Differentiating with Learning Menus

As I looked out over my classroom, I saw kids completely NOT on the same page. Literally. Five were sitting in a group, talking about the differences between conduction and radiation. Five more were scattered, sitting alone, coloring pages of cut-outs to glue into their interactive notebooks. There were three students with their Chromebooks open, taking the quiz on TEKS 6.9 A. Another five were using textbooks, iPads, and dictionaries to look up new vocabulary words and fill in Frayer models. Yep...it was going well. My class was up to their elbows in personalized learning. It was beautiful and ugly, neat and messy, streamlined and frustrating. It was awesome. It had kids engaged. It needed tweaking. I still have much to learn and even more to try out. My first attempt at using a personalized learning menu was definitely a dynamic work-in-progress and I can't wait to try it again.