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.
Roots ED and Founder, Jonathan Hanover, discusses why the teaching team uses heterogeneous grouping approaches.
Transcript: Jon Hanover: I think of the benefits in two ways. First, it’s just an efficiency game. Like every public school in the country, we have limited funds and so we’d love to have a 1:1 student to teacher ratio, but we can only have the student-to-teacher ratio that we have. So, throughout each content we look for what are instructional routines that get the most bang for your buck to do one-on-one or in small groups and what instructional routines would maybe be better if they could be done in small group but are okay if they are done in a larger group because we have the teachers that we can afford. The second reason is that a lot of the routines that we do in large group or whole group are actually better done with more kids. For instance, this is where we would do CGI, cognitively guided instruction, where kids are really doing group problem solving on a story problem of the day and sharing out their strategies with the group. And there’s a benefit to having a larger group of students so you have a diversity of strategies and perspectives on it.
Students can reach out to other peers who have mastered objectives to get help.
Students are given multiple means of support to look towards before reaching out to the teacher.
Students can pick whether they want to work with a partner or independently.
Student growth and perseverance in achieving mastery is celebrated daily.
Daily “shout outs” are used to openly celebrate growth and success.
At ReNEW DTA’s mastery-based math class, the teacher and students kicks off each day by sharing information on goals and expectations.
When teaching 8th grade-level content, the teacher pairs students heterogeneously to support lower-level students and offer higher-level students the opportunity to deepen knowledge by teaching others.
At CICS West Belden, every student has a Personal Learning Plan. This is a sample template for a PLP.
