This is the 7th post in the Personalized Learning Series.

Personalized Learning is a win – win. It’s a win for students because they get to learn at their own pace and make critical decisions about their learning. It’s a win for Library Media Specialists (and other teachers) because it frees up time for us to work with students in a more positive way (less time disciplining). For Personalized Learning to be successful, students need to be taught some skills.

Teach them how to use the app or process.

• For tips on Academic Choice as part of Personalized Learning, click here.
• If you are using QR Codes as part of a Learning Path or Playlist, teach them how to scan and use QR Codes. You may find this poster helpful.
• If you are using game based learning or gamification, its important to teach them how the game works or to play the game.
• How do they submit work? Where do they keep their work? How do they know what they are doing that day? Answer these questions for them before they ask them, and have it posted for them to refer to.

Teach them how to check for understanding.

• When personalized learning requires students to attain and/or synthesize information, it is important to teach them how to do know when they know. AKA: metacognition.
• Teach them to reread, rewatch, try again. A little perseverance goes a long way.
• Teach them some ways to check their and/or clarify their thinking. I use videos a lot to teach content. I teach the students how to ask themselves questions about what they learned, and how to have a conversation with others to make sure they are correctly understanding. This is constructivism at its best.

Teach them how to ask for help. Whatever your process is for getting assistance, teach it. Some ways you might consider:

• 3 before me
• Assign them a dedicated partner or have a core group of people in the class who anyone can go to for help.
• How to get help from their seats or workspace. Leaving a workspace is how a lot of kids avoid tasks and behaviors can creep in when kids leave their assigned area. You can have them raise their hands, use touch lights, color coded cups or cards to show they need assistance.

While you are teaching them what to do to get help, teach them what to do while they are waiting for it.

• If they have exhausted all other efforts and needs your assistance, teach them how to occupy themselves until you can come to them. Perhaps they review the content again to try and answer their question. Perhaps they sketch out what they know so far, etc.

Provide graphic organizers and anchor charts.

• Graphic organizers are one thing that I am working on getting better at providing. Those and note-taking sheets are really helpful! Have a system and space for storing work in progress.
• Anchor charts are super helpful. Any anchor charts that are hung on the wall or used during the lesson, even if its online, is also provided at each table group. This makes it easily accessible to students.
• Teach them how to use the Anchor Charts as a resource that helps them with their learning.

Teach them how to talk to each other.

I do a lot of work online or with iPads. And yet, I still find ways to pull in some F2F social interactions. Teaching children how to speak clearly, give eye contact, and speak about a provided topic are important life skills. They need a lot of modeling and reinforcing, too!

As the Library Media Specialist, (or any special area teacher) we don’t always have the time to explicitly teach social emotional skills. The music teacher and I try to share Interactive Learning Structures that we are using so that one of us is explicitly teaching it and the other is reinforcing it. We also do this for consistency during essentials.

Some of this may seem like a no-brainer, but it can be tempting to throw this type of knowledge out the window when employing personalized learning; forgetting that students don’t automatically have these skills, we need to help them acquire them.