{"id":4896,"date":"2018-05-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-05-01T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/blog\/cw_post\/meeting-students-where-they-are\/"},"modified":"2020-02-05T13:05:14","modified_gmt":"2020-02-05T18:05:14","slug":"meeting-students-where-they-are","status":"publish","type":"cw_post","link":"https:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/cw_post\/meeting-students-where-they-are\/","title":{"rendered":"Meeting Students Where They Are"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"iNACOL<\/a>, CompetencyWorks, and reDesign<\/a> released the final version of Meeting Students Where They Are<\/a> today that was prepared for the 2017 National Summit on K-12 Competency-Based Education<\/a>. It\u2019s a fascinating paper \u2013 I\u2019ve read it a zillion times and I learn something new every time. (FYI: reDesign<\/a> has a lot of other great resources on mastery learning<\/a> on their website.)<\/p>\n

Figuring out how to \u201cmeet students where they are<\/a>\u201d to ensure they are repairing gaps, reaching proficiency, able to access rigorous (as in higher order skills) learning, and growing at a rate that will prepare them for college and careers close to age 18 (because few high school students want to hang out in high school after their friends leave) is one of the biggest challenges we are facing. Too often schools are still organized to deliver grade-level standards or they revert back to something that looks horrifically close to tracking. There is a third way (and I\u2019m guessing a fourth and fifth way) \u2013 and reDesign sketches out what it can look like.<\/p>\n

There are a lot of resources in this paper, and my number one recommendation if you don\u2019t do anything else is to watch Austin\u2019s Butterfly. I had seen it in another context and I\u2019ve never recovered: I had never realized how low my expectations of children were. Watching this video really helped me understand what strong question-asking, effective feedback, and opportunity for revision means for learning.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=dOSiU42P8Gc<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve also come to realize that none of us operate with one zone of proximal development. We can say \u201cthe\u201d zone of proximal development, but in fact the breadth and depth of that zone is based on several variables:<\/p>\n