From personalized learning to PBL and back

Action Plan, part 2

The first part of this post deals with what I have read and learned about since our last face-to-face meeting. At the end of the post, I chart out my next steps and would love some feedback about how I could use technology / coaching strategies to assist with a personalized unit of study.

Personalized Learning

I started off on a path to explore personalized learning with the goal of offering a personalized unit of study for my students, once I had a clearer vision of what that would look like. What resonated with me in reading about personalized learning:

1. The ten tenets of the Unlimited school in NZ’s character – listed on the “Choose your own ed-venture” site made by Garth. Among them: “Students follow their individual interests and enthusiasms”, and “Curriculum and qualifications needs are met through a student’s chosen path, not a prescribed route”. I think these ideas influenced my research in the direction of Project Based Learning (PBL).

2. I am excited about the new curriculum that is set to be released for French this year in Ontario, which will focus on a communicative rather than linguistic approach. It is long overdue, and the main reason why I’ve referenced the American Association of Second Language Teachers when setting overarching goals for my courses over the past few years. Here’s an article about how the focus on assessment for learning rather than of learning in a foreign language classroom brings about a more personalized approach to learning languages.

3. This website helped me focus on optimal conditions for language learners, and how blended learning could help attain these optimal conditions. The right blended learning environment is highly personalized for students, but also provides the structure they need to define their learning goals.

PBL

In my original Action Plan statement, I wanted to come up with a personalized unit of study where students pursued learning goals linked to overall Ministry expectations and the course’s essential questions. I also wanted them to perform an authentic, real world task that they chose based on their interest and the degree of challenge it posed.

I became drawn to articles and blog posts about Challenge-based, Project-based learning.

1. The key idea on this site which attempts to identify the differences between Challenge-based, Problem-based and Project-based learning, is that all of these strategies lead students to make discoveries for authentic audiences and purposes.

2. I came across Benny Lewis’ TEDx talk and website and it was inspiring to see what evolved from a self-motivated language learner when he made it his goal to become fluent in a language in 3 months. His “project” could serve as inspiration to my students.

3. Going on to explore PBL within the foreign languages realm: the name Don Doehla kept coming up on Twitter and in searches. One of these days I will sign up for the weekly langchat he organizes, but for now I’m happy to subscribe to his newsletter.

What’s going on in my personalized classroom?

I am putting everything in place for a personalized unit of study in my grade 10 enriched class following the March Break. My idea is to challenge the class to complete a project with an authentic outcome, then have them reflect on where they could take their learning if they were to decide on the outcome themselves.

How it’s going to work:

I’m going to introduce the class to a classic board game I used to love to play called Wide World (details on how to play can be found here). The challenge will be for students to recreate the game with a twist: We will call it Le Monde Francophone and all of the aspects of the game (travel agent cards, destinations, product cards) will be related to the francophone world. The students will have to come together as a team to determine which countries they will include, what information to reveal about that country’s history/products/culture on the game cards as a result of their research, and tailor the game to students in the grade 3  or 4 French class, to whom they will present the game when it is complete. They will reflect on their learning along the way (method to be determined), and use applications like Padlet when determining everyone’s roles for the project.

I hope that at the end of this task, students will see the benefits of working towards an authentic product (in this case, a game for a younger group of French students), that they have some flexibility in determining what they learn (i.e. which country they decide to research in detail and what they contribute to the making of the final product) but that they will question the fact that I am still the one determining the end-product.

I hope this project serves as a good model for authentic learning. The latter part of the unit will see my students implementing action plans for learning goals they have established for themselves.

My research has come full-circle from personalized learning –> PBL and back.

The structure of my personalized unit (following the group challenge) is as follows:

-Students determine their learning goals based on curriculum and course essential questions

-Technology will play a key role (much of this inspiration comes from Derek Doucet’s work

• padlet to brainstorm for game; and individual student projects
• google moderator when students begin pursuing their own challenges (organic way to potentially form groups; this is where I can provide some inspiration for those who have trouble getting started)
• edmodo or some other platform to help students reflect along the way

 Next steps:

I like what Derek Doucet is doing to involve his students in the learning process, and I’d like to go a step further from our curriculum list and examine how we can embed the CEFR proficiencies and their language portfolio into our language courses at my school, starting from the first day of class in September. I wonder if this is the best way for the students to find direction and set realistic learning goals. To this end, I’ve enlisted the help of an OISE teaching candidate, who is going to complete her alternative practicum at our school. She is keen to examine the CEFR document, samples of language portfolios that have been adapted for Canadian students, and she will also be helping out as a coach in my grade 10 class as they put their plans into action.