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The Personalized Learning Environment at RSS - So what could it look like? With the following model, Rossland Secondary School will have the ability to offer more than most schools in BC - more courses and more options within courses resulting in a better personalized learning environment. What it is not: This model does not look like anything most people are familiar with on a large class scale. It is, however, being successfully implemented in other public high schools. First, you need to lose the notion of class, teacher, timetable and courses taught in isolation. There are not regular scheduled classes where a teacher works with the same group of students from start of a course to the end. It is also not a structureless environment. It is just a different (and more real) structure. Not all learning is online but is blended.

With uncertainty comes opportunity. Philosophy: You cannot expect to achieve success by relying on old or current sets of tools and skills Overall Structure: No set (ie traditional) timetable Diversity - of experiences, interactions, of experts... Increase in experiential learning opportunities Students assigned to a course, but not individual teachers Less learning outcomes - means deeper learning Integrated learning experiences across curriculum and across grades Flexible Scheduling - individual students AND staff... Therefore time management emphasized. Teacher Advisor program key Courses organized around: Key learning outcomes and attributes Modules to best achieve these String of modules constitutes a Learning Path

A Day in the Life of a Student: Mike arrives Monday morning at school. The first thing he does is to check in with his advisor. They are joined there by 12 other advisees where they spend 10 - 15 minutes at the beginning of every day planning out their course of action for the day as well as for upcoming days. The advisor checks the advisees goals and helps them ensure they have all the necessary tools to meet their targets. They make sure to note progress in all of their subjects as well as performance. Luckily this is easy to do as all Mikes course work is tracked electronically. Its

2 second nature for Mike now, but it is normal to see students take charge of their learning and chart their learning path with advisors help. Some need more help than others. A good portion of this time is spent scheduling since very few days and weeks are exactly alike. One thing that Mike knows is a regular occurrence is his band practice and he has that scheduled in straight away. There is a Community Linked Project (CLP) announced that Mike is interested in. It wont happen for a couple of weeks, but he knows he needs to sign up early to make sure he gets a spot. The project will help him get credit towards Socials, English and Science. He looks at the prerequisites for taking part and is happy to know he has them all. Mike hopes to bring his camera along and knows he will need to talk to the photography resource teacher to have his independent photo project approved. If he does this, then the CLP will give him credit toward four courses! Once advisory is done, Mike heads to the testing area. He studied last night for the biology midterm and is pretty confident he is ready. He thought he was going to write it the Friday before the weekend, but he needed a little more time to study. The midterm goes well and he finishes it with enough time to attend the Large Group session on climate change. He gets to the auditorium with only a few minutes to spare and the room is full. The guest speaker really knows her stuff and the hour flies by. There was barely enough time to ask questions so the speaker finishes with a promise to answer emails to do just that. Mike feels pretty comfortable that with the information he gained at the lecture, and will need to conduct more research to answer questions that were raised before he can start drafting his essay. If there are any gaps, Mike is happy he can simply fire off his questions to the expert. Mike grabs lunch at school and hooks up with his friends. They head off to their grade 10 - 12 PE Golf Module that they are half way through. Its nice the weather has been good lately and finishing off each afternoon in the sun on the links has been perfect. Mike makes it back in time for the practice session in the band room. He and the others are sounding pretty good considering they have only been playing together for four weeks. Afterwards he checks his schedule for the next day. The only thing he needs to work on at home is the rough outline of his climate change essay, so he packs his instrument home too in case he has time for a little more practice. A Day in the Life of a Teacher: Ms. T gets to school about 45 minutes before advisory. This gives her enough time to make some of the changes to the Social Studies courses reflecting the developments in the Middle East. The recent events should make for some lively debate in the Discussion Forums. She also checks her email specifically looking for a reply confirmation from the friend she has travelling in the Middle East right now. She is hoping he will be able to Skype chat to the Large Group session she has scheduled the following week. As soon as she gets that, she will revise the post offering the session for students. When Ms. T gets to advisory, a half a dozen advisees are already there. It is nice to see some of the Grade 12s giving good advice to the new students about the benefit of negotiating Independent Learning Opportunities. Many of the advisees are already finishing up their weekly plan and daily goals. She makes a point to sit down with a couple of students who have been struggling ensuring that their goals are specific and realistic. She also has them book a one on one appointment with her for a more thorough progress check. Both students are pretty happy

3 to know that someone is watching over them and willing to help. Its nice that the interaction is seen by students as a helping one and not heavy handed or with marks attached. Ms. T has always liked that. After Advisory Ms. T heads off to meet with the science and English teachers about the CLP project they are running together next week. They just announced it today and limited the participants to 20. If it fills up quickly, theyll run it again. She isnt scheduled to go with the students on this one, but she wants to make sure the other teachers are clear that students will need to weave in the Social Studies components into their productions. In the CLP outline she added links to last years productions, so that should help. After her meeting with the other subject teachers, Ms. T heads to the Humanities Resource Area where students across all three grades are immersed in a variety of learning activities; most using computers ,or mobile devices like iPods or iPhones, in pairs or on their own. She circulates around and discusses with students what they are doing. There are a few that were in yesterday as well and she sits down with each of them to see if their writing reflects the rubric they discussed. She is pleased to see some significant improvements though one student is still lacking in supporting detail. She refers back to the seminar all students took at the beginning of the year about effective research and gets the student to practice those strategies in front of her. Once she is confident he is onto some decent resources and noting them properlyusing tools like Evernote and Easybib, she moves on. A couple of grade 10s approach her to ask her to sign off on their geography project proposal. They seem to have all of the requirements in order and it looks to be an exciting and innovative idea. After lunch she meets with the debate team to discuss their arguments in the upcoming debate. The participation is so much better now that the students are able to meet during the day and get credit as well. Ms. T finishes her day with her prep where she revises a couple of weak areas of the grade 11 online course and responds to and rates entries on the active discussion forums. She loves the addition of rubrics embedded right into the Moodle course that allow her to easily mark some essays that were recently submitted. Facility: Resource areas and not classrooms Specialty areas still exist and experts are available to assist with learning experiences Resource areas are shared areas Private office space is available for consultation, meetings and advisement

What does this school facility look like? A lot of what the actual facility looks like is not that different. However, there were some changes made that facilitate this type of approach to learning. Gone are the classrooms built for 30. Interior walls are opened up and larger Resource Areas are created. Main Resource Areas would be math, sciences, and humanities. Within these are independent learning areas, quiet areas, small group discussion areas and general work areas. Expert teachers are there to answer questions and work with students one on one or in small

4 groups. Most of the instructions are delivered online, so teachers are freed up to work face to face and give continuous formative feedback that will enhance student learning. Science Labs exist for students to carry out experiments. Equipment for these are prepped in advance. Labs that involve potential safety issues are only available at certain times when qualified staff assist with and supervise the procedures. Prerequisite demos and relevant readiness checks are used to help prepare students. Students are required to prove that they are fully prepared to perform labs. Specialty elective areas exist and also act as open resource areas. Students take on projects as required to meet the outcomes of a course. In some cases (ie woodworking projects and safety) a mandatory seminar series needs to be completed and passed prior to taking on any projects. Projects instructions are also delivered online so students could view them prior to arriving, see demos, and arrange in advance for special materials. A teacher collaboration area exists where teachers work on designing projects independently or with other teachers. Teachers no longer work in isolation in their classroom. Colleagues are available to bounce ideas off of, help trouble shoot, and plan innovative and learner responsive experiences. Private conference rooms are available for teachers to meet with parents and/ or students. Technology facilitates this type of learning so wide and universal access is a priority. Portable devices in the form of laptops, tablets and net-books are the norm. Text resources are replaced as needed by digital options and versions. Technology labs are not for a class of 30 though since this notion of class size is no longer applicable. Labs with specialty software (ie. Photoshop) are only a pod of 10 machines.

5 Courses: All courses are like maps. They start with What do I need to know and what do I need to be able to do? These are the Learning Outcomes and the Attributes. A full four credit course is broken down into 30 units. Students aim to complete, on average, one unit per day. Courses are organized around Learning Modules. Some of these modules are mandatory or available as options. Some are sequential and others not. An individuals choice of modules constitutes a Learning Path. Learners can take modules that cross curriculums and meet requirements in multiple courses (ie. a small group workshop series on effective research skills)

Courses and course requirements are laid out in using the Moodle platform - an online open source Learning Management System. Most courses are from the BCLN (BC Learning Network - that SD20 is a member of) and designed for distance learning. Since RSS is involved in blended learning, the BCLN courses are tweaked and adapted to reflect the enhanced opportunities available. Many courses are being developed within Moodle and other tools to meet the needs of learners where BCLN courses are either lacking or do not exist. Since 20 to 30 students are no longer required to run a course, there are in fact more courses available and subscribed to at RSS than in most large high schools in the province. No one teacher is responsible for a course. Course outlines, learning paths and strategies are the responsibility of teachers working together mostly in areas of their expertise. Often teachers will work together on course modules that cross curricular boundaries. Similarly, students engaged in a course will interact with a number of teachers. Course Modules: Courses are designed around the concept of a learning path and learning paths are established using a variety of modules. Understanding the value of diverse learning styles as well as capitalizing on the skill base and assets of teachers and community members, courses are multifaceted offering modules that include: Community Linked Projects, Inquiry Based Projects, Small Group Sessions, Large Group Lectures, Integrated Learning Opportunities. Many of these are requirements for successful completion of the courses, yet students can still make the experiences their own depending on their interests and learning styles. Some components are not optional and are considered to be essential. However, as a result of choosing between numerous options, no two students will have the same learning path. Courses still adhere to provincially prescribed learning outcomes. These learning outcomes form the parameters that guide learning options. Teachers have identified in advance which outcomes and competencies are considered essential and ensure that these make up the required modules. That being said, even these required modules have options attached. For example, students in PE are required to participate in 7 different modules throughout the PE course and at least one module from each of the Activity Categories (Individual/ Dual, Games, Rhythmic) There are options within those categories (Individual/ Dual Activities - Badminton, Skiing, Golf...)

6 All four credit courses are divided into 30 units. This assists students, teacher/ advisors and parents in gaging the progress through a course. Containing one or more units, some modules are considered compulsory and even prerequisite while others are essential with options. Some units are completed with modules that are self designed (within parameters) or via Project Activities (Inquiry, Community Linked, Integrated, or a combination). These learning path options are presented at the outset of a course and are found in course outlines. Though all courses use online tools to some extent, that extent varies on the nature of the courses and the respective competencies and learning outcomes they are meant to address. Language courses often use online tools for written and reading comprehension work, but use (Face to Face) F2F for most aural and oral components. Formats, strategies and categories that courses draw from in their modules include: self paced small group large group seminar series compulsory choices prerequisite project independent design community linked inquiry based single person multiple person Learning activities can be based on one or more of these at any one time. Course requirements would indicate to students which are required for successful completion of a course. Many courses are laid out using a topic level of organization. Some are presented in a weekly format for courses that require students to move through material together or for courses that are being developed on a just-in-time basis. Sample Course Templates Below are sample course structures: Course #1 - (Biology 11) **Note: 2 of 5 Key Labs must be done at specified times offered throughout the year, the other 3 can be carried out with general supervision

Course # 2 - Math

Course # 3 - Language Arts