At Batesburg-Leesville Elementary School (BLES), it always comes down to one question: What is best for children?
BLES is a rural elementary school containing grades three through five and is located in the midlands of South Carolina. BLES is part of Lexington County School District Three and received a Palmetto’s Finest award during the 2017-2018 school year. We are the teachers of the fifth grade team and the instructional coach.
Our Journey
As we mentioned above, we are about children. Period. For years, we worked with data, analyzing, rethinking our practice, and trying new ideas, always searching for the best way to address each student’s individual needs. Three years ago we introduced a structure to help us better meet the needs of our students through small group and one-on-one instruction. This time, which also housed our RTI small groups and Resource, became known as Panther Time. For us, Panther Time is a forty-five minute block of time that happens twice a day; once for reading and once for math. During this time, teachers hold small groups and one-on-one conferences while students work on reinforcing previously taught skills.
In fact, we realized that many of the pieces of PL already existed in out school, and, with some refinement, would quickly become a natural part of the PL model.
Fast forward two years to the summer of 2017, when we began working with the South Carolina Department of Education (SCDE) Office of Personalized Learning (PL). We learned about the pieces of Personalized Learning and, while we were a little overwhelmed, we were quickly able to see how PL fit into what we were already doing. In fact, we realized that many of the pieces of PL already existed in our school, and, with some refinement, would quickly become a natural part of the PL model. From building community and writing class visions to establishing goals and developing data notebooks, the PL team at the SCDE modeled each piece, and as we lived each part of PL ourselves, we began to imagine how this would look in our classrooms and within our school.
Building Community: A Necessary Foundation
When school started in August, we spent the first few weeks building community. Each class participated in team building challenges, such as Giant Jenga or the hula hoop challenge, and used a voting process to establish classroom visions. We posted our classroom visions and read them often until they became part of the fabric of our classrooms. We also wrote Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for all day to day routines. These SOPs allowed us to have open conversations with our students about our expectations for them as they move and learn in the building each day. These SOPs focused on activities such as how to walk down the hall, how to properly use technology, or how to go through the cafeteria line.
A Step Forward in Academic Components: Data Notebooks and Goal Setting
Once we established our classroom culture, our visions, and our SOPs, we were ready to begin thinking about data tracking and goal setting and what that might look like for our students. We started with data notebooks; deciding on three tabs: leadership, academics, and celebrations. We liked the simplicity of the three tabs which we felt kept it more manageable for us and our students. We also wanted the notebooks to be easily accessible, so teachers used a plastic basket or crate to store the data notebooks in each classroom. The baskets or crates could be smoothly passed from one classroom to another when the students switched classes.
Within our data notebooks, we began by setting a whole grade level goal. Then we moved to a class goal. We found that the class goals were helpful because it taught the students how to begin using their own data to set their own goals. Then, during the Second Nine Weeks for math and after the winter MAP (Measures of Academic Progress) test for ELA, students began setting their own goals. To do this, the teacher went over the student’s MAP scores in a conference, together they identified areas of growth, and then the students set their goal. At first, these goals were vague but as the year progressed the students learned to set much more specific and individualized goals. In time, we found that it was most productive for us to have the students set an individual academic goal while keeping the behavior goal a class goal. With the class behavior goal, students tended to encourage and push each other, helping them to best reach their goal as a class team.
Through the process of goal setting, we have seen student motivation and work ethic increase throughout the year, and we are very pleased with the positive affects goal setting has had on our students. Plus, students love keeping their awards from our behavior program (Panther PRIDE) and their report cards in their data notebooks as well. These notebooks have become a place of celebration for us and our students, as many of our students are eager to show off their growth and their awards.
Flexible Grouping
As we worked with our students around their data notebooks, we also focused on figuring out the logistics of flexible grouping. Thanks to Panther Time, we already had a small group structure in place, making it much easier for us to have a set aside time for flexible grouping. Now, for the logistics.
We decided we would try flexing for one to two weeks at a time. Students would be given a card with their “focus strand or area” and their assigned classroom. On the first day of flexing, students would leave their main classroom and head to their flexing room during Panther Time. We flexed in math first. Teachers looked at data from benchmarks produced by TE21 (Training and Education in the 21st Century) and sorted students who answered a problem incorrectly by standard. Using this data was very informative but we quickly realized that it was too much data to use for one round of flex grouping so we decided to switch to MAP. Using the Learning Continuum, we were able to more easily separate our students by areas for growth. To do this, we meet during the week before we flex. We sort students by areas for growth and each teacher takes a group of students all working on the same content standard or strand. The next week we begin flexing. During that flex grouping time, teachers either work with each child at the teacher table or rotate around the classroom working with students one-on-one or in small group while other students work on their individual work plan based on their specific strand with the support of IXL or Khan Academy. After the one to two week period, students return to their regular classroom small groups.
We have found that, for us, it is best to flex when students need extra support on particular content. So there is not an exact schedule for how often we flex; rather, we try to follow the needs of the students and flex when it will best support their growth.
Looking Forward
Next year, we are excited to continue to grow PL in our classrooms. As we reflect, some of our main goals for next year are:
*Continue flexible grouping, using manageable amounts of data
*Begin the year looking at the standard based trackers in our data notebooks and using those to help us and our students keep track of their learning
*Look at the AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination) notebooks used at the middle school and think about how we could use aspects of those notebooks in our 5th grade data notebooks
*Examine the rigor of our assessments, as well as how we could use those assessments to further drive our flex grouping and goal setting
Advice for Those New To PL
Also, as we reflected, we thought through our learning this year and any advice we might would have for someone who was researching this process. We would encourage this person to consider the following:
*Take it slow! At first it’s overwhelming but it gets a whole lot better and the work pays off in the end.
*Start small but look for opportunities to add in the next step when it makes sense to do so.
*Again, take it slow. Launch pieces of PL when your school is ready to do so. This may mean starting in a completely different place than we did.
*Work as a cohesive group with your colleagues. Teamwork truly makes the dream work!
*Take time to train and plan before school starts. Also, having someone come who can model the visioning and SOP processes helps.
*And, finally, if it does not work or make sense, change it. There is no one way to have PL happening in your building. Research and learn and then do what is best for your children.
Personalized Learning has empowered our students and we have only just begun. We are excited to see where this journey takes us with the hopes of increasing independence, collaboration, and rigor while building self-directed learners who are models of the 21st Century SC Graduate.
Authors:
BLES 5th Grade Team: Meredith Barfield, Courtney Bedenbaugh, Myra Davenport, Christyann English, Mary Clare Price, Brandee Quarles, Rebecca Rodgers, and Michelle Smith.
Instructional Coach: Samantha Trotter