Personal Learning Plan: Empowering Learners™ to be Future Ready

Part 3 of the 3 Part Series on Using the UDL Lens of Access, Engage, and Express™ to empower learners to be Future Ready.

Just imagine learners turning challenges they have into strengths! Consider those same learners enhancing their strengths so they are self-confident in what and how they learn. Wouldn’t it be great if your learners were able to set their own goals to explore careers and determine what experiences they need to be college and career ready?

This post is the last part of the three-part process for all learners of any age to build agency so they become independent and self-directed learners.

Your learners shared with you how they learn best using the Learner Profile (LP). Your conversations with your learners when using the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) lens of Access, Engage and Express™ describing their strengths, challenges, preferences and needs in how they learn helped them decide what to include in their Personal Learning Backpack (PLB). You collaborated with your learners to choose the skills, tools and apps that can enhance their strengths and support their challenges they have in accessing and processing information, engaging with content and expressing what they know and understand.

The next step in the process is to help each learner develop the skills to be an independent, self-directed learner with agency. The Personal Learning Plan is where the learner defines goals, describes actions steps, and indicates a way to measure progress and achievement.

 

Introducing the Personal Learning Plan™

The purpose of a Personal Learning Plan (PLP) is to assist learners to develop goals with a set of action steps to achieve those goals, ways to monitor their own progress, show evidence in reaching the goal and a reflection on achieving it. The PLP has four specific focuses:

• Learning Goals (Access, Engage and Express) to develop independent skills to support their own learning;
• Personal Goals to explore their interests, talents, or passions;
• College and Career Goals to gain first-hand experiences in career areas where they have strong interests; and
• Citizenship Goals to become an active citizen in the local or global community.

Learning Goals for Skill Development

In Part 1 (LP) and Part 2 (PLB) of this series, the learner shared one of her Express challenges was that she found it difficult to put her thoughts on paper, and that she needed a speech-to-text (STT) tool to help her write her thoughts down. She has seen that tool being used by other learners but would like to learn how to use it on her own. She works with her teacher to describe the Express Learning Goal along with a set of action steps to learn the speech-to-text tool, ways to measure progress and showing evidence in reaching her goal and finally a reflection on achieving the goal.

On reflection, she has taken a challenge she has had for a while and has now learned new skills so she can independently write her assignments. What a great feeling she has in achieving a goal she set for herself! Her next focus is on a personal goal. Let’s take a look back at how she described her interests, talents and passions to illustrate what a personal goal would be.

 

Personal Goals to Explore Interests, Talents, and Passions

For this learner, having a personal goal that she can focus on gives her an opportunity to explore what she has only dreamed about doing.

Interests, talents, and passions: I love drawing and want to take more art classes in different mediums. I am interested in helping others and maybe can see myself as a teacher or a business leader when I grow up. I am starting to learn about social media and may even look at starting to create a logo and website to showcase my artwork.

Setting a personal goal and taking actions to meet that goal ignites engagement and encourages ownership to learning. Her personal goal is to create a logo and website to feature her artwork. The action steps to help meet this goal can include:

• Consult with art/design teacher on personal goal.
• Create several logo designs.
• Invite art/design teacher to help her choose the best design.
• Prepare artwork to display on the website.
• Locate low or no cost websites and review features and specs to display artwork.

She decided with her teacher that her evidence in reaching this goal would be featuring her artwork with written and audio narratives on a website with her self-designed logo. Next, she wants to focus on her college and career goals.

 

College and Career Goals to Pursue Opportunities

The high school where this learner attends offers Extended Learning Opportunities (ELOs). She is excited to have an opportunity to teach art with younger learners in her town. She meets with her ELO Coordinator and begins outlining the action steps that include:

• Discover who are the elementary art teachers in the local and adjacent schools.
• Develop a proposal outlining her goals for an art teacher mentorship.
• Decide on two art teachers and set up a time for an interview to share goals of the mentorship.
• Begin mentorship with art teacher and coordinate a schedule.

This experience of being mentored by two art teachers helps this learner make college and career decisions about going into this profession. During the mentorships, she created a visual portfolio of her experiences in the classrooms on her website with audio to show evidence of reaching her goal for college and career.

Realizing that she enjoys working with younger children and learning from her mentors, she was inspired to look at ways to give back to the community since she received so much help from others.

 

Citizenship Goals to Contribute to our Democracy

A Citizenship Goal contributes to a learner’s understanding that a democracy thrives when you are an active citizen in the community. This learner meets with her teacher/advisor to discuss how she would like to give back to the community by being actively involved with the local food pantry. Now that she has decided on the goal, she discusses what her action steps could be.

• Meet with the food pantry coordinator to discuss how she could contribute and the time she could commit.
• Make up signs to post at local businesses and schools.
• Collect non-perishable food for the food pantry.
• Organize food at the pantry for distribution.

She decides that one of the best ways to show that she has reached her goal is to share her experiences on her website and invite her peers to join her in working with her at the food pantry.

Learner Agency and Future Ready

Learner Agency means that someone has developed the skills to become an independent, self-directed learner. This learner has created her Learner Profile (LP) using the UDL Lens of Access, Engage and Express to identify her strengths, challenges, interests, talents, and passions. The Personal Learning Backpack (PLB) defines the skills. strategies, tools, and apps that will help her become an independent learner.

Future Ready means that the learner knows how to set her own goals, develop action steps and show evidence in achieving these goals. The Personal Learning Plan (PLP) guides the learner in gaining the skills and experiences she needs to support her learning and make choices for college and career. This post provided one example using an older learner who turned her challenges into strengths and enhanced her strengths so she developed the self-confidence to follow her passion for art and in helping others.

We want you to know that you can build a learner with agency at any age by using this three-step process. We provide an example of an older child only as a model for you. Consider building a relationship right away with young children by starting with a Learner Profile. Get to know your kids and how they learn using the UDL Lens of Access, Engage and Express™. Have them share with you their preferences and needs and build a Personal Learning Backpack with them. Then encourage them to choose and set goals with your guidance. Just imagine what your kids can do when they have the confidence in how they learn and that they know how to set goals for themselves. This is the Wow! of learning that we all want for our kids.

 

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Empowering Learners, Personal Learning Backpack, Personal Learning Plan, UDL Lens of Access, Engage and Express are trademarks of Kathleen McClaskey.

This post was revised and updated from http://www.personalizelearning.com/2016/09/the-personal-learner-profile-goal.html