When it comes to building a digital education world, it takes a village. At least it does at the Woonsocket Education Department. To be exact, it takes six. In this case, those individuals are Dr. Angela Holt, Director of Curriculum and Instruction, Sue DeRiso, Director of Literacy, Dawn Morelle, Assistant Director of Special Education, Rania Aghia, ELL Coordinator, Heather Neil, Blended Learning Coach, and Jessica Donato, Instructional Coach at Woonsocket Education Department. In what may be Little Rhodie’s biggest secret, these six digital experts from Rhode Island walk you through the tips, tricks and methods they have found to make their district hum with success.

According to Dr. Holt, “We worked with identifying three questions that can be used to support self-efficacy, self-paced learning for students. We really want students to take ownership of their learning, and students and teachers truthfully are able to answer these simple three questions. Then they know what they're learning, right? So the three simple questions are, What are we learning? Why are we learning it? And, How can we demonstrate our learning? We then added a plus one because we realized we also need to think about, what do we already know about the content that we're looking at and that we're going to be learning about for that day?”

It’s all part of building independence and giving the students agency, taking charge of their own learning so they can go the distance. From stem to stern, Woonsocket has a method to their madness, and the beneficiaries are the students, the families and the community. You’ll want to tune in and watch every minute. There is much to learn, and so much to bring home to your own school or district.