Personalized Learning Plan Skills Template

During my morning routine this morning, which includes looking through some of my favorite blogs,  I got inspired  by Bill Ferriters blog post in The Tempered Radical called "New Feedback Activity:  Not Yet/YouBet Lists"

Bill writes ..."So I’m tinkering with a new idea that I’m calling Not Yet/You Bet Lists.

Like the Unit Overview Sheets that I’ve written extensively about on the Radical (see here, here and here), Not Yet/You Bet Listsare designed to give students opportunities to track the essential content and skills that they are working to master.  But because they are simple tools, students – whether they are baseball players, gymnasts, pianists or martial artists – can use Not Yet/You Bet Lists to detail the progress that they are making in areas of personal interest and passion outside of school.

My mind immediately started to modify one of  Google Sheets  templates into a new version which could be used in student's personal learning plan using Bill's  Not Yet/YouBet Lists concept.


In my original  Template  students/participants each are privately assigned a number and fill out their skill level 'before" and after a course, workshop, summer camp, etc. by entering a value 1-4 in their assigned column.  The template uses Conditional Formatting to paint colorful displays of skill growth.  I copy the sheet from the first day unto a new tab in the sheet for later reference. The students update the first sheet throughout the course or at the end of a workshop.  

Here is an Example from  one of my Google Trainings.  This works as a pre-assessment and also for portraying the learning that happened to the class as a whole.

But Bill's  post in "New Feedback Activity:  Not Yet/YouBet Lists"  had me thinking about how I could modify the template so that it could be used for more self-directed student goal setting that might be used in a student's personal learning plan or even  embedded in a student portfolio.

Here is what I came up with for a new template to use Google sheets for creating a Not Yet/YouBet List.




In this template students put their skills in Column A, and enter a number 1-4 in Column B that corresponds with their current skill level.  I choose to use 4 skill levels, but this could be easily changed to include Bill's 2 (Not Yet/ You Bet). 

I added a date field and a Notes field.  The Notes could be used to describe how you learned the process, or include a short reflection, or even a link to longer reflection and an artifact of learning.   Column E is just a spacer.   Column F and G  use an If then statement to automatically move the Skill into either the NOT YET Column or the You Bet Column based on the current status. 

I also added a second tab to the sheet called the NotYet/YouBet List  that simply pulls out just those columns in case a students wants to embed only the second sheet in their portfolio. 

Now my thoughts are on how a teacher might easily assign this spreadsheet to all his/her students using Google Classroom  and the students could easily embed the whole sheet or only parts of it in a portfolio that uses Google Sites.   Inspired by the many ways that Alice Keeler has shared to help teachers make the most of Google Classroom and by the focus in Vermont schools on Personalized Learning Plans  (PLP) where many students are using Google Sites as their PLP portfolio,  I'm on a quest to discover how to leverage the management features of Google Classroom in ways that sets students up for success in creating eportfolios of their Personalized Learning journey. 

I think this could work! Thanks Bill Ferriter for the inspiration.  I'd love to hear back if anyone tries this or has a different idea for meeting this goal.