Tag: Personalized Learning

Shifts in Teaching and Learning – MHS

This past school year, Mount Holly students and staff worked towards making shifts in how we teach and learn to become much more proficiency based and personalized. Two major areas that we have focused on include student-led conferences and celebrations of learning.

While students in some of the older grade levels have had student-led conferences in the past, this was the first year that students in Pre-K through grade six have all had student-led conferences. It was truly amazing to see students throughout the entire school plan and lead their own conferences. Students selected work to share with their parents that was evidence of their learning and presented data that demonstrated growth in key areas. The ownership that students showed was clearly evident even in our youngest learners.

At the end of the school year in June, we organized a school wide celebration of learning in which all of the students shared various aspects of their learning. Students carefully selected and presented a wide range of evidence of their learning. The pride students showed was inspiring, and parents were impressed with the quality of students’ work. In the coming school year we will be building on this work to develop a more comprehensive portfolio system and personalized learning plans.

Craig Hutt Vater
Mount Holly School Principal

Personalized Learning

This spring I had the opportunity to visit Ms. Baitz’s sixth-grade classroom at LES. After school one day Alexis shared a notebook with me that holds her Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) assessment results and goals that she has set for herself based on those results. At that time, Alexis set a goal to increase her understanding of an author’s intention.  Then on a subsequent day, Colline shared her notebook and told me she was focusing on informational text, looking for key ideas and details that support those ideas.

  • Alexis
  • Colline

In addition to learning about personalizing learning for our sixth graders, Ms. Baitz showed me an aspect of her work in proficiency-based learning. The teachers throughout our supervisory union are working on designing modules of learning that typically have several lessons. These lessons are designed to deepen and optimize learning with the expectation that our students will demonstrate their learning and meet proficiency.

Above is a Performance Learning Standard that the students in Ms. Baitz class were working to achieve. The students developed compelling questions, researched the mills and textile factories that were scattered throughout Vermont and then made claims based on that research.  Throughout this module, Ms. Baitz checked for understanding and developed a variety of assessments to gauge student learning.

Meg Alison Powden