Giving Students Meaningful Choices

There’s choice, and then there’s choice. Think about it: In our classrooms, the vast majority of learning decisions are made by the teacher, not the learner. We dictate the pace, the resources, and often the very path of learning. But let’s ask ourselves, “Could more decisions be given over to, or at least partnered with, our students?” Whether a 12th-grade or kindergarten student, the answer, of course, is yes. But is there value in it? Also, yes. 

Practices surrounding student choice vary widely. We often see students given the illusion of choice, perhaps picking a topic of interest, a novel from a list, or the format of a project—e.g., “Would you like to do a poster or a PowerPoint?” All good things! But, the students may not be truly informed about how any of these could affect their achievement of the intended learning outcomes. All too often, students aren’t given enough specific information to consider when making learning choices, which makes these choices adjacent or maybe even unrelated to the learning.

But what if we consistently supported students in making informed choices about their next steps in learning? The more ownership we offer students over their learning journey, the more engaged and invested they become in the success of their outcomes. Below are some ideas that may guide students to be more deeply invested in learning.

Share the decisions

Partnering with students can seem daunting. We face real challenges in our work, and one perceived barrier to partnering with learners is the demand on our time and energy. It can seem like a complete overhaul of the course structure.

In reality, we can make very small shifts that open up the opportunity for student input—like offering a guiding question on one part of a larger assignment or project instead of altering the entire thing. A lack of a strong student ownership culture can leave a teacher feeling that students aren’t able to efficiently make decisions. This can be connected to a lack of clarity about what the learning outcome looks like.

This is where success criteria become invaluable in ensuring that students know what they’re trying to accomplish. Using the “I can” statement format (I can write a complete sentence including a subject, a verb, and punctuation) or using short measurable statements (Plug a, b, and c into a quadratic formula and simplify) allows students to own the process, the progress, and the learning.

Offer progress monitoring

Creating a system for partnering with students involves a combination of ownership, feedback and self-assessment, and genuine choice. When we use success criteria to make the learning goals transparent, we give the students a way to measure themselves against the intended outcome.

A progress monitoring system then can be as small as an exit ticket on the success criteria. This can be maintained by students for students when they make a note at the end of class about where they are on the success criteria and where they need to start tomorrow. This empowers students to gauge their own progress and enables them to make choices about what to do next based on their self-assessment.

We can use gradual release of responsibility to build and support the needed reflection and monitoring skills. Start with one aspect of a lesson, like a bell ringer, where the students check their progress on one part of the learning material—for example, vocabulary. This approach puts students in the driver’s seat to know if they are making progress, and it’s helpful to make it a daily and integrated habit of class.

Opportunities to Inform choices

Let’s talk about the “how.” If the success criteria and progress monitoring are in place, the choices students make can take many forms. Here are three key examples:

1. Select their resources: Students use their self-assessment to determine which learning resources to access next. The student sees on Tuesday’s bell ringer that they know three of 10 vocabulary words for the week. So what happens next? How about playing a review game—have a friend quiz them on the ones they don’t know yet. 
2. Learning stations: These enable students to engage in what they feel they need to be retaught, or they need more practice with, or would benefit from an extension activity. For example, say the students are working on the mapping project but are not able to find all five places on the midweek quiz—maybe the practice station is the place for them. Or if they are not feeling confident that they have a clear understanding of the needed skill, they head to the teacher’s small group for more instruction. The students choose and own the progress.
3. Peer groups: Students group up to accomplish their next step together, such as application exercises, demonstrations of learning, real-world applications, or peer teaching. For this, students need evidence for why they’re making their selection. Looking at the success criteria, use a series of sentence stems to help them select a group to join. For instance, “The real-world application group would be good for me if… I understand the three types of triangles, but I don’t know how they are used in real life.”

Bottom line: If we share the progress monitoring with students and offer them supports, they can make informed decisions about what they need to reach the learning outcome. They will keep getting better at it. John Hattie’s Visible Learning research tells us that student self-efficacy is strengthened when there are success criteria, self-reported grades, goal setting, feedback, and more.

These are among the most powerful student-centered practices. So why do all the work when we know that giving students a role in their progress monitoring empowers them to learn more and get there faster? Let’s shift the paradigm and let our students truly own their learning journey.