I have been trying to catch up with episodes of George Couros’s excellent Innovator’s Mindset Podcast. Of course, I had to revisit the episode in which I was lucky to appear. While listening to it, I began to realize when I was talking about my favorite teachers. They were actually the ones who allowed me to experience personalized learning. This is nearly 40 years ago! In 1997, the movie of the year was Beverly Hills Cop 2, and the biggest song of the year was “ Want to Dance with Somebody” by Whitney Houston. Specifically, Mr. Vollrath, who I talked about in the episode, realized that it was not the ability to spell a word but to know what it means and use it in the proper context. As I write this post right now, I am still not the best speller, but there are tools that can assist me with it. I see red lines in Google Docs that alert me if I misspelled something. It’s like he understood the WHY of the words, which was not the spelling but the understanding of the words and the abi
I believe that all learning is personal, and it still is. An essential part of ensuring that all learners' needs are being met is that they understand how they learn best and can communicate that to their teacher. Of course, this feedback means nothing if the instruction isn’t adjusted, but that’s another blog post in itself.
While going through some old photos on my MacBook, I came across this one 9 years ago when I began incorporating more voice and choice in my classroom. It illustrated a simple form of feedback I gained from students at the end of a unit. I’d have the headers on the board and leave the room while students wrote their opinions.
It’s hard to read, so I’ll put the responses in the table below. I did not correct any grammatical errors.
How Have I Been Given Voice and Choice?
We have a lot of apps to choose from, and we have the option to make presentations based on voice recording, visual demonstrations, or lab write-ups
Projects allow us to be creative
Mr. Mo allows us to have our choice in making our projects in our own creative way
I personally feel tests don’t give an accurate representation of a student's abilities, especially if people get test anxiety
Students get a choice in the way they want to be tested, not only traditional MC tests, but projects, presentations, etc.
We actually learn the material instead of memorizing!
It allows me to choose how I want to approach a project throughout. Other classes teachers force you to make certain types of presentations. But in this class I’m allowed to decide that I don’t want to make a video, I don’t have too and I would get the same grade.
Students can offer their own ideas to the teacher without worrying about receiving a negative response
You let us give ideas to help us learn in our own way such as Kahoot quizzes and projects
It’s really personalized learning and there are different options that work for everyone
Why Is It Beneficial?
Students can show their understanding in a way that uses their learning style! Plus presenting information is great practice for the future!
We often have to think outside the box which results in beneficial learning and problem-solving
It helps us develop new ideas and collaborate with one another.
We can all learn in our own style and in a way that will help us the most
Students, regardless of their test-type preference, can excel in physics.
We can take responsibility for our own education which prepares more for college
We can learn at our own pace and not worry about stressful tests
The video presentations are more helpful than traditional rests because the student becomes the teacher and is required to explain the concepts learned in class
Having a flexible learning path makes a class less stressful and seems to create a more free, open, idea-sharing atmosphere in the classroom
Because we can learn the way we want
Okay, so there seems to be an overwhelming sentiment against “traditional tests” in this feedback. Let me just take a quick aside that it could be a completely different blog post.
I just want to take a moment to provide a few examples of assessment evidence from some of the classes in our school district:
Analyze data to support the claim that Newton’s second law of motion describes the mathematical relationship among the net force on a macroscopic object, its mass, and its acceleration.
I can present information, findings, and supporting evidence such that listeners can follow the reasoning and organization.
Wisconsin students will develop claims using evidence to support reasoning.
These standards are written as if the student will be able to (verb) of (direct object) and may include some extra guidelines.
A big thing to note about these and all the standards I have looked at is that they do not include the words “multiple-choice test.”
I have nothing against teaching learners how to take a multiple-choice test. But isn’t that its own standard and set of skills? The ability to effectively take a multiple-choice test is its own separate standard!
Ok, enough of that rant.
The point is that learners need to be able to express that they have mastered the standard. If the standard doesn’t specifically state how they will express mastery, why exclude methods that work best for the learner?
Here are some of the methods I have used in the past in a unit dealing with light
Ultimately, the students choose the assessment method and use their voice to demonstrate mastery of a standard. Allowing students to express their voices helps the teacher construct alternative choices for how they would prefer to best demonstrate their mastery of the content/standard, which only helps increase the choice options.
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