Brianna Benitez's Portfolio Page
About Me
Hi! My name is Brianna Benitez, and I am from Greenwood Lake, NY. I have lived here for almost all of my life! I commuted to SUNY New Paltz to complete my bachelor's degree in Early Childhood Education B-6 with a concentration in English. I substituted through this degree, and after graduating applied to the CDIT program which I am on track to complete after this semester is successfully finished. I teach preschool right now, and while it takes up some time, I make sure to spend with my family, friends and my dog Cooper.
My Topic and Purpose
My topic is on personalizing early childhood education. This mini-course includes information on how to teach children what they need in the way they would be able to understand it and utilize it. The course will include research based evidence to help others understand and also techniques, tips and specific examples on how to teach in this type of way without loosing all control as a teacher. This way of teaching is all about learning the right balance to support a healthy learning environment and successful as well as confident students. I chose this topic because there is a major opportunity for educators to engage and excite learners by making their way of learning valued in the class. This is something that can motivate them to do their best in their education.
Scope of Learning Outcomes and Content
The course will give learners insight on the importance of making a students learning personal. They will know what this means through the provided research and how it can help by learning about the foundation of this teaching style. They will gain the skills needed to implement this such as designing personalized instruction and balancing this. The tips, techniques and specific examples will help educators apply this in their classrooms. They will become more comfortable and confident to find the right balance in personalizing their instruction and activities for their students not dependent on subject or age. This sense of knowledge should push them to ask questions such as: "How can I change my lessons to personalize them for my students?" It will be a course they can use to reevaluate their teaching and apply it when improving it.
Overall, at the end of the mini-lesson, learners will be able to
-Understand the importance of personalized education
-Know types of ways to implement this style of teaching
-Reconstruct previous lessons into personalized lessons
Needs Assessment
The Educational Opportunity:
Recent research describes personalized learning as an approach for the learners. The Forum Guide to Personalized Learning shows how this opportunity is built for the learners but can be used in different ways depending on the schools and/or states. Personalized learning has three parts that are impacted by this method. These are the objectives, the approaches and the content. Each of these are the working pieces towards personalization. The psychological research from Developing Personalized education: A Dynamic Framework, claims that it is not the best option to give all control of learning to the learners, the amount of control should depend on each student and what us expected of them. It’s importance lies on the fact that it is the chance to give students power in their own learning to an appropriate extent. Schools are following various types of this method adapting it in their own ways.
Participators and Learners:
While anyone can explore this mini-lesson and gain knowledge about personalized education, it is aimed at incoming and current educators. The incoming educators can include anyone who is going into or already part of teaching such as any educators, assistants and administration. Each of these people are making decisions about children’s academic education and taking this course could make an impact.
Analysis of Gaps:
Teachers are incorporating material personalized for the individual students to implement this type of learning model. To solve this issue of some students struggling and others succeed while some are somewhere in the middle, Data: Here’s What Educators Think About Personalized Learning, explain more on this way of education. It is expressed that the inclusion of students’ personal interests and getting to know sech learner are things that more schools all over are practicing and utilizing. Teachers express their high hopes for it and work to construct what The Forum Guide to Personalized Learning calls “learner profiles” where different parts pf the student is updated and used when creating materials for the learners. The other side though is that teacher’s need help to figure out how to accomplish this. They know what to do and can included the right pieces, but in Data: Here’s What Educators Think About Personalized Learning it is emphasized that teachers need to keep in mind state standard requirements, which creates this gap.
Existing Efforts:
Educators are getting to know students and attempting to use their profile about how they are to cater to what and how they are learning as depicted in The Forum Guide to Personal Learning. There are websites that assist in this and are for educators to receive extra support in these struggling areas which are found on ascd through Witsby. There are options on how to learn how the model can be a help to student engagement as well as various guides and assistance is applying this learning method towards standardized expectations in schools.
The overall goal of this mini course is to help current and incoming educators gain the knowledge on the value of personalized learning and skillset to utilize it effectively.
Analysis of the Learner and Context
Learners: This course is designed so that anyone who is interested in personalized learning can learn more on the topic. It is specifically aimed at present and future educators of all ages. Those who are currently teaching, experience students who need help understanding material in the way that works for them. This unit helps those teachers understand this more and provides helpful tips to implement this as well. The future educators learn how to teach students, and this is a unit that would flow with other areas of their learning such as differentiated materials. They can make this part of their future teaching tools and be ready before they get to the classroom. Each learner being a current or future educator may already have a lot going on so the course will be designed around that idea and be clear and efficient but simplistic so it is helpful rather than overwhelming.
Instructional Context: This mini-course can be found and used through KNILT. From there, these learners can start and finish the course in a timeline that works at their own pace. They can do this course multiple times or they can just go back and study certain parts of it over again. There are examples in the course as well as resources that can be used to help teachers of any grade level. Future educators can save what they learn to apply when they instruct.
Goals: The mini course should be able to be completed within a week if focusing on it each day, but it can be done in smaller increments. It is to enhance the teachers and future teachers’ knowledge on personalized education to effect the impact on the students. It will be a course at learners pace which is helpful so students can work int he way they need, It could cause for a challenge as they may do certain pieces one day and later on do the rest and may not make the connections between the units.
Performance-Based Objectives
After completing this mini-course, learners will be able to
- Define personalized education and what it means in the early childhood classroom
- Examine the research on the effective impact personalized learning has on young students’ connection and success in the class
- Identify ways to use personalized learning in the/their current or future classrooms
- Apply learned approaches and techniques towards previous experienced or created lesson plans to improve the students' connections/interactions in class and academic performance
Task and Content Analysis
Objective 1: Define personalized education and what it means in the early childhood classroom
- The learners here must know one of the most important parts of this is getting to know the students. They need to understand the vital part of knowing how the students connect to the material, to the class and to the teacher based on their interests and their needs. They also must know ways to make these connections in the early childhood classroom such as communication, being flexible and applying various techniques to the learners.
-Some learning content to address this will be specific definitions and examples of personalized learning using sources such as https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10648-020-09570-w. I will break up both the definition and how others may describe it and how the communication and techniques are used in this way in ECE classrooms. There will be a website https://www.edweek.org/leadership/data-heres-what-educators-think-about-personalized-learning/2019/11 posted aimed to help them achieve this objective where they can understand other thoughts on personalized learning in their classrooms. As for activities, one example is at the end of this unit, the learners will be asked to complete a multiple-choice activity assessed on their understanding of personalized learning. This multiple-choice activity will consist of numerous examples of classroom lessons, activities and assignments and the choices will either be a) it is an example of personalized learning or b) it is not an example of personalized learning. They will then be able to access the answers to see how they did and what they need to go over again. This will show them that they understand what it is and how it is used in the ECE classroom so they can move on to a different unit.
Objective 2: Examine the research on the effective impact personalized learning has on young students’ connection and success in the class
-While knowing what personalized learning is and how to go about it, it is important for these learners to know what it does for the students in those classrooms. The learners need proof from others and real-life examples to see these outcomes for themselves. They need to know what this looks like to examine the effects it brings, including academic achievement and connections.
-The research that will be given to them such as websites including https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9994.html which has visual graphs to help learners further understand as well as https://www.k12dive.com/news/curriculum-deepen-learning-engagement-student-interests/690410/ and https://www.learningovations.com/post/personalized-learning-the-power-of-connection that highlights the importance of developing connections when using a personalized learning style. Along with this, there will be a video, where these adult learners can see what this type of learning means in ECE.
As for an activity example, there will be a matching activity that will test the adult learners on what personalized learning is and how it is used according to the websites they examined. They will have to match a cause to an effect. The cause will be a possible personalized learning strategy and the effect will be the impact it has on the child. The tricky part is that in there will be 7 “cause” choices and 5 “effect” choices because two of the “causes” are not examples of personalized learning so those two choices should not be selected.
Objective 3: Identify ways to use personalized learning in the/their current or future classrooms
-The learners will need to be able to relate their personal experience or their soon coming experiences to the topic. They must be able to understand how to personalize parts of a lesson and engage them so they can form closer connections to the teacher.
- The learning content will include a mock class on PowerPoint with activities and bolded examples of how these activities will be. On one of these activities there will be two options. One will be for current educators while the other for future educators. The current educator’s activity will be for them to come up with 5 general activities they have done in their classroom before. They will then be asked to give a brief explanation of how that activity is or can be personalized. The future educator's activity will be a list of general activities where they can choose which activities to use to describe how to expand them into personalized learning experiences.
Objective 4: Apply learned approaches and techniques towards previous experienced or created lesson plans to improve the students' connections/interactions in class and academic performance
-The learners need to understand personalized learning and know various techniques to be able to implement what they know. They need to be able to connect those together.
For instance, in this activity, there will be a small lesson plan template that the current/future educators will use. They will take either a lesson they have taught or have experienced before and transfer it to the template. From there they will highlight in yellow any techniques used in creating a lesson aimed towards personalized learning and highlight any areas in blue that can be altered. They will then use the same template to recreate the lessons so that it is fully catered towards this style which will show that the students are catered to but more importantly that what they are using and doing through the lessons connects and engages them more to the class. At the end in a few sentences, they will reflect on this experience and how they see this learning style.
Curriculum Map
References and Resources
- Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD). (n.d.). 15 Resources for Personalizing Student Learning. ASCD. Retrieved from https://www.ascd.org/blogs/15-resources-for-personalizing-student-learning
- Education Week. (2019, November). Data: Here's What Educators Think About Personalized Learning. Education Week. Retrieved from https://www.edweek.org/leadership/data-heres-what-educators-think-about-personalized-learning/2019/11
- Tetzlaff, L., Schmiedek, F., & Brod, G. (2021). Developing Personalized Education: A Dynamic Framework. Educational Psychology Review, 33(4), 863–882. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-020-09570-w
- U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. (2019). Forum Guide to Personalized Learning (NCES 2019-096). Retrieved from https://nces.ed.gov/forum/pdf/Personalized_Learning_Data.pdf
- U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Technology. (2016). Future Ready Learning: Reimagining the Role of Technology in Education (Office of Educational Technology, Policy Brief). Retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED558042.pdf