learner Agency because students are all given the same problem, but their path to finding the solution is truly unique to them. How a student may approach a given problem can be completely different than how the person sitting next to them would approach their solution to the problem. Problem Based Learning allows students to harness their creativity and talents to be used in the project. Students use the Engineering Design Model to ask what the problem is, imagine all the solutions, plan their solution, create their model, test their model to see if their solution solves the problem, improve upon their design, and then finally share their results with their intended audience. As students are given PBL opportunities, they learn to take risks, persevere through obstacles, and become problem solvers for the world.

PROJECT BASED LEARNING Opportunity

Our 5th Grade students are partnering with a local company, Club Car, for their year long PBL project. On September 15th, Club Car representatives came to kickoff the yearlong PBL the students would be solving. Their driving question for the project is: How can you accessorize a Club Car to make it marketable for a specific region. There are three different marketing segments of Club Car. They are golf, consumer, and commercial. Students were able to choose which marketing segment they wanted for their yearlong PBL.

5th Grade Yearlong STEM.pptx

Yearlong PBL: Club Car

After our kickoff, students began researching their specified region for their class. Students were to research the terrains, climates, and anything they felt was important to help their find a solution to the driving question. Next, students will work on designing and creating their own accessory. The goal is to appeal to their marketing segment to enhance the Club Car to make it marketable to their region. Club Car representatives will come into the school to collaborate with the students once a month.

DIFFERENTIATION with Choice Boards

Inspiring Inquiry states that differentiation is individually student centered, with a focus on appropriate instructional and assessment tools that are fair, flexible, challenging, and engage students in the curriculum in meaningful ways.

Not all learners learn the same or show their mastery in the same manner. To promote learner agency, differentiation is essential in allowing students to become successful in their learning experiences. Differentiation means that content is presented in various multimodal forms and students can show mastery of content in many different ways.

Circuits and Electricity Choice Board: Southern Fried Teaching

DIFFERENTIATION with Individual Work Time

Differentiation can come in many different forms. Teachers can differentiate how they present material to their auditory, visual, and kinesthetic learners. During small group or independent work time, teachers can differentiate with the stations that meet the students needs. Some different stations could include task cards, a digital component, a video lesson, a game, versatiles, or teacher-student conference station. Having different options for students to pick from can allow the student to take ownership and choose which station would best meet their needs for the content.

Genius Hour

Presentation source: Genius Hour Project Introduction

Passion Video (Slide 1) Source: Google

Genius Hour Video (Slide 2) Source: Spencer, John. 2017, March 19

Genius Hour

Genius Hour is a designated time of the week that is dedicated to allowing students to explore and become masters or geniuses on their passion. "They spend several weeks researching the topic before they start creating a product that will be shared with the class/school/world." (Genius Hour). Once the student has concluded their research, each student will find a creative way to present the material to their peers, school, and community. Some examples from my classroom are learning the history of sign language and sign a song. The presentation of that model is performing the sign language with a song to their classmates.

Genius Hour Implementation

Over the course of the next three months, students in my classroom will work on their personal Genius Hour Project. Every Friday, students are working on a project of their choice as they become the experts on their passions. My students began the Genius Hour Project by brainstorming three different ideas for their project. Next, the students and I conferenced individually about which project would they want to complete. After selecting the project, students will engage in research, learn about their project, and create a presentation of their choosing to share with their peers, school, and community.

EXAMPLES of ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGES IN THE CLASSROOM

CONFERENCING and REFLECTING

Edutopia states that when students lead meetings with their parents and teachers, they gain a voice in their education and develop skills like goal-setting and metacognition. When students are given choice to use their voice, they become their best advocate. The student knows what their greatest strength is, but also their greatest weakness. As teachers and students have conferencing to share their thoughts, the student can voice to the teacher where they need to grow and how they want to make that happen.

A personalized learning plan is a way for students to not only have choice, but really use their voice to advocate to share how they want to receive the content or material. Students can voice what style of learning works best for them. Next, they can conference with the teacher to share their thoughts on the delivery of the content, what they feel was the most difficult part of the learning plan, their favorite part of the learning plan, and what they feel still needs work. Students do not have to have personalized learning plans to be able to use their voice in conferencing. Teachers can help promote students using their voice by conferencing with students weekly. The more opportunities to have conferences to use their voice, the more confident they become, which leads to a enhanced education experience that is personal to them.

FLEXIBLE TIMELINES and DUE DATES

In my class, students work on their individual learning plans each day. Before beginning the personalized learning plan, students conference with me and discuss the tasks, their plan, and the due dates. Students set their own due dates for the assignments given.

FLEXIBLE SEATING

Learners must feel comfortable and welcome in their physical space before they feel that they can really embrace the learning experiences. Flexible seating can release the control of environment from the teacher to the learner. By giving physical environmental control to the learner, the learner can feel motivated and engaged to focus on the tasks or assignments. (Park, 2021). To the right you can see some examples of flexible classroom seating within my personal classroom.

FLEXIBLE SEATING Journey

Beginning 2 years ago, I started the journey of converting my classroom to include flexible seating options. I began with using my daughter's old crib mattress as a bench seating. The students fell in love with it and I actually noticed that students seemed to focus better when sitting there because they felt comfortable in their environment. This sparked my interest to see about the correlation between flexible seating and attention to tasks. The next year, I incorporated two gaming chairs and a bean bag. This gave more flexibility in seating for more students. Finally, this year, I added the other two gaming chairs, the patterned rocker chair, and the tables to allow students to have a place to work while sitting in the chairs. As students were able to choose their seating, students focused more on the tasks as they became comfortable in their environment, which allowed for uninterrupted focus and thinking time to take place.

References:

Park, Esther. Fresh Ideas for Teaching. (2021, September 23). 5 Activities To Promote Student Agency In The Classroom.
Retrieved from https://blog.savvas.com/5-activities-to-promote-student-agency-in-the-classroom/

Bray, B. (2018, September 9). Spectrum of Voice: Developing Self-Regulation, Autonomy, and Agency. Rethinking Learning.
Retrieved September 23, 2022, from
https://barbarabray.net/2018/09/09/spectrum-of-voice-developing-self-regulation-autonomy-and-agency /

Cooper, R. (2017, November 6). How can educators best promote student agency? K-12 Dive.

Edutopia. (2019, January 14). Developing Agency With Student-Led Conferences.
Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/video/developing-agency-student-led-conferences

What is Genius Hour?
http://geniushour.com/what-is-genius-hour/

Inspiring Inquiry. What is Project Based Learning.
Retrieved from https://www.inspiringinquiry.com/learningteaching/toolsstrategies/project-based-learning

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