Personalized Learning in the Middle Grades: A Guide for Classroom Teachers and School Leaders

by Penny A. Bishop

Personalized Learning in the Middle Grades shows how teachers in grades 5–8 can leverage the use of personalized learning plans (PLPs) to increase student agency and engagement, helping youth to establish learning goals aligned with their interests and assess their own learning—particularly around essential skills that cut across disciplines. Drawing on their research and work with fifty schools in Vermont, where PLPs are used statewide, the authors show how personalized learning aligns with effective middle grades practice and provide in-depth examples of how educators have implemented PLPs in a wide range of schools representing different demographics and grade configurations. They also highlight five critical roles for teachers in personalized learning environments—as empowerer, scaffolder, scout, assessor, and community builder—and illustrate how teachers can adapt the PLP process for their own unique contexts. Grounded in experience and full of engaging examples, artifacts, and tools, the book builds on the emerging field of personalized learning and connects it with the developmental needs of middle schoolers to provide a unique and valuable resource for individual classroom teachers, teacher teams, school leaders, teacher‐educators, and others.

366 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 25, 2021

Reviews

[Jeanie Phillips · Rating 5 out of 5]

Check out a podcast conversation with one of the authors of this book here: https://tiie.w3.uvm.edu/blog/personal...

Full disclosure: I work with the authors of this book at the Tarrant Institute for Innovative Education, and our work is featured in this book.

I wish I had had this book when I began working for the Tarrant Institute: it is a road map to school transformation that centers learners. Bishop, Downes, and Farber go deep in exploring pragmatic school change that leads to educational environments where students engage in meaningful, relevant, and engaging learning. They explore the shifting roles of teachers and students in personalized learning, the structures that support these shifts, and ways to document reflection and growth. And they provide countless examples from the Vermont education community. This book is a how-to, but it is also a celebration of personalized learning. Brava!

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

This exceptional resource is comprehensive, practical, and immensely thoughtful. The authors integrate just the right amount of rationale, research, and middle level learners’ developmental needs into large doses of concrete clarity, accomplished through highly illustrative vignettes, examples of practice, tools and resources, and relationships to longstanding best practices for any teaching context. Potential challenges and pitfalls are thoughtfully identified, along with strategies for avoiding or addressing them.

While I personally reveled in the philosophical, pedagogical, and practical alignment between the book’s theory and practice and my experiences and beliefs, as with any great resource, I not only clarified my understandings, sharpened my practices, and gained language to articulate what I’ve come to know, but I gained new perspectives and expanded my repertoire. Most delightfully, I was jolted into a crucial realization as I read the authors’ exhortation to start with engaged learning, not goals. But of course! That makes all the sense in the world and implementing that one shift in approach could well help the programs with which I work experience new successes.

My only question is when will the elementary school and high school versions be available?!