TETA K-12 Committee
Elementary Interest Chair
One of the best decisions I ever made in my classroom was to let the students choose. Whether it is a small decision regarding when it is appropriate to leave to use the restroom to a big decision such as what will you learn about next, giving your students choice gives them a voice in the classroom.
Our students are living in extremely protective times. Their parents and schools are on guard about much of what they do: when and how to play outside, their cell phone/internet activity, what they eat, etc. Students spend much of their day following orders without any chance to express their opinion. As teachers, we need to provide opportunities for the students to be in charge of their choices to prepare them for the future of ample choices.
The Kindergarten class of 2013 will graduate from high school in 2024. I can only imagine what the world will be like when they walk across the stage to accept their diploma. Will they even receive a paper diploma or will it be in their electronic portfolio? Will they attend a top-ranked university from a satellite campus in their hometown or from their bedroom? Whatever the world is like for them, one of the things I am sure of is that the choices they will have to make will be endless, but of the highest importance to their success. If we start providing students with decisions to make now and let them play out the choice with ever-increasing real-world consequences, they will be better equipped later to make the bigger and harder choices.
I teach Kindergarten through 5th grade, which are five to eleven (sometimes twelve) year olds. You might think that leaving the choices up to that age group could be a disaster. But when structured well and with follow-through, the students can learn to make good choices and be a significant help in the classroom.
For example, when I was preparing to be gone for TheatreFest in January and thinking about my lesson plans for the substitute, I asked the students whether they wanted to work on their projects or have a theatre game day. We do not have game days in my classroom very often (if ever), and I was sure that the students would choose a game day. But to my surprise when we put it to a vote, they wanted to continue to work on their projects. I reminded them that I would be gone and the substitute would not be able to help them as I could if something came up. They still wanted to work on their projects. All I left for the sub was a brief explanation of how the students work in small groups or independently on projects they have chosen and how the room is basically laid out. I provided her with a list of what each group was working on. When I returned from TheatreFest, I ran into the substitute and asked her how it went. She said, “It was great…but I didn’t really have to do anything.” I told her that’s how it should be. She said, “No, I mean, they didn’t need me.” I assured her that that was how it was supposed to be.
I attribute my students’ success with the substitute to giving them a choice in my lesson plans. If I had simply chosen the game day for them, they would have had fun, but they also would be been less engaged because they were not getting to do what they really wanted to be doing: their work. Below are some examples of where you might give your students a choice:
- Who to work with: This is a hard one for a lot of teachers because they worry that a given student will not be successful because they will choose to work with their best friend who has a poor work ethic. But one time being unsuccessful and frustrated with their partner will teach them to make a different choice next time. My response to students when they complain about their partners is often, “I hope the lesson you are learning is never to work with that person again.”
- How to provide evidence of their learning: Especially when they are working on a project, consider providing the topic of the project, but not what the end product looks like. Provide the requirements, such as a certain number of sources and the information they must know, but how they present that information should be up to them. I recently had a group of students decide to do a project about theatre in other cultures. They decided to research Native American Pow Wows because a student in their class participates in them with her family. They created a talk-show called “Showing the Real You,” interviewed the student within the talk show, along with a slide show of pictures of the student’s family performing at a Pow Wow. They even included the sound effects of a live studio audience. I would never have come up with a talk show as a way to present that information, but these students learned a lot and were extremely engaged (and their end product was amazing!)
- Resources: Students in my class use resources to gather information and learn more. For each project topic, they have options in the type of resources to use. There are videos, websites, articles, and books. We know that each student learns differently, but requiring them to use only one resource type may hinder their learning style. Providing options allows them to self-advocate by choosing the type appropriate to their learning style. Two different students in my class wanted to learn more about pantomime. They could either watch two video clips of Marcel Marceau performing and have a discussion about what they watched with me or look at a book about pantomime. One student chose the video, the other the book. Both students proved their learning by performing their own mimed scene of equal quality, but I may not have gotten this result if both had looked at the book.
As you begin to provide more opportunities for your students to choose, be careful of your follow-through. If you let them vote on something, be sure you are willing to live with either option. They will know when you hope they choose a particular option, and they will demand the opposite just to see how you react. Create a classroom culture where their opinion matters and is valued, but also allow natural consequences to occur because of their choices. Then, process how things played out to help them learn from the choices in order to make better ones next time.