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Insights

Teachers Guild and TLA want to know: How do YOU personalize learning in your classroom?

Teacher works with student at desk

Lori Corcoran and Mary Ruskey

Mercy Career and Technical High School, Philadelphia, PA

Personalized Learning Kickoff

Teachers Guild and The Learning Accelerator are joining forces this coming fall for a personalized learning collaboration. As an early kickoff, this spring we asked educators to submit their favorite lessons or activities that they already use to personalize learning in your classroom. View the entire collaboration here and discover user-submitted ideas you can bring to life in your own classroom.

Example in Action: Flexible Rubrics

The Flexible Rubric is an "example in action" created by educators Lori Corcoran and Mary Ruskey of Mercy Career and Technical High School in Philadelphia, PA. In their own words below, they describe the experience of the rubric:

"We developed the Flexible Rubric in order to allow for students to take ownership of their work and become partners in assessment. Prior to getting started, we identify what every student must achieve across the board. For each project, we are teaching problem solving by using the design thinking process to address a need in the community that the students are passionate about. Students have created after- school mentorship programs, tested methods to positively impact urban food deserts and raised funds/awareness for cancer by designing handmade bows to name a few. Flexible Rubrics help us account for the variation in roles, responsibilities and outcomes which allows students to personalize their learning. We have found that having students define and justify their grading parameters, keeps them more accountable and gritty when being challenged.

While working on class projects, we ask our students to help us build the tools used for individual assessment. It helps students understand what is expected of them when working on the project. We believe that it also helps them take ownership of what their roles and responsibilities are while working in a group. We have found great success with this."

Share Your Best Practices

Now it is your turn...we would love to hear how you personalize your curriculum for students in innovative ways. Come join the conversation and share ideas on how you or your school build buy-in and engagement, utilize data, and/or personalize for students by giving choice around path or pace by visiting the Teachers Guild Personalized Learning Collaboration starting in fall 2017.

Also check out other ways our partner sites have personalized their curriculum and/or given students choice around their path to mastery.

If you have any questions or would like more information on this project, please contact us at info@learningaccelerator.org.

Opinions presented in this Insight are those of the author and do not necessarily represent TLA's opinion, nor should be considered an endorsement by TLA of any organization or product.

Teacher works with student at desk

Lori Corcoran and Mary Ruskey

Mercy Career and Technical High School, Philadelphia, PA

Lori Corcoran is a Mathematics Instructor and Mary Ruskey is a Business Education Instructor at Mercy Career and Technical High School in Philadelphia, PA.