Leveling up Student Learning with Student Voice and Choice
Leveling up Student Learning with Student Voice and Choice
Do you want to deepen student thinking and increase learning? This time of year, often teachers reflect on how to ensure and deepen student understanding with the time remaining in the academic school year.
We all want to be seen and heard.
No exceptions.
Giving students meaningful opportunities to express their perspectives and opinions is a powerful teaching strategy. Combining multiple modality options for students to express themselves can prove even more effective.
Strategies to incorporate student voice and choice:
-Design lessons that allow students to collaborate, discuss, and create.
*partner work, group work, think-pair-share, turn and talk, walk and talk, journaling,
scribble notes
-Provide authentic learning tasks that include topics that interest your students.
*survey students about their interests, gather student questions on topic to be learned,
classroom parking lot to hold questions that arise during lessons
-Allow students to choose from a variety of products to display their learning. Include products that are a variety of learning styles-visual, kinesthetic, verbal, etc.
*Provide options for students to choose from while being open to students creating
their own ways to demonstrate learning. Allow students to demonstrate their learning
through skills which students are talented in such as music, writing a poem, a dance,
mnemonic device, etc.
-Create opportunities for students to share their work publicly.
*Design lessons that include ways for students to share their work in their classroom, school, district, or public.
-Limit teacher-led direct instruction. Increase student talk and collaborative work. Teach
students how to collaborate, discuss, disagree, reflect, and peer review.
*Utilize protocols to structure group work, directly teach strategies on how to disagree
appropriately, use structures that ensure that every student provides input.
-Focus on questions, reflection, and feedback.
*Allow students to create their own questions for inquiry and assessments, incorporate
protocols to allow students to review and revise their own work and peer work.
-Be a coach.
*Design a carefully planned lessons that guide students down a learning path. Ask
more questions. Model inquiry and push students beyond passively waiting for answers.
Value student voice. Give students a chance to think deeply and share their thoughts. Incorporate student voice and watch student investment and learning deepen.
Wondering how to get started? Helpful articles.
7 Tips for Getting Started with Student Choice in the Classroom
10 ways to Encourage Student Voice
References:
Cultivating a pedagogy of student voice. (2023, February 27). ASCD. https://ascd.org/el/articles/cultivating-a-pedagogy-of-student-voice
Student-Centered World. (2024, December 16). Easy ways to give student choice in the classroom. Student-Centered World. https://www.studentcenteredworld.com/student-choice/