Personalized Learning

We want each student in Spring Lake Park Schools to experience personalized learning experiences that capitalize on their strengths and interests, satisfy their motives and address their needs.

We believe personalized learning is the way to ensure a positive educational experience for each student. The result is preparation for their career, college and life path and aspirations for success. Here are a few examples of what we mean by personalized learning:

Teachers use their expertise and knowledge of each student to design learning experiences that resonate with them.
Each student can see themselves in their learning and they believe their interests are honored and supported.
Students have personalized plans to help them achieve success in academic and/or life skills.
Students have opportunities to showcase their learning for real and important audiences.
Students discover who they are as life-learners and what excites and inspires them.
Even students who only spend a short time with us leave us better prepared than then would be without us.

Personalized learning is deeply intertwined with knowing each student deeply and creating a place where each student feels valued and that they belong.

Personalized Learning at SLP

Why Personalized Learning?

Behind our approach

Behind our approach to personalized learning are four – more technical - components that shape and guide our work. Students and teachers use these components to co-design learning together. When their efforts are successful, students are engaged, they are inspired and they learn deeply. They become powerful, independent and curious learners.

Competency-Based Learning - Flexibility for learners to demonstrate their mastery of rigorous academic, career and life skills competencies

Competency-based learning provides learners flexibility to demonstrate their mastery of rigorous academic, career and life skills competencies. Instead of just spending a set amount of time in a classroom on a particular topic, it's about truly understanding and being able to apply their learning.

We have two types of competencies in Spring Lake Park Schools:

Academic competencies are aligned to different subject areas and to Minnesota state standards for those areas.
Career and life competencies are skills and mindsets needed for success in school and beyond.

This approach helps students learn in a way that works best for them. It's personalized and flexible. Students focus on what they need to learn and understand deeply before they move on to the next concept. This helps students build on and develop the skills they need for their next steps.

Academic and Career and Life Competencies

KEY ELEMENTS

UNDERSTANDING WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW — Competencies are clear goals that represent the most critical and enduring concepts from each content area and the skills and mindsets needed to be successful.

There are 4-8 competencies in each content area.
Competencies are consistent from kindergarten through grade 12 and grow in complexity at each level.
Each competency includes what students need to demonstrate to be proficient in that competency.

LEARNING AT YOUR OWN PACE — Students can go at their own pace. They can take more time on things they find difficult and go faster through things they understand quickly. Descriptions of what learning looks like when a student is beginning, in progress or proficient is embedded in a tool teachers use, called a rubric, to determine where students are in their learning.

SHOWING WHAT YOU KNOW – Competency-based learning requires students to show their learning. They have to apply and transfer their learning to real situations and in authentic ways. Through tests, projects, or other applications of their skills, they produce examples that show what they know.

Additional Resources

Fact Sheet - multiple languages

Terms to Know - multiple languages

Spring Lake Park Schools takes a personalized, competency-based approach to learning. This focus makes sure each learner experiences success and is prepared for their unique next steps. These are terms we use.

Competency: The most enduring concepts from each content area and the skills and mindsets needed to be successful in school and beyond. These are the big ideas, often interdisciplinary, that answer for learners “why” something is worth learning. Because competencies are the deepest level of learning, they cycle through all grade levels and grow and develop throughout their time at Spring Lake Park Schools.

Competency-Based Learning: An approach to learning and teaching that centers around deep learning experiences, personalization, and equity to ensure a student learns each concept deeply before moving to the next. The approach focuses on:

being transparent with students, staff and families about what the learning outcomes are and the progress being made
personalizing the learning to each learner by providing opportunities to take more time on things that are difficult and go faster through things understood quickly
requiring learners to apply and transfer their learning to real situations and in authentic ways

Academic Competencies: Competencies specific to each academic content area (Math, Science, English Language Arts, Social Studies, etc.) and aligned to Minnesota state standards. Competencies represent the most critical concepts from that discipline. There are typically 4-8 competencies in each content area. Competencies are consistent from Kindergarten through 12^th grade and grow in complexity as students progress.

Career and Life Competencies: Competencies specific to the skills and mindsets needed for success in school and beyond. These competencies span all content areas and grade levels. Spring Lake Park Schools has identified seven career and life competencies: self-direction, collaboration, digital citizenship and wellness, civic and cultural awareness, communication, critical thinking, and creativity and innovation.

Competency criteria: The smaller learning goals within an overall competency.

Performance levels: Indications of where a student is at in their learning for each competency criteria. Teachers indicate where they see a student is at in their learning for each piece of evidence and at points in time overall (end of a timester). Performance levels include:

Beginning: Starting to grasp concept
In progress: Showing growth and learning of concepts
Proficient: Showing strong understanding and application of concepts
Extending: Making connections between your learning and other concepts, real life situations, etc.

Over time, the goal is to gain proficiency. Students might gain proficiency for some concepts quickly and for others more slowly.

Rubric (or competency rubric): A tool tied to competency criteria that clearly describes what the learning looks like at each performance level. Students and teachers use rubrics to assess student work, determine where the student is at in their learning, and identify next steps.

Evidence of Learning (or evidence): Anything a student produces to demonstrate their learning. This might be a project, test, quiz, paper or a simple observation or conversation that shows what the learner knows and/or can do.

No Evidence (or NE): A way to report when students have had an opportunity to show their understanding of a concept but have not shared any evidence with their teacher.

Not Introduced (or NI): A way to report when content has not yet been introduced or taught to a student.

Not Yet (or NY): A way to report when content has been taught but a student has not yet demonstrated a level of learning that meets any of the performance levels.

Learning Progression: The most foundational knowledge and skills for a particular grade level and content area. When they are missing, learning progressionis can create a gap for a learner as they move to the next course or grade level.

Arabic Terms to Know

English Terms to Know

Hmong Terms to Know

Somali Terms to Know

Spanish Terms to Know

Vietnamese Terms to Know

Academic and Career and Life Competencies

Learner Profiles - Deeply knowing each learner to design engaging work and experiences

Learner Profiles document who a student is and how they learn best. Each profile includes information on a student’s strengths, interests and needs as a learner as well as their background and personal experience. The profile grows and changes as each student grows and changes during their time at Spring Lake Park Schools.

Learner profiles are co-created by students with teachers and with input from families. Each student updates their learner profile at least once each year. The profile includes:

Demographic information about the student, family and other personal information that is important for understanding a student’s background and identity
A snapshot of learning progress – results of standardized assessments, learning goals, progress on competencies
Information about a student’s social, emotional, and behavioral growth and development
Current interests, passions and potential sparks
Information on student supports – family, teachers and staff the student trusts
Learning preferences
Anything else the student has included as being important to know

The profile helps educators to know students more deeply and design engaging work and experiences for them. Because students grow to take ownership of their profile over time, it also helps students become more aware of who they are as a learner.

When students graduate, our goal is for students to be incredibly self-aware of their strengths, interests and needs as a learner to be able to navigate anything they might encounter. Learner profiles are an important tool to support achieving that goal.

Personal Learner Maps - Learners, families and staff co-design learning goals for success in SLP and beyond

Personal learner maps define learning goals and the path to achieving them.

Personal Learner Maps for All document the learning outcomes for a specific unit of learning and identify the paths students will take to achieve the learning outcomes based on their interests and needs. Students provide insight on their interests and see that reflected in the learning and experience pathways teachers design. These are captured by unit designs and co-created designs.

Personal Learner Maps for All are visible to parents as trimester overviews that identify the key points of learning and updates for units of learning that outline what is to come.

Targeted Personal Learner Maps are living, short-term learner maps. They are developed with and for students identified as needing something more or different than what is captured in the unit design. These maps include further diagnostic data, specific skills to target and information on when, how and by whom targeted interventions or supports will be delivered.

Teachers develop Targeted Personal Learner Maps with colleagues who have expertise in the specific areas that are being targeted. Students follow along to see where they are in the learning, where they are going and their next step. Teachers communicate with parents to help them understand what their child is working on, provide updates on their progress and share next steps.

Flexible Learning Environments - Flexible use of time, space and resources to enhance learning

Flexibly using time, space and resources to enhance learning supports personalizing the learning experience.

Personalizing learning requires collaboration between staff and students. We meet and work together and make our work visible to each other along with the learning we are doing. We use spaces to showcase all type of talents, work and performances and as places to work together or independently.

Observing students on wobble chairs, sprawled on the floor, reading in a cubby or on the stairs is not unusual in our schools. Varying sizes of groups gathered around screens sharing work or meeting as small groups, building things or conducting experiments in all kinds of flex spaces are common experiences in our schools.

How adults and students are grouped for learning is flexible based on the learning to be done and the strengths, interests and needs of the learners. This is flexible use of resources. . . and space. . . and time as the focus is on the learning to be done and not the time spent in a seat in front of one teacher.

The facilities and practices of Spring Lake Park Schools are in a constant state of evolution to stay current with the learning experiences being designed in collaboration with each other.

The K-12 Student Journey

How We Work

Stories of personalized learning

RSS Feeds

Students smile in front of their future bites project poster and prototype

Future Bites: The Next Great American Food

Seventh graders stand in front of poster boards and screens pitching a group of visiting parents, teachers, and other students. They are looking for investors in their products – the next great American food. This is the culmination of their interdisciplinary projects. The winner? Student engagement.

From paper plants to community circles

The paper plants on the wall are all different and filled with students’ hopes and dreams. In another room, there is a student signed poster with the class rules. In another space, Tuesday mornings are circle time. Across Spring Lake Park Schools, specific, intentional strategies and practices like these are creating a learner-centered environment.

How to get a child to care about school

Designing the experience of school so kids care to learn is at the heart of Spring Lake Park Schools’ approach to personalized learning. But what does personalized learning really mean? We have a new resource that describes the K-12 student journey when we are at our best and students are engaged at school.

A day in 3rd grade: Competency-based learning in action

Third graders enthusiastically welcomed a video crew into their classrooms to follow along in their learning for one day last May. As we start a new school year, short video stories from that day provide tangible examples of competency-based learning in action. From collaboration to math to science to digital literacy, let’s roll.

Three students in Jen Haviland's class working and smiling

Learning . . . to Do

Have you ever taken a test and then promptly forgotten everything about the topic? Studying to get through a test or grade is not uncommon, and while it is reality sometimes, it doesn’t often lead to learning a student is able to apply in life. At the secondary level, competency-based learning is an approach that aims to deliver the grade AND the skills students can authentically apply to real situations.

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