Personalized learning is tailored instruction, learning, and assessment that is unique for each student. A personalized learning classroom is a student centered classroom that meets students where they are; while promoting leadership, engagement and ownership of learning. It also focuses on personal improvement, goal setting, and independent and collaborative learning (CBE Solutions, Pine Point Creative, www.cbesolution.com/).

Maddox Jolly (Second Grade student) proudly displaying the standards he met during his personalized learning!

Classroom Code of Cooperation

The teacher guides students in creating classroom expectations. What should learning in the classroom look like, feel like, and sound like? By developing the expectation of the classroom together, the students take ownership over their behavior and learning.

Second Grade

The Phonics Dance Philosophy

The Phonics Dance was inspired by my inability to read first graders' stories.  Decoding their words was almost impossible for me.  So, I came up with an approach that would give these six, seven, and eight-year-olds a strategy to sound out words.

As first and second graders dance their way through chants and rhymes, they start a journey through sound, continually looking for “hunks” and “chunks” that are part of our language.  The decoding process is made easy because of the rhyme and
movement in the learning.  Children of all developmental ages benefit from daily
reinforcement.  

The Phonics Dance is a spiral approach to language arts.  Initially, you will see huge progress in each child’s writing.  As the students learn how to “hunk” and “chunk,” the carryover into reading will be an easy one.  The Phonics Dance gives young children one more strategy to use in their journey towards literacy.  Dancing all the way, of course.  

-By Author/Creator Virginia Dowd

Phonics Dance Home Page