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With summer and fall planning top of mind for educators across the country, one stubborn challenge is students' online attendance and engagement-or, precisely, the lack of it. In many schools and districts, half or less of their students participate in remote learning.

Many students are unable to participate virtually due to resource constraints. For those who can, it's become abundantly clear that grades alone are insufficient to motivate learning.

Take, for example, the distance learning plan created by Chaffey Joint Union High School District in California, which says that schoolwork completed by students through the end of the year can only preserve and improve grades, but not lower them. According to Rocky Bragg, a high school English teacher in the district, this policy has created some havoc. Many teachers watched their students brush off assignments and disappear from class.

The policy is pragmatic, responding to the fact that many students are dealing with stress, trauma and extra family responsibilities that impact their ability to focus on school. But it also illuminates just how little value schoolwork has, from some students' perspectives, except to feed a grade.

But Bragg has witnessed a different reaction in his classes. He's consistently seen high attendance in synchronous online classes since the school closed, and almost all his English students submitted the epic poems they'd been working on for the last few weeks.

What's behind this rare level of engagement during such a traumatic and trying time? One factor is learner agency. As it turns out, nurturing students' abilities to contribute and lead can have big payoffs as schools face ongoing uncertainty.

Agency as both a learning outcome-and a precious resource

Agency is generally defined as an important learning outcome, characterized by the ability for students to set and pursue their own learning goals. It is an ingredient for their success through college and careers, and it is also a frequently cited goal among educators working to reimagine teaching and learning. Our Canopy Project, which documented student-centered learning plans in schools, found that three-quarters of them are designed to foster learner agency.

But in addition to being an important outcome, learner agency may also be an undervalued resource for schools, especially when they have less control over how to structure students' time and attention. The impacts of COVID-19 are highlighting at least three ways in which schools can benefit from nurturing students' agency:

1. Benefits to student engagement and learning

Bragg shares his classroom with dozens of other teachers: his own students. In a four-week unit on Albert Camus' "The Stranger," his senior year English students helped design guiding questions and themes, decided on daily and weekly assignments, determined how assessment and evaluation would be conducted, led each day's discussion, and held each other accountable to mutually agreed-upon expectations.

With students largely running the show, what was there left to do? Bragg described his duties as "back-seat driving"-synthesizing, challenging, questioning, and giving feedback. In cases where Bragg did have a role, like generating discussion questions, they were assigned by his students. In essence, responsibilities between the teacher and the learner flipped.

Shifting to this approach wasn't easy. "It was stressful, it was difficult, and it required a ton of energy and patience," Bragg wrote. But it also wasn't just one more responsibility on top of everything else teachers must do. Instead, Bragg's focus on agency eventually rebalanced the responsibilities in his classroom so that duties became shared between students and the teacher. In turn, students retained greater motivation to continue their learning even during the shift to remote instruction.

In a similar vein, Phyllis Lockett, founder and CEO of the education nonprofit LEAP Innovations, has argued that the charter network Distinctive Schools has had a smoother transition to at-home learning, due in part to a longtime focus on student-directed learning pathways.
How to start:
Teachers can use school closures as opportunities for what Bragg calls "unlearning" of conventional roles and protocols. Building this kind of learning culture won't happen overnight, but there are ways for teachers and parents to nurture it. Teachers can:

introduce more student control over activities, schedules, and assessments during remote learning.

invite students to develop homegrown projects related to their own curiosities and interests, or host a "skill share" to teach something new to their peers.

2. Benefits to social and emotional well-being

The benefits of nurturing agency can extend beyond academics, too. As educators across the country scramble to support their students' social and emotional needs during this time, they may find that students themselves can also play a big role in helping one another.

Bragg's district has restricted the use of Zoom by teachers due to privacy concerns. But he encouraged his students to set up their own video conferences for peer support. This isn't just friends getting together to chat-the students are deliberately planning the calls for all their classmates to discuss how the pandemic is affecting their learning and well-being.
How to start:

Teachers and school administrators can incorporate students into their efforts to check in with families. Having students call each other and report back could supplement staff efforts to reach all families.

Students can contribute or take the lead on strategies to raise morale and support well-being. For instance, students at Van Ness Elementary school in Washington, D.C. are recording videos that their teachers quickly compile into a remote-learning version of the school's daily morning routines for community-building.

3. Benefits to school operations

Even before COVID-19, teachers and staff were being asked to do more than they had time and energy for. Now, in short order, most schools have to rapidly adapt their instructional models and operations. Even with the CARES Act financial stimulus, school leaders are having trouble making the math work when facing existing capacity constraints, ongoing uncertainty about how schools can reopen, and a looming recession.

But some schools have taken the opportunity to invite students-usually considered the beneficiaries of resources-to pitch in and become resources themselves.

In Miami, students at Hammocks Middle School in Miami are responsible for managing a Genius Bar to support their peers and teachers with tech help, including remote support during the pandemic.

Similarly, in Massachusetts, Burlington High School has long been lauded for its student-run technology help desk, where students provide tech support and earn credit for doing so. In the chaos caused by stay-at-home orders, the school didn't immediately have structures in place for students to respond to tech issues remotely. But the requests for help are coming in fast, and they recently created a Google Classroom tutorial video for teachers.

In addition to creating applied and relevant learning experiences for students, programs like Burlington's enable schools to rely on students to help and contribute in meaningful ways-rather than shouldering new costs for those supports.
How to start:

Teachers, staff and students can work together to identify operational needs-like tech support, attendance, peer tutoring, or class planning-that students can take the lead on.

Administrators and policymakers can pave pathways for student contributions to be valued, such as formalizing them through courses that count for school credit. Creating these pathways helps reduce the risk of student contributions remaining peripheral or haphazard if not embedded thoughtfully into the core of the school's model.

In a recent Medium post where Bragg described his student-driven classroom, he wrote that conventional education wisdom "has embedded in our curriculum and infrastructure a natural tendency to save and to do for our students." There's no question that schools must equitably provide support to struggling students. But school leaders focused on building student agency during and beyond COVID-19 may see increased engagement and attendance.

And over time, they'll find that students can contribute to running the school in increasingly valuable ways.

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How Student Agency Can Ease the Pain of Remote Learning and Teaching - EdSurge News

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With summer and fall planning top of mind for educators across the country, one stubborn challenge is students' online attendance and engagement-or, precisely, the lack of it. In many schools and districts, half or less of their students participate in remote learning. Many students are unable to participate virtually due to resource constraints.

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Whether your school is starting the year with in-person instruction, using a hybrid model, or teaching completely online, you will need to be flexible. You may even be asked to shift back and forth between different models of instruction throughout the school year.

Regardless of what learning environment you and your students find yourselves in, this is a challenging time for both teachers and students alike. So it is crucial that you have processes in place to monitor your students' needs-both academic and non-academic.

In fact, in a learning environment that is designed to be student-centered, continuously monitoring student needs may not only be more easily accomplished, but can also lead to opportunities for learner agency by also encouraging students to learn more about themselves and how they learn best.

As we wrap up our Student-Centered Learning blog series, this is the third post of four in our mini-series, Engage and Empower Learners: How Student-Centered Learning Supports Learning Continuity. In this mini-series, we discuss how adopting student-centered learning principles can actually help school leaders and teachers facilitate the transition to this "new normal" of teaching and learning while still nurturing student growth.

In this post, we will be revisiting a core tenet of student-centered learning: continuous monitoring of student needs. We will explore this concept in more depth to understand why implementing student-centered principles into the learning environment can improve student engagement and make teaching and learning, no matter what environment you and your students find yourselves in, more student-focused.

Continuous monitoring of student needs: Going beyond data

As we discussed in the first post of our student-centered learning blog series, one of the core characteristics of a student-centered learning environment is the continuous monitoring of student needs through the ongoing analysis of student data.

Continuously monitoring student needs provides an opportunity for teachers to adjust or "re-architect" student learning experiences based on the changing needs of each student.

However, in a truly student-centered learning environment, it really goes beyond just data. Teachers and administrators should look at the whole child, considering both their academic and non-academic needs.

Non-academic student needs

In a student-centered learning environment, putting students at the center means really getting to know them beyond the academics-understanding their interests, their passions, and what truly matters to them.

Understanding the non-academic needs of the student can help teachers connect the academic curricular pieces together in ways that work best for that individual learner. For example, if you find out a student has a passion for cars, you may suggest they take some career and technical education courses. Or if a student is really interested in science, you can help them gear their curriculum to be more science intensive.

Knowledge of students' non-academic needs and interests can help teachers and school leaders make more meaningful decisions for individual students, especially when there is a collaborative process with students in place to facilitate these discussions.

How can we effectively monitor students' non-academic needs?

Some schools monitor students' non-academic needs by building an advisory period into student schedules on a regular basis. During the advisory period, students meet with an advisor or academic coach who serves as an advocate for each student in their group.

The academic coach or advisor gets to know the students on both an academic and a personal level. It is their responsibility to see if students are having any general issues and to make sure that each student has what they need to succeed.

Some schools use learner profiles as a way to monitor students' non-academic needs. In their learner profile, students can share their strengths, challenges, aspirations, interests, and talents.

Coupling learner profile data with student achievement data can help teachers, advisors, and school administrators get to know individual students and can help to guide students in an educational direction based on their interests.

However, a caveat to consider is that while advisory periods, academic coaches, and learner profiles are always implemented with the best of intentions, they shouldn't be something that is simply layered on. To be effective, they have to be viewed as a central piece of the school's education process. Otherwise, they may be pushed to the side when competing priorities arise.

Placing importance on considering the non-academic and academic needs of individual students can also help students learn more about themselves and how they learn best.

Academic student needs

In a student-centered learning environment, it is crucial to monitor the academic needs of students in order to make decisions that appropriately shape their learning pathways. Monitoring students' academic needs can help determine where students are excelling and where they have gaps in their learning.

One source for identifying students' academic needs is their student-achievement data. While state testing data can help to shape overarching district decisions (e.g., How is the district's overall math achievement?), that is only one piece of a student's academic performance puzzle. It is the formative and summative assessments that are the real data.

Frequent formative and summative assessments tell a much bigger and more meaningful story of student learning, one that more accurately describes the academic needs of individual students. However, keep in mind that if the assessment isn't designed well, you won't get the data or the answers that you are looking for.

How can we effectively monitor students' academic needs?

Technology can help streamline the process of gathering data and tracking student academic performance for use by both teachers and students.

Student information systems, such as PowerSchool or Skyward, give teachers an easy way to track student performance over time and can help in identifying students' academic needs. A learning management system (LMS), such as Brightspace or Canvas, provides teachers a central space for digital assessment and grading tools and offers ways to streamline the process of tracking grades. An LMS also provides students with a central space to locate learning materials and track their own progress and grades.

Most importantly, technology makes it feasible for teachers to track individual student data and monitor individual student academic needs.

When we can effectively monitor students' individual academic needs, we can also teach students to monitor their own needs. By tracking their own academic progress, students are encouraged to take ownership of their learning, which helps them to develop the skills needed for learner agency.

In their microcredential on student progress monitoring, Digital Promise explains that learner agency has two main components:

1. Knowledge of oneself as a learner

2. The learner's ability to articulate, create, or ask for the conditions necessary to meet one's learning needs

While it is a teacher's responsibility to know how students are doing overall, students themselves rarely know.

Monitoring their own academic progress is an important life skill for students. It fosters metacognition (awareness of one's own thought processes), which has been associated with higher levels of achievement.

However, there are a few caveats to consider. While students should have opportunities to track their own progress, we can't assume that students know how to do this themselves. Monitoring student data should be a collaborative process with both students and teachers looking at the same data and discussing it together.

Monitoring and setting their own goals and progress made towards those goals can help students own their learning and become more personally invested in the process. As Dr. Sarah Pazur, FlexTech's Director of School Leadership, shared:

"Student-centered learning mirrors what happens in life and the workplace; you have to set goals, take action, manage your time, reflect and revise, and have a belief in yourself that you can improve."

Student-centered learning can help students develop both academic and non-academic skills transferable beyond the classroom.

Continuous monitoring of student needs and learning continuity

It is important to remember that when we talk about continuously monitoring student needs, we must mesh both academic and non-academic monitoring to get the whole picture of each learner.

Understanding a student's non-academic needs can oftentimes help us to make better informed decisions about their academic needs, increasing their chances of engagement in the learning process and academic success.

Learning management systems help to capture academic data and put it in formats that are more useful to both students and teachers. And the availability of technology is making monitoring student needs-and student-centered learning in general-more possible, especially when students are 1:1 (each student has an appropriate learning device).

The reality is that some of this monitoring of student needs is sometimes a bit more straightforward in a face-to-face setting. In a face-to-face classroom, teachers can more easily monitor understanding and learning because they can see it.

When teachers who have little or no prior online teaching experience are asked to teach online, monitoring student needs is something that may be a struggle without the visual cues they are used to seeing from students.

However, when students have voice and choice in terms of demonstrating their understanding-when they can show their learning in a way that makes sense to them-teachers should be able to more easily monitor students' needs and assess their learning, no matter if they are teaching remotely or face-to-face.

Final thoughts

In talking to school leaders and teachers, those schools that had an easier time making the shift to remote learning last spring did so because they were able to leverage the processes and the technology they already had in place.

Schools that already had elements of student-centered learning-whose students were used to having voice and choice, used to progressing in a competency-based learning environment, and used to monitoring their own learning-made that shift much more easily. As Dr. Pazur explained in a previous post,

"Schools that have created the conditions for student agency are going to have an easier time with rapid or extended closures because students aren't waiting on the adults or the system to tell them what to do. They [students] are inspired by the work they're doing because they had a voice in shaping and designing it-they created it and it doesn't live in the school building. When the student drives the learning, the arbitrary structures like class periods and teacher-driven lessons in the form of worksheets or rote learning tasks become obsolete."

Isn't that the goal? Inspired students. Students who see that learning doesn't live only inside the classroom. Students who see connections to real-world situations. Students who have opportunities to work at their own pace and to show what they know in a way that makes sense to them.

Students who understand how they learn best and can monitor their own learning.

Student-centered learning is about more than just putting students at the center of education. It is about giving each student the opportunity for success. It is about designing learning to be flexible and adaptable for each learner, not just the average student.

It is about understanding the whole child-what they need both academically and non-academically-and giving students the skills they need for success within and beyond the classroom.

Student-Centered Learning Blog Series

In our Student-Centered Learning blog series, we lead a discussion each month about student-centered learning: what it is, how it can help students and schools, and how to make it a reality. Our hope with this series is to provide practical insights to school leaders, teachers, and parents on how to make education more meaningful to students. Stay up to date on future blogs in this series by signing up for email notifications!

About the Authors

Christa Green

Christa received her master's in Curriculum and Instruction from Kent State University, as well as a bachelor's degree in Business Administration. She taught middle school language arts and social studies for seven years before coming to work for Michigan Virtual in 2018. As a research specialist with the Michigan Virtual Learning Research Institute, Christa enjoys using her passion for education, curriculum, research, and writing to share and shape best practices in online and blended learning with other educators within and beyond Michigan.

Christopher Harrington

Dr. Christopher Harrington has served public education as a teacher, an administrator, a researcher, and a consultant for more than 25 years and has experience assisting dozens of school districts across the nation in the design and implementation of blended, online, and personalized learning programs. He has worked on local, regional, and national committees with the Aurora Institute (formerly iNACOL) and various other education-based organizations aimed at transforming education through the use of technology.

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Increasing Learner Agency Through Continuous Monitoring of Student Needs | Michigan Virtual

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Student-centered learning is about more than just putting students at the center of education. It is about giving each student the opportunity for success. It is about designing learning to be flexible and adaptable for each learner, not just the average student.

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Listen to my interview with Natalie McCutchen (transcript)

With few exceptions, I would bet that most teachers feel they could be doing a better job of differentiating instruction. It's not that we don't want to do it-we know our students learn at different rates, that some need more help and others could be moving much more quickly than we let them. The problem for many of us is that we just can't figure out how to manage it. How do you run a classroom where each student is working on a different thing at a different speed?

The first time I ever saw a truly self-paced learning environment was on my visit to a Montessori Elementary School two years ago. And although I was completely enchanted by the student-centered environment there, the class size was small. I wondered whether that method could really be scaled up to class sizes at a typical public school.

So I was excited when, at a recent TeachMeet, I saw that there would be a session on self-paced learning. At the session, Franklin, KY, middle school math teacher Natalie McCutchen showed us how she has converted her pre-algebra class to a completely self-paced system, where students work on different skills at their own pace, and how she's gradually introducing self-paced learning in her other math classes as well. I found her system to be astonishingly simple, and I thought a lot of other teachers might like to try it for themselves, so I interviewed her for my latest podcast episode (see player below) and asked if I could share her methods here.

Here's a quick snapshot of how she does it: For each chapter in their math textbook, students take a pre-test to determine which skills they have already mastered and which ones they still need to learn. For the skills they still need to master, they work independently on lessons (either reading them in the textbook or watching them on videos) and do practice problems until they feel they've got the skill down. This is the true self-paced part: Students decide how many lessons they need. They decide how much practice to give themselves. "Maybe there are five videos that you could watch today," Natalie explains to her students. "You watch as many as you need. If you watch two videos and you understand it, then you move on to the practice. If you need all five, use all five." Rather than forcing students to follow the same path in lockstep with one another, practicing page after page of skills they already have down, this system gives them a chance to build the metacognitive muscle they'll need to become lifelong learners.

When a student feels he is ready, he takes a mini-assessment for a single learning target, usually made up of just a few questions. If he does well on that small assessment, he can move on to another skill. Once he has mastered all the skills in the chapter, he takes a whole-chapter assessment-this is the same test he was given as the pre-assessment. If he does well on that, he's ready to progress to the next chapter.

How do students know which lessons and practices to work on, and when?
Natalie creates a Chapter Guide for each chapter. It includes each learning target, the pre-test question or questions that align with that target, the lessons students should watch or read to learn about that target, the practice problems that match up with that target, and the assessment question or questions for that target.

Look at the example below. If this student missed question 2 on the pre-test, she should do Lesson 2.4 on pages 102-104 and may need to do Skills Practice 2.4 on pages 403-406 in preparation for the assessment for that learning target, which is item 2a on page 38. She might only need to read through the lesson and do one or two practice problems in order to do well on the assessment, or she might choose to do them all. Likewise, if she got question 6 correct on the pre-test, she doesn't need to do the lesson, the practice, or the assessment for that learning target at all-she'd just mark that as mastered on the chart.

Do students get the answer keys?
Students have access to the answers for all of the practice questions, so Natalie does not need to check these; it's up to the student to do the practice problems, then self-check them to see if they're getting the skill down. There's no real incentive to cheat here, because if a student doesn't teach herself the skill, it will show up in the mini-assessment for that target: The mini-assessment IS scored by the teacher, and students are not given an answer key for it.

hey keep the chapter guide in a composition notebook. We glue all their items in there. So they have that with them on their desk every day, and I'm able to go by and say Some kids may turn in two assessments per class period, depending on how hard they worked. Some kids may turn in one. Some kids, maybe they didn't get to an assessment that day." And because Natalie encourages collaboration between students, the room is What does class time look like?
"It's very much organized chaos," Natalie says. "T Okay, what have you done? Where are you today? And at the end of class, I can say, busy: "I really prefer them to work together on the lesson, especially with my pre-algebra students, because they are such good math thinkers, they understand and can talk math, I want them to work together. You know, two or three in a group seeing if you can figure it out on your own using the video." How much did you get done?" Because students are all working independently, the amount of work produced on any given day can vary. "

ometimes they have to come back to the pack," she explains. "I'll say What if some kids can't handle all that independence? What if they just fool around the whole time?
Natalie's solution to this problem was what really impressed me about her system: Not all students get to do self-paced; some have to work with her in a more traditional teacher-led setup. Self-paced learning is a privilege reserved only for kids who take it seriously and work hard. If you mess that up, you can lose the privilege, returning to a group that's working directly with the teacher. "S You know what, you really didn't work that hard yesterday. I'm not even sure what you got done, I don't see anything on here. Just come back with us today. " For some students, this is a step backward, but they get other chances to move ahead later. "They like being ahead. You know, they think it's kinda cool. Sometimes I'll let them go out in the hallway, sit at a little table. They like that, but I stress to them you still have to work."

Natalie McCutchen developed her system through some trial and error, and she's constantly refining it, so none of this is set in stone. But if you'd like to try and replicate her approach to self-paced learning, here are the steps to take:

Step 1: Select a Unit of Content
This can be a chapter in a textbook or a batch of skills or content you would typically teach as a unit over a couple of weeks. This unit should have clearly defined learning targets, which are likely dictated by whatever standards your school follows. If you've been teaching for a while, you probably already have this step taken care of. In Natalie's class, each chapter in her math textbook represents one unit.

Step 2: Create the Assessment
Decide what students should be able to do by the end of the unit and create an assessment that measures it. The simplest type is a test with clearly identified right and wrong answers, where each item (or small group of items) in this assessment is aligned with one learning target. For skills that require more teacher interpretation to measure, like writing, the assessment could be a writing task, such as an extended response question with a prompt and a rubric. Each skill listed in the rubric would align with a specific learning target.

Step 3: Create the Chapter Guide
Following the model shown above, set up a guide that shows which assessment question aligns with each learning target, then lists book or video lessons students can follow to learn each skill, exercises that will give students independent practice with the skill, and a brief assessment students can take to test their mastery.

Step 4: Give the Pre-Test
Use the assessment you created in Step 2 to pre-test students on the skills for this unit. Use the results to identify which learning targets each student has already mastered, and which ones they still need to learn. [Note: Natalie's school uses standards-based grading, but that's not a strict requirement for this system. You could still record mastery of learning targets in the standards-based style and convert those measurements to traditional grades. To learn how, see Matt Townsley's video on converting standards-based indicators to letter grades.]

Step 5: Help Students Identify Standards to Master
Giving each student a Chapter Guide, have them mark which standards they have already mastered-based on pre-test results-and which ones they still need to learn.

Step 6: Provide Time, Materials, and Supervision for Self-Paced Learning
From this point on, students will begin the process of moving through the lessons on their own. Your job is to make sure they have the materials they need to do the work: If you are sending students to videos, make sure they have devices to access them (and earbuds to keep the audio to themselves). Make sure students know where to look for answer keys, and where they can access the mini-assessment when they are ready to take it. Check in with students regularly to make sure they are making good use of their time.

Step 7: Iterate
Keep in mind that this system probably won't work perfectly the first time you try it. You may want to try it just once with a short unit, rather than attempt to convert your whole year to self-paced learning. You might want to offer it only to students who have the academic skills and maturity to handle it. You may need to tweak it, then tweak it some more. But speaking for the kids who would love a chance to see just how fast they can learn and how far they can go, I'd say it's worth a serious try. ♦
Other Resources:

There's more where this came from.
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Self-Paced Learning: How One Teacher Does It

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Most teachers feel they could be doing a better job of differentiating instruction, but many can't figure out how to manage it. How to run a classroom where each student is working on a different thing, at a different speed? See how one teacher does it.

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"It's like they've been spoon-fed until now."

"How are they going to meet deadlines when they're adults?"

"What does it take to get students to think for themselves?"
Until recently, these were the words my colleagues and I would utter when we found ourselves frustrated by our students' lack of intrinsic motivation. They often seemed unable to figure things out for themselves, and as much as we tried, it was a challenge for us to help them overcome a lackluster approach to their academic responsibilities.

In my search for a solution, I began to think about the structure of my classroom and how the traditional learning environment shapes student engagement. As a firm believer that people respond to their surroundings, I asked myself the following questions:

How do I allow students to take responsibility for themselves?

Do I give students enough opportunities to make decisions about their learning?

Have I shown that I trust students to shape their own learning environment?

In my reflection, I realized I had plenty of room to grow in creating a learning environment that fosters independence, choice and student decision-making.

Fortunately for my students, my school offered a professional development session on self-pacing, which is the practice of implementing instruction based on individual learner response.

What is self-paced learning?

Self-paced learning differs from the traditional teacher-led, whole-class lessons in that it allows students to use materials and resources to customize the way they learn in class. The self-paced method allows students to design their own learning experience, not only at their own pace, but according to their own interests and learning preferences. The role of the instructor is to provide guidance, feedback on proficiency and tailor the learning environment to students' needs.

I decided to give it a try. My colleagues, Cristie Watson and Logan Riley, and I worked together to create our first self-paced unit. Here's how we made it work our classrooms using state-mandated curricula:

Choose an activity. First, we had students access a Google Doc that gave an overview of the unit and outlined the learning goals and various activities associated with each.

Students browsed the list, picked an activity that interested them and decided how they wanted to interact with the content. For example, some students took Cornell notes on readings, others created Minecraft structures depicting a learning goal topic, and many engaged with EdPuzzle videos with embedded questions to guide their learning. Students could go online to do research or find resources whenever they needed to.

Request an assessment. When students feel like they've mastered the material, they can request a check-in, which involves answering a question in writing on the learning goal. We discuss their answer and if I feel they've demonstrated mastery, they move on to the next learning goal. If not, they can select a different activity and try again.

Other benefits of self-paced learning

Not surprisingly, most students liked having choice in their learning and remained engaged in the academic content. But engagement wasn't the only benefit of the new format. Here are five unexpected surprises:

1. Movement

Students were free to leave their seats as many times as they needed to select materials for their learning activities, answer check-in question or gather resources. Before we tried this approach, students had few opportunities to leave their seats without a movement-based activity. I would pass out our whole-class materials, and students wouldn't have to move a muscle. As you know, not moving a muscle for an hour is uncomfortable for most of us but can be excruciating for active kids.

I wondered if allowing additional movement would be distracting and promote wandering, but I discovered it was not. Students knew where to go and what to do. They were more purpose-driven in their actions because they were allowed to choose what to do. They had to think for themselves about their next steps as opposed to being told what to do.

Oddly enough, in addition to more movement in the classroom, there was also less movement. The fact that students were allowed purpose-driven movement cut down on random chair scraping, loud foot-flopping, annoying pencil-rapping and free-wheeling pen-clicking.

2. Organization

In order for my students to independently select learning materials, I was compelled to reorganize my classroom in a thoughtful, deliberate way. I clearly labeled the learning stations with instructions, and I modeled how to move through them. This helped students grasp the literal motions of self-paced learning.

As a teacher and mom, organization is supposed to be one of my strengths. It's not. Because I'm a teacher and mom, my brain functionality is that of a browser with dozens of tabs open at once. Becoming organized allowed students to function as they should in a self-paced classroom and closed a few tabs in my mind as well.

3. More time for relevance

An amazing thing happens in a classroom where students select their learning goals, collect their materials and know where to find additional supplies. They independently engage with technology and content, and I get to do what every teacher dreams of being able to do. I am free to float from student to student to answer content-related questions. Without a barrage of logistical questions, I now have time to work with students one on one to foster student understanding and critical-thinking skills.

4. Quick results

I expected some students to lag behind on self-paced learning. To my surprise, many students were completing activities and check-ins much more quickly than they had finished whole-class activities. And yet, their check-in responses did not seem rushed or composed with intentional mediocrity. Students simply worked at a quicker pace than my previous classroom structure had permitted. The quick results allowed me to provide same-day and direct feedback, rather than going over check-ins during the evenings. Students were able to rethink and revise immediately, with no lapse in time to hinder full understanding of our learning goals.

5. Effective, personalized feedback

Prior to self-paced learning, I would offer general feedback to the entire class about check-in responses instead of giving individual students. I might say:

"I've noticed that some check-ins simply list a lot of facts about the subject of the question, but do not answer the question. For example, if a question asks how the pyramids reflect the values of the Ancient Egyptians, I'm reading some laundry lists of facts about pyramids, but nothing about the values that the pyramids represent."

I realized that presenting group feedback fell flat because often students felt like the advice didn't apply to them. When I give direct feedback to students individually, they know that I'm talking about their work specifically. It resonated more deeply than when I would offer feedback to the whole class at once.

Self-paced learning boosts confidence

Self-paced learning has proven to be an effective way to allow my students to customize their learning environment to fit their needs as learners. It also shows them that I trust them to design their own learning, gives them a sense of responsibility for their academics, boosts confidence in their choices and allows me to give direct, immediate feedback to each student at least once a day.

On top of that, students use technology every day to access online interactives, which gives them endless possibilities to show their learning.

As educators, we exhaust ourselves trying to figure out how to best teach our students individually. Self-paced learning allows students to show for themselves how they best learn and to gain valuable information about their own learning that they can carry with them for life. Self-paced learning truly transforms a classroom.

Watch the video below to learn more about the self-paced classroom:
Catherine Stanley is a sixth grade English language arts and social studies teacher at Gravelly Hill Middle School. She believes in student-teacher relationships to foster success in the classroom. Connect with her on Twitter @TeachStanley. This is an updated version of a blog post that originally published on Nov. 19, 2019.

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5 Surprising Results of a Self-Paced Classroom

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"It's like they've been spoon-fed until now." "How are they going to meet deadlines when they're adults?" "What does it take to get students to think for themselves?" Until recently, these were the words my colleagues and I would utter when we found ourselves frustrated by our students' lack of intrinsic motivation.

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I've shown students examples for Jamboard entries and let them go on their own

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I've shown students examples for Jamboard entries and let them go on their own

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ELA 8

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Comment - Julie Lott I try to do this for my students.

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Students respond with 'thumbs up' or 'thumbs down' to participate as a whole class. Most students answered that they like it on questionnaire. 

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Students respond with 'thumbs up' or 'thumbs down' to participate as a whole class. Most students answered that they like it on questionnaire. 

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I have created groups that rotate between teacher-on lessons and teacher-off lessons (Acellus, ALEKS, Moby MAX) so that they can experience both and will work either independently on individually tailored questions or with me for a more homogenous group of students with a more honed in group activity.
~Tracy Mann (Middle resource)

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I give my students a 10-second unmute pass at the beginning of class to tell me how their day is/answer a fun question/etc. This helps them get the silliness out. 

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I give my students a 10-second unmute pass at the beginning of class to tell me how their day is/answer a fun question/etc. This helps them get the silliness out. 

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Chat option through GoGuardian for those that are to scared to unmic or use the live meet chat.  

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Chat option through GoGuardian for those that are to scared to unmic or use the live meet chat.  

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We meet as a whole group then split into small groups while the students complete their own work for the day. This gives multiple times to touch base as well as students time to work independently. I can customize small group time to fit the students needs

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I plan to use "Tic Tac Toe" templates that will allow this

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I plan to use "Tic Tac Toe" templates that will allow this

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ELA 8

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Hopefully Pear Deck will be engaging for them. ELA 8

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I use "Quizizz" for classwork, homework, or quick assessment. The students are loving it! High School

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I use "Quizizz" for classwork, homework, or quick assessment. The students are loving it! High School

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I've definitely used the thumbs up, thumbs down more in the last two weeks than the last two years. (Claire Gilbert)

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I've definitely used the thumbs up, thumbs down more in the last two weeks than the last two years. (Claire Gilbert)

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I introduce the technology first with a "Get to Know the Technology" activity that takes students through the basic steps of the program.  

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I introduce the technology first with a "Get to Know the Technology" activity that takes students through the basic steps of the program.  

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I complete mini lessons and then have breakout groups based on the students' needs and levels. For the students who finish early or don't need a small group, I use ALEKS, Readworks, Common Lit, and writing probes to progress monitor while I work one-on-one or small group with students who need more direct instruction
. I keep the meet open for anyone who has a question.

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Students respond with a number from 1 to 5 (1 is they understand completely/like, 5 is they understand nothing/dislike). They can do this verbally or with their hand.  (ESOL)

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Students respond with a number from 1 to 5 (1 is they understand completely/like, 5 is they understand nothing/dislike). They can do this verbally or with their hand.  (ESOL)

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I have used Padlet in class to create a sense of whole-class collaboration. So far, I have only used it to test out games, but the kids are already asking to do it again.

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I have used Padlet in class to create a sense of whole-class collaboration. So far, I have only used it to test out games, but the kids are already asking to do it again.

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I do a mini lesson in math as a whole group. Students work independently after the lesson. Once students are finish with working independently and if time permits they work on ALEKS.  

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I do a mini lesson in math as a whole group. Students work independently after the lesson. Once students are finish with working independently and if time permits they work on ALEKS.  

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I create Google Forms used to refresh note-taking from the previous class.

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I create Google Forms used to refresh note-taking from the previous class.