Development of Personalised Learning Definition

The concept of personalisation, as currently understood by Waterloo School, is that students have the ability and the will to positively influence their own lives and the world around them. Personalisation is defined as the capacity to set a goal, reflect and act responsibly and to effect change in their learning. 
When students are agents in their learning, that is, when they play an active role in deciding what and how they will learn, they tend to show greater motivation to learn and are more likely to come up with goals for their learning. These students are also more likely to have “learned how to learn” – an invaluable skill that they can and will use throughout their lives.
We also encourage agency with learning involving not only instruction and evaluation but also co-construction. Co-agency is when teachers and students become co-creators in the teaching and learning process. The concept of co-agency recognises that students, teachers, parents and communities work together to help students progress towards their shared goals.

(influenced by OECD thinking: http://www.oecd.org/education/2030-project/teaching-and-learning/learning/student-agency/)

Developing Choice and voice

As a school we started by looking at what student voice and choice could look like in classrooms and have worked across the year to give student authentic voice in their learning process by;
~ choosing what they write about
~ taking learning in their own direction
~ choosing what they feel is important to work on
~ choosing where they work and who they work with
​~ giving feedback to their teachers

Examples at Waterloo

Becoming more active

As we learn more around personalising learner we are looking at ways to encourage our learners to become more active in the learning process.
We are researching ideas from Guy Claxton and other active learning models to see what things we can bring into a Waterloo Model of active learning