Resource Type: Instructional Practice

Educators at Elm Street Academy created a community culture questionnaire out of their desire to ensure students had a voice in decision-making about community building, rules, policies and student leadership.

Interest-based student groupings are groupings driven by student voice and choice. This planning protocol is an opportunity for team members to explore ways to leverage your team of educators to provide student voice and choice within a lesson or across a unit. In it, you’ll identify a lesson or unit appropriate for interest-based student groupings, draft student choices and work together to plan team deployment.

Skills-based student groupings are groupings based on formative student learning data. This planning protocol is an opportunity for team members to explore how you might leverage your team of educators to differentiate instruction for learners. In it, you’ll identify the objective(s) of your choice, draft a check for understanding and work together to plan team deployment for skills-based student groupings.

In an effort to shift the ownership of learning from educator to student, SPARK School at Kyrene de las Manitas has implemented a system for students to reflect on their learning and progress, identify the academic support they need and schedule time to meet with the appropriate educator(s). This resource guides educator teams through steps to implementing student-selected support.

The educator team at Kyrene de las Manitas Innovation Academy co-plans project-based units that support deeper learning. The 10 tips appearing in this document are drawn from their approach to planning. To get started, consider how your team might implement these tips.

Community educators provide capacity and insight in service of deepening and personalizing student learning. They enrich learning environments by forging authentic relationships, sharing expertise and expanding networks. Use this template to guide your communication with community educators.

Next Education Workforce team-based structures can strengthen the project-based learning instructional approach. This unit planning template takes educators through the steps of designing a PBL unit, while also planning for how to maximize distributed expertise.

An asset map is a visual way to identify resources within your community. The act of creating a map of expertise can help you discover connections you already have, organizations you’d love to know about, and talents and resources near your school or available virtually.

Elementary instructional blueprints suggest ways teams of educators with distributed expertise might deploy themselves to better deepen and personalize student learning.

Elementary instructional blueprints suggest ways teams of educators with distributed expertise might deploy themselves to better deepen and personalize student learning.

Elementary instructional blueprints suggest ways teams of educators with distributed expertise might deploy themselves to better deepen and personalize student learning.

Elementary instructional blueprints suggest ways teams of educators with distributed expertise might deploy themselves to better deepen and personalize student learning.

Elementary instructional blueprints suggest ways teams of educators with distributed expertise might deploy themselves to better deepen and personalize student learning.

Several times a week, for a 20-minute period, SPARK students engage in Student-Selected Mindfulness Time. In this clip, a fourth-grade SPARK student and an MLFTC teacher candidate describe the activities students engage in and how they make their choices.

Exploring a new topic can be exciting. We want to help make sure your exploration is productive, with targeted searches from reliable sources. This list, while not comprehensive, offers good resources for planning and implementing personalized learning.

Exploring a new topic can be exciting. We want to help make sure your exploration is productive, with targeted searches from reliable sources. This list, while not comprehensive, offers good resources for planning and implementing deeper learning.

Levels of Student Autonomy is a simple system that supports student independence and personalized learning. The resource below explains how you might implement this system in your learning space.