Self Paced Classroom: Turning your resources and curriculum into a self paced setup!

​  Ok, we’re off the PD train for a little bit and onto one of our favorite topics, the self paced classroom! We’ve been talking about the steps to building great curriculum and finding resources that make your curriculum engaging but today we talk about the ultimate way to differentiate that great and engaging curriculum: making your curriculum self paced. Not sure what I mean by that? Click here for more of our self paced blog entries!

Back to today though! How can you take that fabulous curriculum you worked so hard on and use it in a self paced classroom? Honestly, if you have done all of the ground work on finding resources, the rest gets a lot easier.

To start
We suggest trying a self paced unit before fully committing to a self paced classroom. Testing out a unit will give you a good idea of whether or not it works for your students and for you. So right now, take a minute and think about a unit you teach that you would consider making self paced.
Do you have it? Alright, time to figure out how to make it hypothetically self paced! 

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​Go back to the meat of your curriculum to start! Ask yourself these questions.

• What standard(s) is the focus of the unit?
• What essential skills or content do students need to demonstrate?
• What can students do or produce to demonstrate mastery?

​You can probably answer all of these questions pretty easily because they are questions every teacher has to think about regardless of the setup of their classroom. In the table below you can see an example from a unit we each chose to make self paced. Becca gives short assessments and a final unit test. Her department gets 100% of their grades from quizzes and tests so that is important to continue to use though she would also like to integrate a project into this unit. Danielle also uses a quiz as her way to test for mastery in this unit. ​

 Now that you have the end goal in mind, what will you do with your resources to make this unit self paced?

• How will you provide expectations?
• What resources can students use?
• How will you monitor student progress? 
• How will students monitor their own progress?
• How will students receive feedback and how often will they receive it?

Something to keep in mind when you are changing to a self paced classroom is that you typically aren't going to spend a lot of time speaking to the class as a whole. Many of the things that you ask students to do need to be self guided.

    For Becca, she found it useful to give a short version of each lesson about twice a week to the whole class. If students were already ahead of the material she was teaching, they just kept working on their own or assisted her in the lesson. Everyone else was given a short version of the notes but mainly a lot of examples. When she was finished, it was pretty easy for her to tell if students were completely lost or ready to work. She could then work with small groups to help those who were lost understand but all of the other students were still working on their own. With online lecture videos, fill in the blank notes, examples with answer keys, and links to immediate feedback math problems, all students were working on what they needed to and she was still able to help students understand parts that they were confused on. Students would decide when they were ready to take a 5 question quiz corresponding with the lesson they felt they had completed and get immediate feedback. Whether they passed it or not, they would show Becca their score which gave Becca the perfect time to check in on progress and either congratulate them on their success or help them see their mistakes. Students could tell whether they were "on track" or not by looking at the checklist of mastery quizzes. While having a true deadline is not completely self-paced, we all have a last day of school and students need to understand what they are expected to complete. Having suggested due dates let them know what they needed to do and helped them monitor their progress and understand the expectations. 

For Danielle, it really comes down to working with small groups. The students go through self-guided material, but in addition to the self-guided material Danielle does small group instruction twice a week on average. The self-guided material is a variety of activities that she used to do as a whole class that are modified for self-paced and some new ones she has found or created. The students have access to videos, website, books, etc for the activities and many of them are not online activities. She still does hands-on activities as much as possible. For the small group activities, she picks particular skills that correlate to where students are in the curriculum and has mini lessons that she does with the students. This allows Danielle to have carved out time with each student and make sure that they are understanding the material. 

Danielle also makes it clear that, if any student would like, they can schedule class time to work with Danielle in a small group or 1:1 and work on specific content. Danielle also uses formative assessment to create remediation small groups. Students have to complete 2-3 formative assessment activities per unit and they have to be reviewed with Danielle before they can move forward. This allows Danielle to check for understanding frequently and forces students to pause and make sure they understand material before the summative assessment. 

Danielle also makes a point on certain days of the week to do what she calls 'rounds'. She goes around the room and talks to each student about their progress and goals for the content and class. This is when many students make appointments for small groups or she assigns students to specific small groups. It is a really great way to check in and have one on one conversations with students. 

We've filled out this section of the template below to give you a snapshot version of what it looks like! These are the questions that lead you to the logistics of your self paced unit. 

Now for the setup and what your classroom will look like during this unit:

• How will you communicate about this process with parents and peers?​
  • This set up will be very foreign to most parents and peers. We suggest sending home a letter as well as having materials available at open houses and parent teacher conferences so parents can see what their students are doing in class. If you have a study hall type of time where your students may be in another classroom, it would be great to let other teachers know what your students can be working on so they continue to get things done! We have our communication letters in our TPT store!
• How will you communicate about this process with students?
  • Constantly is the correct answer here. Throughout the first unit of the year (or whichever unit you pick) you will need to reiterate expectations for your students. We use a self-regulated work rubric in our rooms. We blow this rubric up to a poster size as well as print out a copy for each of our students so they can reference it daily. Becca takes a few minutes at the beginning of each class to let everyone know what is expected for the day. She also writes on the board all of the possible things that students may be working on that day as a quick reference for getting students back to work. It is important to give a lot of feedback throughout this unit, too, so students can not only understand what they are learning but how they are learning. 
• How will you differentiate your expectations, resources, etc.
  • Having a self paced room is incredibly eye opening. You will notice who is self motivated and who has a tendency to be lazy. When you talk to those who aren't getting work done you will discover some students who need a little push to start getting things done but you'll also find students who are going through things at home you never would have imagined. You'll also discover students who aren't lazy but just truly need a modification. At this point you have picked apart every bit of your material and laid it out like a map for you students to follow. In a self paced classroom it is so easy to take out one of those pitstops or adapt it with no one else the wiser. That student will get the modification needed and never have to feel like they have been singled out in the class. You will see students excel that you didn't expect to and may be up for tutoring, an extra project, or even a competition you find online! Becca had a student who mastered all of the Geometry concepts in her class a month before school was out. She had him find a MOOC (a massive open online course) that he was truly interested in and work on it the remainder of the year. Modifications are not only for those who need things to be a bit easier. Don't forget to come up with some ways to challenge your students, too!
• How will you get feedback from students and adapt your plans?
  • You may try a unit and decide all of the running around during class and the up front work necessary is not your cup of tea. Maybe it is but you still need to check in with your class and see how they are feeling about it. Both Danielle and Becca have their students take a Google form survey at the end of each quarter to gauge how students are doing and look for ways to improve the process. Both of us have had overwhelmingly positive feedback from our students for a lot of reasons. Here are a couple of things our students have said:

How can we not advocate for this process when we see how much it has meant to our students? This is why we do it. This is why we love it!

Here is the plan for the communication of a self paced classroom at a glance! We have a lot of the items we use available on our TPT store!
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 In the end, you have to do what is best for you and your students. Feedback is so important not only to let you know how the student feel about the process but to get ideas for how to continue to improve your class and the positive feedback has lead us to continue and advocate for self paced classrooms. If it doesn't work for you and your class, abandon ship after one unit and do what you need to do!  

If you are really interested in attempting the self-paced learning concept, we recommend starting with one unit or a specific project or skill that you could have students work on at their own pace throughout the year or semester. Check out the self-paced classroom section of our blog to see all of the pieces we went through to get our classes started. This is something that we are really passionate about and it has helped students learn in our classes. We are still trying to improve as well and we welcome any suggestions and ideas from other who have or plan to take the plunge into self-paced learning!

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Download the template for free here!