Personalized Learning

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.

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.

View each subject area's academic competencies

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 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.

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.