Individualized Learning

Many schools are taking an individualized approach to educating students. Some districts call it individualized instruction, others call it personalized learning, and still others promote personalization, or student-centered learning. While all of these terms may have different nuances, they all have similarities in that the goal is to meet the individual learning needs of each student.  For gifted students this may provide needed challenge and allow for students to pursue individual interests as a means to learn. For example, having an interest in a particular topic such as the stars, can be the basis for interdisciplinary learning. Reading, writing, math, science, history, and other subjects can be learned using stars as the main topic. Reading and writing about stars, doing math problems about star distance from earth, researching scientific facts we know about stars, reading the history of our learning about stars and outer space, and other activities make interdisciplinary learning in the topic an interesting and exciting way to learn the same content as others, but with an individualized approach just for the gifted learner, or other students in the class.  Some school districts have teachers write learning plans for students (often called differentiated education plans), and gifted students can help write their own plans, ensuring the details of their learning needs are addressed in the plan.

Some resources for reading more about individualized instruction follow.  These are only a few websites; you may explore more if you do your own web search.  

Personalized Learning, Great Schools Partnership
https://www.edglossary.org/personalized-learning/


Personalized Learning Plans, Davidson Academy
http://www.davidsonacademy.unr.edu/Academics/Personalized-Learning-Plan-PLP


Individual Instruction Plan Menu for the Gifted Child, Dr. Joyce VanTassel-Baska
http://www.davidsongifted.org/Search-Database/entry/A10272

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