Students will find this fresh and exciting. Without taking much effort, they will learn and remember what you teach them

There are approximately 27 students in each Arena, and they spend this time working through their primary and secondary course credits. A generalist teacher and Advocate Counselor are assigned to each Arena. Specialist teachers push into Arenas, or pull students out, to provide small-group instruction for specific content areas.
Arenas provide students and educators opportunities to build relationships and support systems throughout a student’s learning process. The generalist teacher stays in the same Arena, allowing them to be a consistent presence in students’ lives. This not only helps build relationships between educators and students, but also creates a point person to direct personalized learning experiences for each student. Generalist teachers serve as the primary person for identifying student needs, monitoring student progress, adjusting learning pathways, and coordinating student supports. Should a student’s needs fall outside their skill area, generalists coordinate with content specialist teachers and Advocate Counselors to meet those needs.
Arenas also enable students to progress through content at their own pace. This idea can be adopted and modified. This example was taken from Bronx highs School New York. 

 

Role playing is most effective for students of almost any age group. You just need to customize depending on the age group.

Even in schools that keep traditional class schedules, there are ways to build in more flexibility, Crawford says. She adds that while some schools use block schedules to provide longer times for instruction, those too can become restricting. “It’s not the bell schedule,” she says. “It’s what you do with it.”

She recommends that schools start with a group of teachers from different content areas who decide how to share and regroup students within the existing framework. “One teacher operating in isolation — that’s the beast that eats kids and eats teachers,” she says.

Platte County High School in Platte City, MO, began its “flexible personalized learning” program by combining classes in 9th-11th grade. For example, an English and government teacher will take the same two periods that they were using before, co-teach for one of them, and spend the second supporting students as they work in “independent learning time.” Meanwhile, the students are still getting credit for both courses.

“School just simply needs to look different,” says Assistant Principal Shari Waters. “It’s a focus on how we can help students learn to collaborate and advocate for themselves. We’re not holding them hostage in a seven-period day.”

At Platte County High, the flexible model is an option. A quarter of the school’s students — about 300 — are enrolled in it. Teachers who have been more reluctant to make the switch, Waters says, are worried their content area will be shortchanged or that they’ll lose some control. But she says that it’s not unusual for teachers to just give students “things to do” because they are used to filling up a specific block of time.