Personalized Learning & Mastery

Teaching That Sticks: The Science of Reading Meets the Science of Learning

Kim St. Martin, PhD | Michigan's MTSS TA Center

Teachers are engaged in extensive learning about district and state priorities, curriculum resources, assessments, and more. This session focuses on how to prioritize literacy practices aligned with the sciences of reading, learning, and instruction. Quality instruction not only promotes learning but also prevents social-emotional behavior challenges in the classroom. Strategies and resources for teachers to use will be shared throughout the session.

Session Outcomes

• Recall key words from the Science of Reading definition.
• Explore the Science of Learning.
• Explain how the Science of Learning informs instructional design and delivery.

Facilitation Over Differentiation: Personalizing Learning Through Adaptive Decision Making

Sarah Weisbarth | Inspired2Change
David VanderMolen | Inspired2Change

Great learning environments are built on the belief that every student can grow, succeed, and contribute. In today's diverse and dynamic classrooms, educators benefit from approaches that help them respond to individual learner needs with flexibility, curiosity, and confidence. More than a set of strategies, effective differentiation requires a mindset and facilitation approach that helps educators notice student strengths, identify opportunities for growth, and make responsive decisions in real time.

This session introduces the FiveA Model of Advanced Facilitation — Alert, Acknowledge, Accept, Analyze, Advance — as a concrete, transferable tool for personalizing learning with any curriculum. Rather than adding new programs or instructional frameworks, the model strengthens an educator's ability to recognize when students are engaged, when they are struggling, and when they need a different kind of support or challenge. It shifts instruction from rote delivery to responsive facilitation, freeing teachers to make adaptive decisions in the moment and leverage the teachable moments that arise unexpectedly in class. Participants will experience the model dynamically, practice it in small groups, and see how it supports educator growth and strengthens collaborative learning environments.

Session outcomes: explain the FiveA Model and how it functions as a facilitation mindset rather than a curriculum, recognize learning signals and use adaptive decision-making to personalize instruction in real time, apply the model to classroom scenarios with any curriculum, and use it in leadership contexts such as coaching, team meetings, and board conversations.

Beyond the Dashboard: The Feedback Loop That Personalized Learning Forgot

Chris Waston | EdLoop
Kyra White | University Prep Academy Middle School

Personalized learning was sold to schools as a content problem: pick the right platform and the software adapts to every student. Many Michigan charter schools made that bet, then watched engagement stall by year two, teacher energy fade and family visibility disappear. The problem is not the content. It is the loop.

Real personalization depends on a closed feedback loop across four layers: student work back to the teacher inside the same week, teacher out to the family in language they can act on, classroom up to the leader as a pattern they can steer with, and this year forward to next year’s teacher. Most schools have broken at least two.

A veteran Detroit charter principal joins to show what repairing one layer actually took. Leaders will map their own loops at their tables, find where the signal dies, and leave with a staff-ready diagnostic.

Session Outcomes

• Map the four-layer feedback loop in their own school and name the exact point where the signal dies
• Tell the difference between adaptive content and a closed feedback loop
• Apply a five-question diagnostic to any personalized learning purchase
• Audit with their own staff within 30 days