DEXTER, MI - Sixth grader Zach Ferree worked on a laptop in class on Tuesday, Nov. 22, looking at an outline of everything he needs to do this school year.
The curriculum for his core subjects - English, history, math and science - was laid out in rows of different colored boxes on the computer screen, and a blue cursor showed Ferree what he should complete in each subject area to be on track for the school year.
The green boxes marking lessons he had successfully completed stretched well ahead of the cursor in math. Ferree figures he could have his sixth grade math work completed in another month or so, and then he''ll move on to seventh grade math.
"I like it because you can go at your own pace," he said. "Last year, in math, I would always be way - well, not way ahead - but I would always be done with stuff and I would never really have to study for the math tests and I would still pass it at 100 percent. So now I can just go ahead. My mid-year goal is just to pass all the sixth-grade math."
Ferree and other sixth-grade students at Creekside Intermediate School as well as seventh and eighth graders at Mill Creek Middle School in Dexter are using a new personalized learning system called Summit Basecamp this school year that gives students more control over their learning.
Dexter Community Schools is one of about 120 school districts across the country included in the pilot of Summit Basecamp, which was designed by Facebook engineers as part of an initiative launched by Mark Zuckerberg and Summit Public Schools, a charter school network in California.
Summit Basecamp, which is provided free to schools, includes three main components: personalized learning time, which is what Ferree was doing Tuesday morning, where students work individually through lessons at their own pace; project time, where students work collaboratively under the teacher's direction to apply the concepts they've learned in more complex ways; and mentoring, where teachers make a point to talk to each student individually about his or her progress in the curriculum and set short- and long-term goals.
"It's the closest I've ever got to really personalizing learning for them in a meaningful way. It's something we wanted to do before," said teacher Jane Webby, adding that the academic skills the sixth graders are developing now will benefit them in high school and college.
It's still too early in the school year to have definitive data on whether Summit Basecamp is improving students' learning, said Superintendent Chris Timmis, but he's heard positive reactions from teachers and students so far.
Narda Black, who has been teaching for 15 years, said it was an adjustment at first to implement the personalized learning system this school year.
"It's been very different because it allows the kids to have responsibility and ownership for their learning. They're learning how to learn," Black said. "Whereas in the past it was more like, 'Ok, boys and girls, today we're going to do lesson two in chapter six of math,' now they're really taking that individualization. It's a self-paced program, which is great."
Student Ella Martin, who is in Black's class with Ferree, said school is easier now that she can work ahead in English and math and spend more time on history and sometimes science, where she it takes her longer to master the material. There are several ways to get help on a tough part of the lesson, she said.
"If there's somebody else studying for it, you can study with them," Martin said. "If there's not, you can always just ask Ms. Black or there's resources (in Summit Basecamp). Everything that's on the test is always found in the resources. Sometimes what you have to do is you just have to keep reading it over and over again. ... If you don't take notes, you usually won't pass the test the first try."
The personalized learning time - when students work on their own on laptops - makes up only 30 percent of the school day, and the cross-curricular projects account for the other 70 percent of students' core class time.
Teacher Denise Dutcher led her students through a lesson on scientific explanations in the STEM project time on Tuesday. To practice supporting their claims with evidence, Dutcher played clips from a commercial for the class, pausing the video frequently to ask students to discuss with a partner their claim for what the commercial was about and what evidence they saw that supported that claim.
The volume of the students' discussion rose every time Dutcher paused the video as students became more and more invested in the storyline of the commercial. That type of student engagement is another benefit of Summit Basecamp, Timmis said, because students can connect the dots to see the importance of what they're learning.
Next door to Dutcher's classroom, students in Webby's class transitioned from their personalized learning time to prepare to work on their projects. Already this school year, Creekside students have completed projects like writing a personal narrative in the style of Greek mythology, discovering what they can learn from a novel and debating issues like whether students should be required to play musical instruments or prohibited from drinking soda.
"I like it because, like, I can learn however I really want," said sixth grader Lindsey Wiczorek, seated with her friends Lauren Martin and Meryl Freiman in Webby's class. "I could use notecards, I could use a study guide to learn, and whatever really works for me I can use to help me learn. Then when I take the test, I'll pass it."