Levels of incorporating Student Choice

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Getting Started

Developing

Going Deep

Content

Teacher provides students with some form of choice with the content.

Teacher provides students with choice in the process- prioritization of tasks or path to complete assignments.

Teacher provides students with more authentic and autonomous choices with the content and process.

Activity

Teacher provides students with some form of choice in activity using either online or offline tools.

Teacher provides students with frequent choice in both use of online or offline tools and students can articulate why they selected an activity.

Teacher provides students with more authentic and autonomous choices with the type of activity. Students can articulate why a certain activity is beneficial to their learning.

Pace

Teacher controls the pace of the lesson and all learning activities. All students get the content at the same time.

Teacher has control over most of the lesson pacing, but offers students some activities that allow for self-directed pacing.

Teacher exerts little control over the lesson pacing, and not only allows students to move flexibly through the content, but allows them to determine when they will start and end an activity.

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Content Choice: Students choose buckets based on skill need. Buckets are color-coded based on level so students know they can grab any yellow or red bucket for the independent station.

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Content Choice: Students choose standards to focus on based on recent performance data. They have discussions with their teacher about their recent benchmark scores and set goals to improve them.

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Content Choice: Students have the opportunity to earn a badge on a topic interesting to them. They also have a playlist of activities to work through each week that includes sections for teacher small group, homework, and reflection.

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Activity Choice: Students are given a choice board for activities they can choose to show their learning.

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Pace Choice: Students choose where they begin their rotations by dragging and dropping their name on the SMARTboard. The small-group instruction station changes with each rotation. The first rotation is heavy review, the second is moderate review, and the third is light review + enrichment.

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Pace Choice: Students create personalized playlist each week based on their learning goals and offerings by the teacher. “Stops” might include time with the teacher, PL time, or activities with other students. The teacher creates a master activities offerings sheet each week.

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Pace Choice: Students work through one of three playlists comprised of activities featuring multiple learning modalities at their just-right level. Students selected a playlist after self-assessment. To learn more about targeting instruction with playlists, click here.

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Pace Choice: Students have must-do and can-do activities to complete each week.This offers both choice in activity, but more importantly, lets students determine when they will start or stop a “Can-do” activity based on priority.

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If Getting Started...

Content

Activity

Pace

• Use Digital Content to support small groups - Align resources from digital content providers/tools to support small group instruction. (Example)�
• Five Ways to Give Students More Choice and Voice [Article] - Five ways to provide more choice and voice in the classroom.

• 9 Simple Ways to Offer Student Choice [Blog Post] - Tried and true methods for offering student choice. �
• Use choice boards to allow students to select from a wide range of activities offered in learning centers (Choice Board Templates)

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• Allocate different amounts of time per small group - Strategically determine how long each small group should be based on the targeted needs of the students in the small group. (Example)

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• Individualized Playlists - This document will help you determine how to begin building playlists (Playlist Building 101)

If Developing...

Content

Activity

Pace