Who Personalizes Learning?

I base the idea of personalized learning off of three things: 1) What do you want to learn? 2) How will you learn it? and, 3) How will you show what you have learned? 

The three questions above focus on the students' specific interests. Not only is the student selecting what they want to spend their time learning about, but they also get the opportunity to present what they have learned in a method that works best for them. 

We have just recently began our Health and Wellness unit in my classroom. Instead of creating the lessons and choosing would our students are going to learn, my co-teacher and I gave students the opportunity to ask questions about what they are wondering in relation to health and wellness. To begin the brainstorming process, we asked the students to define "health" and "wellness". From their definitions, they were able to break the topic down into two subcategories: physical health and mental health. From there they chose which category they wanted to pursue and narrowed down the focus of their research. During the remainder of this process, my co-teacher and I will serve as coaches to the individuals or small groups.

-A.H.