How to Personalize Learning: A Practical Guide for Getting Started and Going Deeper

by Barbara Bray, Kathleen A. McClaskey

HOW to Personalize Learning

Create a powerful shift in education by building a culture of learning so every learner is valued.  This practical follow-up to Bray and McClaskey’s first book brings theory to practice. Discover how to build a shared vision that supports personalized learning using the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework.  Also included

Genres: Education

208 pages, Paperback

Published November 10, 2016

About the author

Barbara Bray, author, coach, mentor, speaker, podcast host, and difference-maker, has been on a mission for over 30 years to transform teaching so learning is authentic and meaningful. She is the co-author of Make Learning Personal and How to Personalize Learning. Barbara has hosted the Rethinking Learning podcast since 2017 to capture stories from inspirational innovators. These stories became the heart of her book, Define Your Why: Own Your Story So You Can Live and Learn on Purpose.

Barbara is co-host of the podcast “Real Talk with Barbara and Nicole” focusing on authenticity in a polarized society. Her new book is “Grow Your Why - One Story at a Time” with 23 personal stories from inspirational educators, entrepreneurs, and innovators. She loves to write and is inspired by stories, especially your story. This is why Barbara calls herself a Story Weaver.

Through Why Press Publishing, she is a mentor and coach to anyone who wants to be a writer or podcaster. Barbara is also pursuing her life coach certification to coach people to grow their why and build their dreams.

Reviews

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The subtitle says it all: this really is a practical guide to get started with personalized learning. It explains the rationale behind personalized learning and gives you easy-to-follow steps and activities to get started so the process is less daunting. It's designed more so for typical classroom teachers, but I think that the concepts can be applied to non-traditional scenarios such as special areas, library, ENL, etc.

[Tracey · Rating 5 out of 5]

"How to Personalize Learning" is great for the teacher or school planning to implement personalized learning. First, educators need to know the difference between differentiation, individualization, and personalization. Once that is established, building a common language is essential. Personalized learning starts with the learner. Learners have choices with how they want to interact with content. This allows them to be engaged and motivated to want to learn, set goals, and determine the direction of their learning. To make personalized learning effective, educators need to know how learners learn best. Universal Design for Learning (UDL), is a set principals for curriculum development to provide equity for learning for all. Goals, materials, methods and assessments work for all, not a one-size-fits all program. In order to develop a personalized learning program, it must include the components of Access, Engage and Express. Students need access to learning opportunities, they need to be engaged and they need to express, to show their learning.

The rest of the book provides ideas, templates, "lesson" designs, charts, for teachers to use with students to help them organize their ideas. This book is part information and part resource guide. The guide is not subject-based, just truly personalized learning.

[Heather Stringham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Learners not Students

How can we engage our students more fully in the classroom? By making the learning more personal and guided by what they need. This book guides teachers to improve their classrooms and help their learners become lifelong learners.

[Hope Dugan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well-written, clear guide. Bray and Mcclaskey do an excellent job outlining the steps and managing the issues. Must read for PL practitioners or anyone that wants a better understanding of what this looks like in practice.

[Doris Herrmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book for your PLN to share. I read this book with a few other teachers/coaches from my district and I'm excited to say it really helped us adopt a common goal.

[Beth Hughes · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is another text I was required to purchase and read for a grad class on personalized learning. If you're new to the idea of project-based learning and how to be creative in the classroom, this is a 5-star read. However, I was hoping for more suggestions on how to make learning more meaningful--especially in one-size-fits-all curriculum that we are now using. There are some great ideas here, but I'm wondering how many would work in a public school. Don't get me wrong: I will be modifying several ideas, but this isn't a guide for teachers who are already using even a little bit of personalized learning in their classrooms.

[Brianne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this one for a class I was taking on Personalizing Learning. It had a lot of good ideas regarding UDL and how to provide more supports for all students.

[Zachary Jackson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good insight and tools

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

**Warning: this text may contain spoilers** Not a review: notes quotes for me:

"That's the problem with schooling, they were teaching answers. I believe questions are probably more important than the answers."
-Erno Rubik from Rubik's cube video: A question Waiting to be Answered

" if learners are given options to pursue their interest for projects, they want to learn more and show what they found out. If instruction taps into their talents, they are more motivated to use their talents to demonstrate what they know". Page 87

"The more you can apply what you're learning to your every day, the more it'll stick in your head. The reason is simple. When youre learning by doing, you're implementing everything that makes our memory work. When you're able to connect what you're learning with a real world task, that forms the bonds in your brain, and subsequently the skills you're learning will stick around." Page 128

[Barbara Bray · Rating 5 out of 5]

I co-authored this book so, of course, I highly recommend it to educators, parents, and anyone who is interested in transforming teaching and learning.

[Rebecca R · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really struggled to read this book. I am extremely passionate about education and implementing the latest research-backed strategies. In fact, I am a proponent of personalized learning. Where I struggle with this book is the lack of empathy for teachers or the real-world view. There are some good charts that compare things, but there are very few anecdotes of how this has actually worked in schools. Unless teachers want to live at school, there is no way all the paperwork recommended in this book will ever get done. Besides, just knowing your students is about the same as these learning profiles. I was hoping this book would include stories by the authors of how they made PL a reality in their classrooms, but it’s just more people outside of the classroom telling us unrealistic things to do in ours.