Roots uses one-on-one conferencing spreadsheets so that students are able to benchmark their progress and set goals in a tangible manner. Teachers walk through the tool with students, with updates made in different colors to track change over time.
Roots ED and Founder, Jonathan Hanover, discusses the benefit of a norm of defaulting to their independent learning tasks if not scheduled directly with a teacher during a learning block.
Transcript: Jon Hanover: some of the early pioneers in personalized learning struggled with the, just like, how do you just like, reconcile everybody’s schedule on a nightly basis, right? So this basically just says if there’s something on my calendar, show me that, ’cause a teacher has scheduled me for a lesson, and I need to go to it. If there’s nothing on my calendar, show me whatever’s next up on my playlist of self-directed work and I’ll engage in that.
Roots teacher, Samantha Gambino, is a content-area teacher. She explains the value of having Habits of Success teaching peers to support the content-area work.
Transcript: Samantha Gambino: they’re having one-on-one conversations about like, behaviors, or maybe conversations with kids about their academics based on like, what their needs are. So we have a lot of scholars who will ask for a coach, and the habits of success team is there to like say, okay, what do you need my time for? Is it – do you need me to have a conversation because you’re not focused, or you want to get more focused? Or like, you’re having a feeling that your teacher can’t address at that moment? So they’re there to kinda like, help us with the social emotional part of it so that we can continue to just focus on content.
Roots ED and Founder, Jonathan Hanover, discusses how the school built customized apps to integrate with their Google tools.
Transcript: Jon Hanover: the apps that we built around Google Calendar that interact with the API – the first one is the one that basically takes that information from their calendar and makes it readable for a five year-old who comes in to us usually as a prereader, doesn’t have a great concept of time, et cetera. Right? And it basically just makes whatever is coming up on their calendar visual and easy for them to comprehend.
Sight Word Ninja is an iPad application that helps students learn sight words.
DreamBox Learning is a mathematics adaptive learning tool for students in grades K-8.
At Roots Elementary, teachers create individualized playlists that scholars work through during independent learning time.
This worksheet from Roots gives an example of how they integrate Habits of Success into their classroom practices.
West Belden uses Learner Profiles to better understand each of their students and help them meet their learning goals. This overview explains many of the elements and uses of Learner Profiles at West Belden.
The teacher explains how students progress through standards at their own pace.
