Learner Variability Navigator | Learner Variability Project

Take the Tour of the Navigator

This tour highlights the Navigator’s key features step-by-step so you can find the research-based factors and strategies that best support your learners.

Get an overview of how to leverage the science of learning to support the whole learner.

Here’s how the Learner Variability Navigator works

1. Choose a Model

that represents your area of interest.

2. Identify factors

that you want to address in your product or classroom.

3. Get strategies

that you can apply now to reach more learners.

Choose Your Model:

MATH

LITERACY

INTERDISCIPLINARY

Math PK-2 Model

This model presents the science of learner variability in Math for grades PK-2. It identifies the factors that are critical to learner success at this stage and the strategies to help you purposefully support each learner.

Learn More

Math PK-2 Factors

Research has identified which factors are critical to learner success for Math PK-2; you select which of those to address.

Explore Factors

Math PK-2 Strategies

Based on the factor(s) you select, get research-based strategies and resources to help you design products or lessons that reach each learner.

Explore Strategies

Math 3-6 Model

This model presents the science of learner variability in Math for grades 3-6. It identifies the factors that are critical to learner success at this stage and the strategies to help you purposefully support each learner.

Learn More

Math 3-6 Factors

Research has identified which factors are critical to learner success for Math 3-6; you select which of those to address.

Explore Factors

Math 3-6 Strategies

Based on the factor(s) you select, get research-based strategies and resources to help you design products or lessons that reach each learner.

Explore Strategies

Math 7-10 Model

This model presents the science of learner variability in Math for grades 7-10. It identifies the factors that are critical to learner success at this stage and the strategies to help you purposefully support each learner.

Learn More

Math 7-10 Factors

Research has identified which factors are critical to learner success for Math 7-10; you select which of those to address.

Explore Factors

Math 7-10 Strategies

Based on the factor(s) you select, get research-based strategies and resources to help you design products or lessons that reach each learner.

Explore Strategies

Literacy PK-3 Model

This model presents the science of learner variability in Literacy for grades PK-3. It identifies the factors that are critical to learner success at this stage and the strategies to help you purposefully support each learner.

Learn More

Literacy PK-3 Factors

Research has identified which factors are critical to learner success for Literacy PK-3; you select which of those to address.

Explore Factors

Literacy PK-3 Strategies

Based on the factor(s) you select, get research-based strategies and resources to help you design products or lessons that reach each learner.

Explore Strategies

Literacy 4-6 Model

This model presents the science of learner variability in Literacy for grades 4-6. It identifies the factors that are critical to learner success at this stage and the strategies to help you purposefully support each learner.

Learn More

Literacy 4-6 Factors

Research has identified which factors are critical to learner success for Literacy 4-6; you select which of those to address.

Explore Factors

Literacy 4-6 Strategies

Based on the factor(s) you select, get research-based strategies and resources to help you design products or lessons that reach each learner.

Explore Strategies

Literacy 7-12 Model

This model presents the science of learner variability in Literacy for grades 7-12. It identifies the factors that are critical to learner success at this stage and the strategies to help you purposefully support each learner.

Learn More

Literacy 7-12 Factors

Research has identified which factors are critical to learner success for Literacy 7-12; you select which of those to address.

Explore Factors

Literacy 7-12 Strategies

Based on the factor(s) you select, get research-based strategies and resources to help you design products or lessons that reach each learner.

Explore Strategies

Portrait of a Learner PK-3 Model

This model presents the science of learner variability for grades PK-3 for learning 21st-Century Skills. It identifies the factors that are critical to learner success at this stage and the strategies to help you purposefully support each learner.

Learn More

Portrait of a Learner PK-3 Factors

Research has identified which factors are critical to 21st-Century learner success for PK-3 learners; you select which of those to address.

Explore Factors

Portrait of a Learner PK-3 Strategies

Based on the factor(s) you select, get research-based strategies and resources to help you design products or lessons that reach each learner.

Explore Strategies

Portrait of a Learner 4-8 Model

This model presents the science of learner variability for grades 4-8 for learning 21st-Century Skills. It identifies the factors that are critical to learner success at this stage and the strategies to help you purposefully support each learner.

Learn More

Portrait of a Learner 4-8 Factors

Research has identified which factors are critical to 21st-Century learner success for 4-8 learners; you select which of those to address.

Explore Factors

Portrait of a Learner 4-8 Strategies

Based on the factor(s) you select, get research-based strategies and resources to help you design products or lessons that reach each learner.

Explore Strategies

Portrait of a Learner 9-12 Model

This model presents the science of learner variability for grades 9-12 for learning 21st-Century Skills. It identifies the factors that are critical to learner success at this stage and the strategies to help you purposefully support each learner.

Learn More

Portrait of a Learner 9-12 Factors

Research has identified which factors are critical to 21st-Century learner success for 9-12 learners; you select which of those to address.

Explore Factors

Portrait of a Learner 9-12 Strategies

Based on the factor(s) you select, get research-based strategies and resources to help you design products or lessons that reach each learner.

Explore Strategies

Adult Learner Model

This model presents the science of learner variability for Adult Learners. It identifies the factors that are critical to learner success at this stage and the strategies to help you purposefully support each learner.

Learn More

Portrait of a Learner 9-12 Factors

Research has identified which factors are critical to learner success for Adult Learners; you select which of those to address.

Explore Factors

Portrait of a Learner 9-12 Strategies

Based on the factor(s) you select, get research-based strategies and resources to help you design products or lessons that reach each learner.

Explore Strategies

Transcript - Lynn Thoman LVN Transcript

Matt:
Hello SEL education community, my name is Matt Pearsall. I am the community manager here in the SEL and education community and I am really excited to be able to share with you today at the beginning the inauguration of our of our new speaker series when we start- we're having a regular series of community members and other people coming in and talking to us giving brief talks around various different topics on social emotional learning and I am not only excited to be kicking off this event but also really excited to be able to kick off at this event featuring somebody who had a chance to meet here before A long time SEL champion in the SEL education community, Lynn Thomas. And so we're gonna be talking about supporting learner variability and without further ado I wanto kind of introduce you all to Lynn Lynn can you tell everybody a little bit about yourself before we jump in?

Lynn:
Hi I'm Lynn Thomas I'd love to Matt. I'm really happy to be here. Really excited about speaking to everybody I'm an ed secondary school english teacher from dunville ontario and I'm also an HP Teaching Fellow and I really advocate for mental health support and mental wellness and social emotional learning. I'm really excited to be here today.

Great! And so this topic of supporting learner variability one of the things on it that I really appreciated when I heard that you wanted to talk about this was that this is something that we all, we, every educator deals with every single day and so kind of hearing how you this connection you found in a little bit you were telling me about it before we started got me really excited. So can you tell us a little bit more about about this this this tool that you've been using and and why it's so exciting?

Well yes definitely. I'm really excited to share it with you so um it's a tool that was introduced to me through being an HP Teaching Fellow and it's something that has been created by Digital Promise who are a non-profit organization who research and try and fill the digital learning gap. And the wonderful thing about it is like learner variability as we all know our kids come to school with all kinds of stuff in their backpack and everybody learns different and we try to adjust and do everything in our programs to try and support all those students and that's a real feat how do you do it for you know 30 odd kids in a room and that kind of thing and a lot of times it can be overwhelming when we try and think about well but how do I account for trauma? How do I account for social emotional learning? how do I account for any cognitive issues? How do I account for background knowledge? You know English language learner, there's so many things that it can feel overwhelming.

And how do you put all that together so the really cool thing about it - and it's called the Learner Variability Navigator - is that it does put all those things together and I love the fact that a lot of times we often think about when we want to do a social emotional learning activity it's very explicit and what I love about this is it offers strategies that are based on research to support any of the different variables or factors that affect learning. And it gives you teaching strategies and methodologies that support those things so you can build it as a thread throughout your program, like every single day and every single lesson without feeling like you're adding more. You know it's switching to how you teach something as opposed to teaching one more thing. And I think that sometimes can really you know it's it's a hard thing to figure out how to do. And you know what are those things it supports so well.

Matt: I think we got you got muted there Lynn there we go you're back

Lynn: okay so I'm having trouble picking which screen I want. That's the one. I got it. Okay sharing. Okay is it right can you see the Learner Variability Navigator? Yep okay.

So this is the Digital Promise's Learner Variability Project. As I said, Digital Promise is an independent nonprofit and their mission is to accelerate innovation and improve opportunities for learning. So basically, what they've done is they've taken research and put it at our fingertips. This is open source and free for all educators. So, you can see as we move down through their research, they've defined basically four pillars that are the main areas that they look at.

So you know here we have social emotional learning, and but we also have content cognition and student background. And then what they did is created looked at those pillars and looked at them in these different models. So they've broken it down basically into kind of numeracy and literacy, which basically they can hit on every single subject. Right, so for ease and because it's the one I'm most familiar with. So you know we'll have a look at the grade 7-12 model and explore the factors. So the first time I saw this, I was blown away by this part so here you can see the four pillars divided in the columns and you can see the factors that they discovered affected learning the most what's really marvelous is when I hover over any one of these factors you can see how some fade out and highlight and it shows automatically right there visually how they're interconnected. And I thought that was just brilliant because sometimes we would forget like you know I wouldn't have thought reading fluency would be affected that much by social emotional learning right and it really emphasized the importance of integrating everything together to support the whole child. And you know you can see like hearing is a factor you know it. I thought it was marvelous, but it gets better.

So on any one of these I can click on and it will take me to a summary page. And then basically outlines what the factor is here it can go it goes into a little more deeper explanation about those connections you know critical literacy so it talks about why is emotion why does critical literacy get affected by emotion you know why does competition get affected so those it really helps. It's, it's like the best teacher PDA out there, I think also.

And again explains all the main ideas so in emotion and if you continue down the page it gives you lots of opportunities to learn more. And I like this - the view measures and references. And it's a little different on for each of the factors, but what's wonderful is one you could dig into the references if you wanted to, but it also gives you measures. So sometimes, these are specific sorts of assessments that you could use in the classroom sometimes they're more specialized where it might be your school psychologist or something like that would deliver and interpret these sorts of assessments but there's a lot of them that the classroom teacher could utilize to then give themselves a better base of understanding so then if we go back and as I said sometimes there's a couple of different measures in there and and then you can see it goes into what are the strategies for this factor and before we get into there I will go back up to the top and you'll notice here we have strategies. So I'll show you that and again here we can see all the different areas down the left hand side and on the right hand side we see all the various strategies again that have been extensively researched and you can see just by the color coding what ones support each of the different factors and for example we can look at annotating. And again like before when I click on annotating I'm taken to a summary page that gives me an overview of what is this strategy and what is it like. But it's really awesome because it then gives me a perfect like a lovely example of it in action in a classroom. It also on the right hand side gives me an example of a technology tool that does a really good job in supporting this specific factor, so you know if you want to need to want to etcetera integrate technology you can find out what ones are really good at supporting that factor.

And as before you there's a ton of examples so you can really learn how are people using this strategy in their classroom and find something that really works for you and learn about it better and even dig into more research if you want to go down rabbit hole, which I have you know so and you can really find out different strategies and what they look like and how successful they can be and work in the classroom.

And finally up here in explorers what's really cool is you can create your own workspace and I'm just gonna show you directly the workspace that I created and what it does. Basically, it's you can go and select five or six factors that maybe you want to focus in on. You know, your class needs etc and that's what I did with this where I was given a new course to start this year our whole board is shifting our grade english courses to indigenous literature and so looking at that coming into coming back to school this year obviously I had a lot of things that I had to think about so I selected specific factors that I thought were going to be really important. So background knowledge because it's kind of lacking critical literacy always important in the english classroom but I also looked at given the emotions and adverse experiences and it's great because this workspace you can give annotation notes so you know I thought okay there's a lot of things that might be triggering just because of the subject matter this year emotions are probably going to be a big factor because of coming out of you know isolation etc and you can share the workspace so you could collaborate with colleagues wow you can just share it straight as a view viewing piece and the strategies that it came up with now it gives me a really great panorama I guess strategies that I can use and build on in my classroom so I know I'm supporting those different factors throughout what I'm teaching, no matter what the content material is.

This is really cool. This is, it's amazing yeah – the depth and breadth has just been phenomenal and the learning possibilities like as a teacher to see how those things are connected and learn the strategies that can support so many different things at the same time is just phenomenal. Yeah I think I mean one of the most powerful things I think from this is I hear a lot, I hear people saying "Well how do we move social motion learning into the classroom?" and I think there's a lot of real there's a lot of high level ways that we talk about that a lot but this really makes it very concrete it's like here's this teaching strategy that that probably most educators will recognize They'll say "oh I already do that, yeah like a gallery walk." How many of us do gallery walks all the time? Well now it's like, "Oh look at that, it supports emotion and it supports motivation. Wow, I wouldn't have thought that." Yeah right - or a guided inquiry. Like, "oh it didn't occur to me that that could be a social emotional learning tool."

Lynn: Yeah and and when when when when we kind of are aware of that then we can be a lot more intentional about how we're approaching it and saying that I'm not just doing this as an academic exercise I'm doing it as a social emotional learning exercise at the same time.

Yeah. Yeah, and I thought it was really cool you know obviously we still need those explicit times where you know maybe we're looking at the vocabulary and the social emotional word wheel or you know and that check-in and that kind of thing but to then carry it throughout the day in the various ways that you teach I think is just phenomenal. Yeah, wow. I really appreciate you you sharing this with us. I think I'd like to ask just one one question here at the end before we before we wrap up and say that that for people approaching this for the first time, what's the what's the where should they start? What's the what's the what's the first place they should go to, you know, What I - just again - it's pretty straightforward how they have it set up is just go to the Learner Variability Project, and I believe you put that n the chat for people to grab and I also gave you a link to a slideshow. Oh yeah let me put that I I made surrounding the learner Navigator Yeah sorry the Learner Variability Navigator and there's a ton of links in there and one specific link at the end resources is basically kind of a one-pager of how to get started and how to create your own workspace. And it's like a one-pager and there's a ton more examples of workspaces that are really really helpful to see how people have utilized it like one teacher used it and sent the link home of her workspace because it explained to the parents all the different strategies and factors

That is a really cool yeah really neat idea because I feel like that's that's something that that's often a real that's a it's a gap in communication between families and educators about about why are we doing things what are the what are the reasons what are the reasons that we do this why does education look different than it used to that sort of those sort of conversations though yeah exactly exactly. So you know there's a wide array of ways that you can use it you know for for your own learning to improve your own practice but also to reach out and make connections with your parents and community

Matt: Well thank you so much for sharing this Lynn, I know the thing I'm going to dig into in this as soon as we get off of here is I'm going to go look at the assessment tools that are laid out in there because that is something that I come that comes up all the time about what are some different ways that we can assess things that are that are they can be done alongside academics. This would be is going to be really useful to a lot of people. That's where I'm headed, yeah for sure.

Lynn: And like I said you could get lost going down the rabbit hole in this Navigator, but it's well worth it.

Matt: Cool! Well again Lynn, thank you so much. I really appreciate you joining us, and for those of you watching at home, I just wanna remind everyone that this is the this is the first of our of our social emotional learning kind of speaker series we're having in the SEL and education community you can continue the conversation right here you see the link to our group. We'd love to see you there. We'll be doing more of these. We've got another one coming up a week from from today with JV Johnson talking about emotional motion management. So, without further ado thank you very much, and we will see you all next week take care everybody. Thank you, Lynn.

Ebony Jones - Distance Learning Transcript

Ebony: Hi, my name is Ebony Jones and I'm the Dean of Instruction at a charter school in Memphis, Tennessee. Today, I just want to reflect and share with you the work I did with the Workspace, and how I used it during - to support teachers - during this time that we are all remote learning.

So, of course, things happened really fast during Covid-19, and we had to adjust and determine, I had to think about how am I going to support my teachers, and how are teachers going to support students. So, after selecting what curriculum we were going to

use to support students, and teachers were given their first lesson.

We had to get things out really quickly; therefore, teachers did not get a lot of direction about how to deliver their lessons. We had a team meeting. I explained to teachers that I wanted them to set up a YouTube page, but I didn't want to create pressure around like, they must have this and this, because this is new for them, and also, I am thinking about their stress levels with everything going on. But, I wanted students to have something to support with the lessons they were receiving. Teachers were very receptive to it. I gave them just a bit of a framework, but I didn't give them much direction.

Ms. McFarland, 2nd year teacher coached by Ebony:

"Even though we can't be together I'm at least glad that we can start sharing things with each other, at least through these videos, and text messages, and all kinds of stuff. So, I hope to get in contact with you a lot more in the coming weeks."

Ebony:

After teachers submitted their first round of videos and links to their YouTube page, I was able to look at it, and I really viewed those lessons as a learner. So I reviewed each video from beginning to end as a learner, and I jotted down notes and determined what trends did I see. After determining what common trends I did see in the videos, for example many teachers were just speaking about their lesson, they had their papers in hand, maybe turning the paper around, maybe for the students to see. But, it wasn't student centered or friendly for students, and I was saying I wouldn't know where we were, or the teachers were just talking to the camera. And they were saying some good things, but they were just talking to the camera and uploading it.

After looking at that, I went to the Learner Variability platform. And, in my previous video I started with the factors. But this time, I started strategies. I looked at strategies, and I'm looking at these trends, and what strategies can I use to address the trends I'm seeing in these lessons. I had to narrow my focus and say "What are your must haves? What do you want to see in every lesson teachers are watching? What things do you want them to consider?"

I had to think about cutting down instructional time. My teachers were accustomed to 90 minutes. So some of the videos were very long, and so I had to think about student engagement: we can keep students' attention with a video that's 20 or 30 minutes. I also think about families. What are the resources in the home? How much access to technology do students have? Are they accessing from a phone? How many kids or students are in the home using that same phone? So, we had to consider that. I had to work with them on providing shorter chunks for that lesson.

When I think about delivery, we really focused on the "model" portion of that lesson. In that "model", what do I want to see in the "model". Think Alouds, you modeling your thought process for students, your think steps. In that model, accompanying it with a Graphic Organizer or Essential Questions on your slides. That, if a student is going to complete the rest of this assignment independently, they have a good model. They have a question that I should be thinking about as they do this, "I can create my own graphic organizer in this lesson to complete the independent practice portion of the lesson.”

So it was about equipping students to complete the assignments independently. Some students were able to send things back in or scan things and others were not. At the end of each lesson, we do have a quick check for students to check their understanding for some levels of understanding.

And then some Wait Time (strategy), just considering when to tell students to pause the video, take a moment to jot this down or to consider this specific question before moving on. That can be difficult to do when you're doing remotely and you're not getting that feedback from students that back and forth we're typically getting that feedback in the classroom.

Ms. McFarland, demonstrating a lesson: "And then I can take what I learned from what she said, then put that together to become my point of view, or rather her point of view. How do I think she feels about the art, what is her point of view about the art? So I'm going to ask you to pause the video for a second, you can stop right here and jot down the details in that box. And what do you think? What do you think is her point of view about this art?

Four weeks in, I'm saying is that all my teachers are executing all the strategies, as far as the the instructional strategies. For the past three or four weeks, this will be the fourth week, they get feedback from me during the one-to-one call, and then during the team meetings on Fridays, I give them feedback that will impact the entire team. So, I can see evidence in those videos, if you look at some of the things that I've shared, you will see the teacher's first video, and you can look at her video, I think I shared her week four video, so you can see how she's progressed over time.

And I'm also thinking about what it can look like for next year. So, I didn't include everything in my workspace as far as my thoughts for next year. That will be another video when we get there. But I am thinking about if school is going to look differently, how do I equip my team over the summer months and over this time – what training, what professional development – how do I better equip myself? And I know family engagement is going to be a huge piece, and especially when the accountability increases in the school year. Right now, parents don't feel that pressure that it's a graded assignment, but we are giving engagement points through our school. And so, I'm just really researching and thinking about how I can engage more families in this process.

So, I'm going to end this reflection, but you can definitely look at my workspace for each item, each strategy that I selected. I wrote a small little piece just to explain my thinking as I selected this piece as I selected a particular strategy. So, thank you for listening, and we'll continue to do this work.

Take the Tour of the Navigator

1. Choose a Model

2. Identify factors

3. Get strategies

Choose Your Model:

MATH

LITERACY

INTERDISCIPLINARY

Math PK-2 Model

Math PK-2 Factors

Math PK-2 Strategies

Math 3-6 Model

Math 3-6 Factors

Math 3-6 Strategies

Math 7-10 Model

Math 7-10 Factors

Math 7-10 Strategies

Literacy PK-3 Model

Literacy PK-3 Factors

Literacy PK-3 Strategies

Literacy 4-6 Model

Literacy 4-6 Factors

Literacy 4-6 Strategies

Literacy 7-12 Model

Literacy 7-12 Factors

Literacy 7-12 Strategies

Portrait of a Learner PK-3 Model

Portrait of a Learner PK-3 Factors

Portrait of a Learner PK-3 Strategies

Portrait of a Learner 4-8 Model

Portrait of a Learner 4-8 Factors

Portrait of a Learner 4-8 Strategies

Portrait of a Learner 9-12 Model

Portrait of a Learner 9-12 Factors

Portrait of a Learner 9-12 Strategies

Adult Learner Model

Portrait of a Learner 9-12 Factors

Portrait of a Learner 9-12 Strategies

Review Whole Learner Topics

Try One of Our Guided Tools

Learner Centered Design Tool

Instructional Design Tool

Product Assessment Tool

See How Educators Are Using the Navigator

Using the Learner Variability Navigator with Lynn Thomas

Transcript - Lynn Thoman LVN Transcript

Supporting Learner Variability through Distance Learning with Ebony Jones

Ebony Jones - Distance Learning Transcript

Sign up for our newsletter for updates, events, and professional learning opportunities.

Success

Visit

Explore

Stay Up to Date

tabs

Announcement

Success

Error

What Is Learner Variability?