What is a Personalized Learning Plan (PLP)?
In 2013, the Vermont Legislature passed Act 77, “An act relating to encouraging flexible pathways to secondary school completion.” (see diagram) Essentially, this act changed the way students earn a diploma from the accumulation of grade-based course credits to the performance-based demonstration of a specific set of academic and transferable skills and knowledge. As a result, schools across Vermont are exploring ways to shift towards personalized, proficiency-based learning. The PLP is the main vehicle through which students personalize learning and demonstrate proficiency.
Starting with the graduating high school class of 2020, students entering 7th grade are required to develop a personalized learning plan that documents their growth and learning as a student, supports student achievement of academic and personal goals, identifies educational opportunities beyond the classroom, and demonstrates student proficiency with the Vermont Agency of Education’s Transferable Skills. Here are the Vermont Agency of Education’s list of critical elements for PLP’s.
In 2013, the Vermont Legislature passed Act 77, “An act relating to encouraging flexible pathways to secondary school completion.” (see diagram) Essentially, this act changed the way students earn a diploma from the accumulation of grade-based course credits to the performance-based demonstration of a specific set of academic and transferable skills and knowledge. As a result, schools across Vermont are exploring ways to shift towards personalized, proficiency-based learning. The PLP is the main vehicle through which students personalize learning and demonstrate proficiency.
Starting with the graduating high school class of 2020, students entering 7th grade are required to develop a personalized learning plan that documents their growth and learning as a student, supports student achievement of academic and personal goals, identifies educational opportunities beyond the classroom, and demonstrates student proficiency with the Vermont Agency of Education’s Transferable Skills. Here are the Vermont Agency of Education’s list of critical elements for PLP’s.
What is Personalization and Proficiency-Based Learning?
UVM professor and Rosenberg mentor John H. Clarke has accurately described personalization as, “a learning process in which schools help students assess their own talents and aspirations, plan a pathway toward their own purposes, work cooperatively with others on challenging tasks, maintain a record of their explorations, demonstrate their learning against clear standards in a wide variety of media, all with the close support of adult mentors and guides” (Clarke, 2003). The Vermont Agency of Education offers this explanation and glossary as well. In fact, Main Street Middle School has used a range of proficiency-based grading systems since 2002. In 2016, Montpelier Public School District adopted this list of proficiency-based learning expectations (LE’s). Students earning a MPSD diploma work to demonstrate proficiency in each of these requirements, typically on a PLP. Team Atlas students and teachers have translated these LE’s into language that we can use to assess our own learning progress in 7th and 8th grade. Our translation can be found on the Team Atlas website, under Academics. The proficiencies that Team Atlas academics are based on derive from Main Street Middle School’s learning targets and objectives, themselves based on Common Core State Standards, Next Generation Science Standards, and the Vermont Agency of Education’s Transferable Skills. Students get feedback and assess their own learning using proficiency-based rubrics that identify the skills, dispositions, concepts, and outcomes necessary to successfully demonstrate proficiency. On Team Atlas, these skills and dispositions are integrated across the curriculum throughout Literacy, Math, Science, and Global Studies classes. |
How Important is Goal Setting?
Goal setting is a key process that allows students to explore and explain the ways in which they find meaning and motivation to succeed. The teachers of Team Atlas are continually working to create an inclusive, growth-oriented learning environment in which students thrive as independent learners. Engaging in the goal setting process helps us personalize the ways in which students access content, engage in learning activities, and express learning growth across all Atlas classes.
We do this because the critical thinking skills, reflective habits, resilience, and independence that we teach and promote are life-long tools. As we show our students how to understand how they learn, how to develop a growth mindset, and how to develop critical thinking and reflection skills, we are explicitly modeling habits with which adolescents are largely unfamiliar, but that most adults use on a daily basis. As we ask students to develop personal, academic, and community goals, we prepare them for a future where we’re not guiding them by the hand.
Goal setting is a key process that allows students to explore and explain the ways in which they find meaning and motivation to succeed. The teachers of Team Atlas are continually working to create an inclusive, growth-oriented learning environment in which students thrive as independent learners. Engaging in the goal setting process helps us personalize the ways in which students access content, engage in learning activities, and express learning growth across all Atlas classes.
We do this because the critical thinking skills, reflective habits, resilience, and independence that we teach and promote are life-long tools. As we show our students how to understand how they learn, how to develop a growth mindset, and how to develop critical thinking and reflection skills, we are explicitly modeling habits with which adolescents are largely unfamiliar, but that most adults use on a daily basis. As we ask students to develop personal, academic, and community goals, we prepare them for a future where we’re not guiding them by the hand.