Visioning Toolkit: Laying the Groundwork for a Community-Wide Vision for Personalized Learning
This toolkit was designed to help districts include the larger learning community in the development of a vision for personalized learning. It can help district’s take the first, important step of crafting and sustaining a community-wide vision for personalized, competency-based learning. In particular it includes: Guidance on crafting a system-wide vision for personalized learning, incorporating diverse stakeholder… Read More ›
Envisioning the Graduate of the Future
This course was developed by MIT with support from the XQ Institute, to help school communities rethink what a high school graduate will need to know and be able to do. The course will explore how to design a graduate profile, the artifact that communicates these ideas. Making explicit the capabilities, knowledge, and attitudes graduates need and… Read More ›
Student Goal Setting: An Evidence-Based Practice
The Midwest Comprehensive Center at American Institutes for Research, with the help of What Works Clearinghouse House reviewers, has released a new resource on student goal setting to support state departments of education who are interested in promoting evidence-based personalized and deeper learning strategies by districts/schools in their states. The act of goal setting is a… Read More ›
Resources for Creating a School Culture of Empathy, Inclusion and Kindness
This tool offers lessons, activities, classroom tools, and more to help students learn about character strengths. In response to gun violence in schools, many educators asked for resources to support students’ social and emotional development. A positive school climate can support academic gains in addition to increased well being and sense of belonging. This list… Read More ›
Exhibits: Models of Excellence
This virtual exhibit showcases student projects. It offers video, pictures, interviews, and articles to tell the story of the group projects students have designed to make a difference in their communities. Examples feature students in grade levels k-12. Topics include: Community-wide “Day of Peace” to raise awareness about gun violence State-wide literacy campaign Coral Reef… Read More ›
The Learning Portfolio Project
This website documents a pilot program in which Dream Yard Preparatory School in NYC partnered with Parsons School for Design to roll out the use of Learning Portfolios with students. The “Our Progress” page provides a nice overview of how the teachers learned to use this assessment tool and support students. The “Portfolios” page provides… Read More ›
Top Picks: Student Portfolio Apps and Websites
This list from Common Sense Education highlights 17 tools for creating digital student portfolios. Portfolios allow teachers to assess student learning and students to track their own progress. These tech tools offer students virtual binders, folders, web pages, and galleries for collecting everything from text to video. Teachers can easily browse through and access student… Read More ›
Performance Assessment Resource Bank
The Performance Assessment Resource Bank works to help states integrate performance assessments into their systems of assessment, develop the capacity of educators to effectively use performance assessment, and design policies to support these efforts. Their website features a large database that will be of interest to both educators and state leaders. Resources include: Over 500 K-12 performance… Read More ›
Ladder of Feedback for Classroom Observation
Making Learning Visible is a Project Zero initiative that adapted Daniel Wilson’s “Ladder of Feedback” for classroom observations. The “Ladder of Feedback” is a protocol or structure that establishes a culture of trust and support by sequencing feedback in an order that is constructive. This wiki page provides a summary, template, and guide for using… Read More ›
Character Lab
Character Lab is a nonprofit organization founded to research and create new ways to help all students develop character. While research suggests character is important to academic and life success, little is known about cultivating it. This site includes links to several playbooks with lesson plans, videos, and activities to help students learn character-building strategies… Read More ›
Creating a Welcoming & Inclusive Community For All
This document, created by Magnolia Montessori For All Schools in Austin, TX, is an excellent example of a school’s effort to codify their commitment to teaching students to value their identity, respect diversity, understand justice, and take action to fight bias and discrimination. The school went through a process to articulate their values and assemble… Read More ›
Courageous Conversations About Race in Schools
These short videos are designed to prompt a deeper, more authentic discussion about issues of racial equity in schools. State Teachers of the Year and other educators at the 2017 National Teacher Leadership Conference, speak candidly about equity, sharing their experiences and ideas on how to move forward. The videos are accompanied by discussion guides… Read More ›