Advantages of Personalized Learning at CCA
Teachers collaborate with students and families to personalize learning by tailoring a curriculum to their unique needs and interests.
Now Enrolling for the 2024-25 School Year click here
Now Enrolling for the 2024-25 School Year click here
Now Enrolling for the 2024-25 School Year click here
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Commonwealth Charter Academy (CCA) is committed to offering a customized, robust, standards-aligned K-12 program that prepares students not just for graduation but for college or technical schooling, careers, or service in the military.
To develop curricula that allow for a personalized education program, the expert course designers at CCA plan, create, and source content and materials to deliver targeted, engaging courses for students across all grade and ability levels. We combine these top resources with our Pennsylvania-certified teachers, working with the entire family to forge a customized program that meets our students’ varied interests and skills, allowing them to enjoy the full benefits of individualized learning.
Personalized learning is a learning model that aims to customize the educational approach to suit the student, tailoring their programs to meet their individual needs, strengths, skills, and interests. The process involves customizing and adapting educational methods and techniques for each learner, considering their background, personality, and learning style.
Across the country, students enter their schools every day, bringing diverse skills, competencies, interests, and educational needs. Yet the traditional educational system is designed to teach them all at the same time and at the same speed. CCA recognizes that students learn in different time frames and different ways, and that is why a personalized learning model is important. It meets students where they are to give them what they need when they need it.
By enabling students to master skills at their own pace, personalized learning allows for customized paths to graduation, makes better use of technology, targets students’ skills and interests most effectively, takes advantage of learning opportunities outside of school, and more easily identifies the need for interventions to meet the specific learning goals of students.
We asked Pennsylvania residents about what goals they think personalized learning can help achieve. Here’s what they said:
At CCA, student choice is one of the benefits of personalized learning. Students and their families work together to choose what types of courses they take, and every course at CCA is filled with opportunities to practice new ideas and concepts and receive feedback. CCA creates a safe learning environment for students to make mistakes as they process new material and skills. This is a big part of what customized learning looks like. Traditional education, with its focus on rote learning and right and wrong, often prevents students from trying something new for fear of failure.
Some of the many advantages of personalized learning include:
In traditional learning models, all students are expected to reach certain goals at specific times, regardless of their strengths and weaknesses. We know that each student’s learning pace is different. Allowing children to learn more in areas where they excel and take extra time in challenging ones can help them get better results in the long term.
When students have no choice but to learn what everyone else is learning, they only complete tasks because they must. They perform better when they want to learn than when they feel obligated, and personalized learning lets them choose their own learning path. Taking a proactive approach to their own learning makes their choices meaningful, motivating them to give their best.
In a personalized learning model, teachers can get creative and present information in ways that increase retention. They have the freedom to choose a learning style that supports each student and gives them individualized attention, developing their creative and intellectual talents.
Personalized learning is important because it is student-driven, gives students more responsibility for their learning, recognizes each student learns differently, and allows for greater educational growth. CCA’s customized cyber education is a great model of what personalized learning looks like.
At CCA, we’re committed to a personalized learning structure so that every student can choose their learning path, feel comfortable trying new things, and enjoy lessons crafted to encourage their passions and strengths. Our mission to different personalized learning approaches gives our students access to the following benefits:
Charter schools and cyber charter schools were authorized in Pennsylvania to create greater flexibility for innovation within public education and to provide a form of public school choice. As a cyber school, CCA invests in customized academic programs in which students drive decisions about what and how they will learn. CCA meets students where they are in their educational journey and supports them in learning at their own pace and on their own schedule.
Because we are a cyber charter school, CCA can offer our students the best of both worlds: a customized education on their own schedule. CCA students have the freedom to pursue a wide range of extracurricular activities, attend field trips, hold jobs and internships, volunteer in their communities, enroll in college courses, and even graduate early due to our flexible learning environment.
Combining personalized learning and technology, CCA offers flexible learning options for students to pursue their education when and how it fits their needs. That means students can choose to participate in an online class session in real time, watch a recorded version at a more convenient time, or forgo the class sessions if that additional instruction is not needed for students to successfully master the concepts of a lesson.
Caring, flexible teachers offer online, phone, email, text, and chat options to connect with students and ensure they have what they need to be successful in their courses. Another benefit of personalized learning is that CCA offers whole-group, small-group, and one-on-one opportunities so students can choose their best learning environment.
CCA recognizes that each student is unique in multiple ways — in their past educational experiences, educational interests, and ways they learn best. Education at a public cyber charter school frees students from the requirement to be in their seats at designated times, enabling them to set their academic schedules based on their wants and needs, regardless of the time, place, and pace of the content.
Students can pursue unique opportunities outside of a traditional school’s brick-and-mortar walls, which allows students to explore career- and community-based learning during typical school hours.
CCA’s teachers work with students to determine their best learning styles and help them establish goals for success. Even better, customized academic programs adapt to students’ changing needs. The benefits of personalized learning allow CCA cyber school teachers, students, and learning coaches together to review their progress regularly and adjust goals as needed throughout the school year.
One of the benefits of personalized learning at CCA is that we believe mistakes are inherent in learning, and that’s why we provide multiple levels of support to students in their journey to success. Teacher-led guided instruction offers students opportunities to participate in a virtual class environment for real-time instruction, class discussions, and teacher and peer interactions. Students can also view a recording of these sessions at a more convenient time and still receive detailed feedback from a teacher while working at their own pace on assignments.
Also, teachers are trained to use formative assessment, which allows them to identify in real time the strengths and weaknesses in student learning to modify instruction for the student. That ultimately supports students where they are and helps them reach grade-level standards and beyond. This is what personalized learning looks like.
Additional support is available to students through small-group and one-on-one appointments with their teachers. CCA also monitors all students for support through the Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) model, a schoolwide initiative to provide universal screening to all students and then targeted academic, behavioral, social, and emotional interventions. These interventions are formulated by data-driven decision-making and involve the student’s full academic team of teachers, school counselors, and administration.
Personalized and student-centered learning is often more effective than traditional teacher-centered models. As teachers treat students as individuals and give them agency over their academic journeys, they are more comfortable taking on challenging tasks and working until they achieve the desired result. As teachers learn more about how to tailor their approach to specific students, they can adjust their teaching to engage and motivate students who may have slipped through the cracks in a traditional system.
Students can also tackle projects in their own time when their concentration and energy levels will likely yield better results. Optimal learning and achievement occur when students engage with the curriculum, which is more likely with a personalized learning approach. It provides students with more than relevant and engaging content but also focuses on creating memorable and actionable learning.
Every student at CCA is an individual, and we have created educational programs to bring out the best in all our learners. Depending on your child’s skills, passions, and goals, they can choose a program at CCA that supports their success. Our education programs include:
CCA’s Career Pathways framework is another tool we use to offer a customized education program. We are committed to providing all students with 21st-century skills, helping them discover future careers, and preparing them to succeed in school and in life.
Our career-readiness initiative, CCAWorks®, employs a flexible, exploratory, career-oriented mindset to help students discover and explore different careers within a field of interest. We help them gain knowledge, experience, and skills that prepare a student for life after high school. Students can explore any of the five career pathways at any point in high school, but we recommend choosing in grade 9 or 10. CCA offers the following Career Pathways for our online students:
CCA’s internship program uses Career Pathways to help students determine which industries might be best suited for their skills and interests.
CCA offers a robust Honors program for students in grades 3-12 to participate in a rigorous and challenging online classroom to meet the needs of advanced students. At the high school level, the Advanced Placement (AP) and dual-enrollment programs are added to the challenging course options.
The Honors program is designed to meet students’ advanced educational needs by providing personalized academic programs focused on real-world applications. Students within the program are required to participate regularly in class discussions and problem-solving activities.
Project-based learning is incorporated into the program, allowing students to engage in complex questions and challenges. Students are always encouraged to work above grade level with a rigorous customized curriculum that challenges and promotes their academic growth. Advanced courses are available pending a school counselor’s and administrator’s approval.
Working in conjunction with the general education curriculum, CCA has injected personalized learning into special education. We reach each student on their individual level by providing specially designed instruction and modifications based on each student’s individualized education program (IEP). CCA uses multiple sources of information to customize a plan for each student’s success, including grades, assessments, interest profiles, and family input, among others.
The exclusive CCA Achieve courses allow students who are several grade levels behind to receive instruction on their grade level while also receiving support to fill in gaps in skills from previous grades that haven’t been mastered yet. CCA’s personalized academic programs recognize the diverse and distinctive needs of each student by providing interventions, occupational therapy, speech therapy, physical therapy, and BCBA (board-certified behavior analyst) therapy to support students and families in-home or at approved facilities based on the IEP process.
CCA appreciates the modified pacing that students with special needs may require, and accommodating differentiated pacing is one of the benefits of customized learning in special education. Without the constraints of a typical classroom, teachers can group material into digestible pieces, while students can take breaks as needed. This is another reason personalized learning is so important. Real-time virtual classroom sessions, where students can meet with their state-certified special education teacher, are always recorded so students can access them at a later time more convenient for their schedule.
At CCA, personalized learning is the key to meeting our students where they are and customizing the curriculum so they can find success through graduation and beyond.
Working in conjunction with teachers, school counselors, career-facilitation consultants, and other staff, CCA students create customized learning goals, allowing students to leave CCA career- and college-ready. CCA’s personalized education program is built around our staff’s commitment to understanding the whole student, including interests, strengths, areas of need, and goals, so they can build a strong relationship with the family and offer guidance to support a student’s goals. This is why personalized learning is important. It is not a cookie-cutter education. It truly is a customized plan that considers all aspects of a student’s life, interests, and skills.
There are multiple benefits of personalized learning. Students have the option to take a wide variety of courses while pursuing internships, early graduation, summer courses, independent study, field trips, and other opportunities to meet their learning goals while preparing them to be a productive citizen who is ready for a career, college, technical school or to serve in the military.
If you are a Pennsylvania family ready to see how your child can thrive in a cyber school environment, enroll today and start your journey. Or, get in touch with a CCA parent to hear about their experience with CCA’s personalized education program.
