Exploring Personalized Learning at Parr Elementary in Clear Creek ISD (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: Hi, we're in League City, Texas at Parr Elementary School in Clear Creek ISD, and we're going to come look at what personalized learning looks like in these classrooms. Let's go ahead and take a look.

Speaker 2: What do I want to know about in this story, Adam?

Speaker 3: How many friends does Jacob have left?

Speaker 4: This is Ms. Hirsch's class. She is a first grade teacher, and she, as part of our personalized learning initiative, she decided to focus on that flexible path and pace. So they designed a playlist for PMGT, and so for us, PMGT stands for personalized math goal time. What is that?

Speaker 5: It's a playlist. Your playlist. It's a math playlist, and what we do is she lets us pick one, so we can do like problem solving, working number, place value.

Speaker 4: They know what their goal is, what they're working on, and so they get to go pick stations that will support their learning, and their goal is to finish the whole playlist by the end of the week, but they get to pick what they want to do when they want to do it.

Speaker 6: Some students might be working on multiplication of fractions, while some might be working on quadratic expressions.

Speaker 7: I called you over here because when I graded your quadrilaterals, I noticed that quadrilaterals were kind of not there. Do you feel better with quadrilaterals? Do you feel like if I gave you a four-sided shape, you could tell me all about it? Okay, so let me give you a four-sided shape.

Speaker 4: So the kids do a really good job of goal setting, and then reflecting on their goals in this classroom.

Speaker 2: What are you most proud of in the goals that you've accomplished so far?

Speaker 6: Almost getting two 4.0s.

Speaker 2: Almost getting two 4.0s. She's a heavy, heavy OneNote user. As soon as they've mastered a progression, they get to go into their OneNote and color in the progression, and they can see, you know, where they've come. It kind of helps them to figure out what they need to do next to accomplish their ultimate goals of a 4.0.

Speaker 8: Tell me a little bit about what your students are working on right now, and what your classroom

Speaker 2: looks like. Okay. I have students, they'll set goals based off of either questions they missed on tests, or skills they've struggled with in the classroom, with exit tickets, things like that, or just from me seeing them working in small group. Tell me what this is.

Speaker 3: So we take a test, and these are our grades, and that's how we determine our goals.

Speaker 2: Just for reflection, I have kids just reflect on the goal they had, like challenges they faced during it, or things they overcame during it, that really helped them deepen their understanding. What does it feel like to accomplish your goals?

Speaker 3: It feels good, because whenever we, like, work on it for three or more days, we take an exit ticket to then pick a new goal from our other tests.

Speaker 2: When I was a kid, I didn't really get a chance to take ownership of what I knew. And I knew that there were a lot of things I knew well that maybe my teacher didn't see. And I think the way I have it set up, from what I've learned from PL, is it gives kids the ability to prove to me they know it, and prove to themselves that they know it.

Speaker 4: You know, we know that our kids nowadays are just different kiddos than in the past, and they need that engagement piece to keep them focused on their learning. So I highly recommend the journey. It's been great, wonderful, and schools are going to love it. So your goal was to get to no model?

Speaker 8: Yes.

Speaker 4: Yeah.

Speaker 8: And so you met your goal? Yeah.