Challenge
Inconsistent, disjointed methods for handling Personalized Learning Plans
Products & Solutions
- PowerSchool SIS
- PowerSchool Ecollect Forms
- PowerSchool Unified Classroom® Special Programs
- PowerSchool Performance Matters
Results
- Greater student engagement from contributing to their own PLPs
- Deeper insights into student progress over time
- Improvements in student achievement, especially in reading and math for younger grades
Marysville District knew they needed Personalized Learning Plans (PLPs) to help engage students in their own learning and link key stakeholder groups. But implementing PLPs was a nightmare.
“The implementation was like a patchwork quilt. It was all over the place,” says Ashley Robinson Thompson, one of the district’s Personalized Learning Coordinators. “Some teachers used Google forms, others used an archaic 3-hole-punch data binder, but the binders would sit on a shelf unused. It wasn’t a sustainable process. We needed something that would live on with the student from grade to grade.”
Robinson Thompson, who is also the principal of one of Marysville’s schools, had the idea in the summer of 2017 to utilize PowerSchool Ecollect Forms for PLPs. “I thought: If we can register kids in this user-friendly ecosystem, why can’t we learn about our kids this way?” she says.
They formed a team, which includes District PowerSchool Manager Rich Bernadella, and worked with Ecollect Forms to create a system that they’ve continued to modify over the past two years.
Tailoring Forms to Gather Personalized Insights
“We created categories as a way for students in K-12 to answer questions that allowed us to learn about them as people—categories like interests, passions, and talents,” explains Heather MacLaughlin, another Personalized Learning Coordinator at Marysville.
“We used a radio button mechanism because we have kids who haven’t learned to spell words yet. We were able to make it data-friendly and easy and not use much instructional time on it. We also have some open text boxes for kids to add things they’re interested in that aren’t already a button.”
The team also created a section for learning styles and “habits of mind,” that allow the students to share their insights and preferences, such as whether they like working independently or in a group, or whether they think they’re auditory or visual learners.
For the habits of mind section, the kids have the opportunity to reflect on wider-world dispositions, like perseverance, resilience, collaboration, teamwork, and organization. “Kids can say, I think I’m really good at XYZ, but I struggle with ABC. That information is good for teachers as they’re creating instruction down the line,” MacLaughlin says.
The district makes sure every student fills out their PLP during the first few weeks of school, with ongoing checkpoints throughout the year.
Visualizing Results
The intention of these PLPs, Robinson Thompson and MacLaughlin say, was to help students craft engaging instructional experiences for themselves. “Engagement promotes achievement,” MacLaughlin points out, and Marysville’s experience with PLPs is an example of that. “We have an uptick in our achievement data over the past three years,” MacLaughlin says. She points to reading and math improvement in the younger grades as being particularly notable.
The Marysville team also loves how Ecollect Forms data can be translated into data visualization programs to create profiles of students and student groups and to show progress and other metrics. And the data follows the student as they progress through school, giving valuable insights about their interests and learning styles to each new teacher they encounter. “It’s creating a history of the student that isn’t just grades and classes,” Robinson Thompson says.