Personalized Learning in Early Childhood
Brianna Benitez's Portfolio Page
Unit 1: Personalized Education: What is it?
Unit 2: The Impacts on Early Childhood Education Success
Unit 3: Using it in the classroom
Unit 4: Making Real-Life Connections
Introduction and Overview
Welcome to this special course that will change the way to you instruct and learn!
Learning a new way to teach in the early childhood classroom can be challenging and overwhelming, but with this course it will feel easier and be a help to your students’ success. Knowing how to create and alter lessons so that each student benefits can change the way the students connect with the class and with each other. There are helpful sources to learn more about this! There are activities, assignments and more to challenge you as you progress through each lesson through the four units. These units include two lesson each and each lesson has an assignment goal at the end of it. These are aimed to push you to understand the goals of each lesson and to think deeper about how to make this part of your teaching. If you question the true impact personalized education can have in the classroom, get started on the first lesson and keep going from there.
Why is this so important though?
Well, 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, and learning about these can add to this educational improvement.
How does this course work?
In this course you begin right off with a brief overview of what these four units will look like. You will start with unit 1 where you will be encouraged to go through readings, videos and activities in the two lessons in that unit. These activities can help you self-assess, and provide you with all the knowledge you need to head to the next unit. Completing all of the tasks will help you succeed and learn all you need by the end of the course!
Needs Assessment
While the need for personalized learning is expressed in many areas of research, teachers need to understand how to do this. Knowing where to start and how to implement it is part of the gap. This course aims to fill this gap and be a path to guide teachers through personalized instruction.
Performance Objectives
At the end you will be able to:
1. Define personalized education and what it means in the early childhood classroom
2. Examine the research on the effective impact personalized learning has on young students’ connection and success in the class
3. Identify ways to use personalized learning in the/their current or future classrooms
4. Apply learned approaches and techniques towards previous experienced or created lesson plans to improve the students' connections/interactions in class and academic performance
Course Units
This mini-course includes the following units. Click the title of a unit to go to its page.
Unit 1: Personalized Education: What is it?
Instructional Methods: Discussions, Inquiry-Based Learning
- Objective: Define personalized education and what it means in the early childhood classroom
-Read the Developing Personalized Education article (L1) on understanding and constructing instruction for individual learners and the article What educators Think about Personalized Learning (L2) to gain more insight as to what it really is.
Activity Description: In this activity, you must think about the research provided and decide what personalized learning is. This can include how it looks, how it is taught and what it does in the early childhood classroom. Take this question and analyze the research to determine your own questions to create your own working definition.
-Define in your own words what personalized learning is.
Activity Description: During this, please take some time to read and digest these questions and choose the correct multiple-choice answer. Think about all that was discussed in these readings to determine this.
-Complete to multiple choice activity to show your understanding of this.
-Complete a Free Write: A chance to journal your thoughts and collaborate with peers
Unit 2: The Impacts on Early Childhood Education Success
Instructional Methods: Multimedia, Interactive, Case Study
- Objective: Examine the research on the effective impact personalized learning has on young students’ connection and success in the class
- Read the article “How Does Personalized Learning Effect Student Achievement” (L1) and the article “Connecting to students’ interests can deepen learning, engagement” (L2)
- Watch the video: Personalized Path and Pace (L2)
Activity Description: When thinking of these impacts and the readings, match the correct “causes” (which 5/7 are examples of personalized learning while 2/7 are not) to the effect that it has on the students. Because there could be multiple answers for one, please explain your reasoning in the area provided for each match.
-Complete Matching Activity (Cause and Effects: Personalized Learning)
Activity Description: In this activity, there is a list of students and one of their interests for each student. Your job is to write about one way to engage each of these students to connect to the material and each other. This is a chance to use what you have learned and be creative highlighting these possibilities and impacts.
-Complete activity on connecting students to material and to each other
-Complete a Free Write: A chance to journal your thoughts and collaborate with peers
Unit 3: Using it in the classroom
Instructional Methods: Inquiry-Based Learning, Reflective Practice, Flipped Classroom
-Objective: Identify ways to use personalized learning in the/their current or future classrooms
-Go through provided PowerPoint presentation from a slideshare company Scribd
-Read LinkedIn’s 10 Strategies to Implement Perosnalized Learning
-Read Ch. 2 in “Forum Guide to Personalized Learning Data”
-Go through ascd’s “15 Resources for Personalizing Student Learning”
Activity Description: To understand the importance of knowing a student when using personalized learning in the early childhood classroom, make your own learner profile. In this you will fill out the spots provided that include varied factors to show how you like to learn. After finishing, you can go over it and decide if you would have been taught better if the teacher knew this about you.
-Complete a learning profile
Activity Description: In this activity, you will choose activities that you have either used or experienced and rework them so that they encompass a personalized learning style more so than before. Use strategies when trying this out!
-Complete an assignment of reworking classroom activities
-Complete a Free Write: A chance to journal your thoughts and collaborate with peers
Unit 4: Making Real-Life Connections
Instructional Methods: Reflective Practice
-Objective: Apply learned approaches and techniques towards previous experienced or created lesson plans to improve the students' connections/interactions in class and academic performance
-Read the “Examples of What Personalized Learning Looks Like”
-Review previous lessons
Activity Description: For this portion, please take the template provided and fill in a fully recreated early childhood lesson, considering the principles of personalized learning and how to use it. If you do not teach early childhood education, attempt to find a lesson topic you have used and teach it in a way that is meant for this age.
-Apply learned items as you recreate a lesson
Activity Description: Please take time to reflect upon what you have learned either in paper format, a letter, or a journal entry. Include the points highlighted in the assignment, but also add more and make it personal. Also, please restate/reword your definition of personalized learning.
-Reflect on the experience