For this week's discussion, locate a current article or post from one of the websites you reviewed or another resource of your choice. The article should be about an education or training issue or event that is relevant to your school, your organization, or your community. Provide the article citation and link. Share what this article is about, explain why it is relevant to your profession or community, and discuss how the topic and issues presented are relevant to the educational community.

Reflect on your journey through the course. How has your perception of personalized learning changed?

Suggest two ways that you can apply this knowledge and understanding as an educator in your classroom or administrator to support teachers

Create one lesson plan. You should feel free to use any lesson planning template you are familiar with, but you must include these features:

• Standards to which the lesson aligns.
• Lesson objectives.
• Any necessary introduction to give context to the lesson.
• Introductory activity for each lesson (for example, Do Now, Warm-Up).
• The procedure: What will happen during the lesson?
• The lesson wrap-up.
• Diversity integration.
• Accommodation for those with specialized needs.
• Resources that would be needed.

In this lesson, you must use at least three of the personalized learning strategies that you have studied:

• Integration of technology (using playlists, learning management systems, online programs, digital tools for collaboration, et cetera).
• Authentic, inquiry-based tasks.
• Problem-based learning.
• A variety of instructional groupings (small-group, peer work, one-on-one instruction).
• Other personalized learning strategies you have investigated on your own.

Provide enough detail for your instructor to understand the intent of your lessons and the lesson activities.

Step 2: Presentation

After you develop your instructional unit, develop a 4-5 slide presentation in which you:

• Summarize your rationale for selecting the desired learning outcomes.
  • For example, how do these fit with your students' schema, students' ability level, and your content standards? In other words, how do these outcomes help to facilitate personalized learning?
• Describe how you expect your instructional approach will shift when moving from a more traditional approach to a personalized approach.
  • What will you need to do differently? How will your planning differ? How will your in-class and out-of-class activities look different?
• Analyze how the backward design model of instructional planning will be helpful in developing personalized learning.

Using the DuFour et.al. (2010) four professional learning community questions as a guide, and consistent with the Understanding by Design Framework [PDF]Links to an external site., which entails identifying desired results (standards), designing assessments to gather evidence for student learning, and creating a learning plan that meets the needs of learners, answer the following questions:

• What should children know and be able to do?
• How will we know when they know?
• What do we do if they don't know?
• What do we do if they already know?

How do the learning activities work together to help students master the unit competencies and objectives?

How have you incorporated technology in a way that promotes personalization?

What concerns or questions do you have about your learning activities that you would like your colleagues to provide feedback on?

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In this assignment, you will create your assessments for the personalized learning unit you will develop in Week 10. You should base this work on your completed activities in Weeks 6 and 7. You will need to design a plan for pre-testing students, a formative assessment, and a summative assessment.

As you are developing these assessments, you will also be developing a plan to track data. Data is collected so you can reflect on the results of the personalized learning strategies you implemented. That's why it's so important to have a plan ready in advance.

You will submit the assessment plan and the data collection plan as your artifact for assessment.

Instructions

Step 1: Assessment Design

Provide the structure of at least three assessments you will implement in your learning environment for the personalized learning unit: a pre-test, a formative check, and a summative assessment. Include the following components for each assessment:

• Background: Describe the purpose and goal of the assessment. 
  • Include specific details about the unit objectives or learning outcomes with which the assessment aligns.
• Assessment Plan: 
  • Describe what the assessment will look like, what students will do, and how you will meet all learners' needs.
  • Create a rubric or scoring guide for the assessment, including criteria, performance level descriptors, and alignment to assignment objectives.
    • The rubric should assess students' progress toward mastery of unit objectives or learning outcomes.
• Strategies:
  • Describe your strategies for incorporating personalized learning features and technology into the assessments.
    • Explain how the assessment incorporates features of personalized learning.
    • Describe how you will incorporate technology into at least one of the assessments.
    • Explain how you will use personalized learning strategies to improve student learning and engagement.

Step 2: Reflection

• Analyze how students and faculty can use assessment data to prepare for and then reflect on summative assessments.
  • How might students use the data to meet their own needs to prepare for the summative assessment and to later reflect on their performance on the summative exam? Provide specific examples.
  • How might faculty use the data to meet the varying needs of each student to prepare them for the summative assessment (after the formative assessment) and to reflect on their performance on the summative exam? Provide specific examples.

This course requires the use of Strayer Writing Standards (SWS). The library is your home for SWS assistance, including citations and formatting. Please refer to the Library site for all support. Check with your professor for any additional instructions.

The specific course learning outcomes associated with this assignment are:

• Develop assessments that scaffold to personalized curriculum.
• Establish the ways that assessment data from personalized curricula can be used by both students and teachers.

Campbell's Law states, "The more any quantitative social indicator (or even some qualitative indicator) is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor" (1).

If France's evaluation of Campbell's Law and standardized assessments is accurate, then they tell us more about privilege and affluence than they do about academic achievement. Consider this as you respond to the following:

• What impact could assessments have on your ability to nurture the child's internal dialogue in the classroom?

France states, "[W]e believe that students are "getting what they need" when they access content within their respective zones of proximal development. As humans, though, learners need so much more than content that is "just right" for them. They need love, belonging, and access to basic needs that make it possible for them to be available to learn (1)."

• Select a student profile from the Riverbend simulation, linked below, and respond to the author's statements above in relation to the student profile. What efforts would you make to integrate this student into the collective conscious of the classroom-that is, the shared values, beliefs, ideas, and knowledge within a social group?
  • Riverbend City | Creating Personalized Learning ProjectsLinks to an external site..