What is Choice?

 

Unfortunately, it just doesn’t matter how rigorous or well planned out your lessons are if you don’t have engagement! Engagement isn’t the only thing you need in your classroom, but it is a THE place to start. Once you have learners engaged, you can now take them to deep levels of rigor and higher levels of critical thinking.Voice and Choice are the two keys to more engaged learners. When given the opportunity to add their ideas and have a choice, learners from Kindergarten College will sit up a little straighter and listen a little closer. Voice and Choice often get lumped together because they rhyme, but they each have their own flavor, so we’ll look at each in their own video.

Voice is intentionally developing opportunities for learners to be heard. Choice is giving learners the opportunity to make a meaningful choice. Just like voice, learners might not know the choices they want to make to be engaged learners. They are pretty sure they want to pick where they sit and who is in their group. In both of these cases truly honest learners will admit that a seating chart and teacher selected groups is likely the best thing for them.

So where can learners begin to make choices? Starting small and controlled is a good place to start for both you and your learners. If you come to your learners tomorrow and say, “You can learn about anything you want, just make sure you can present it to the class in four weeks.” you are likely not going to get the results you want. In fact, in a sophomore level class designed around a learner's individual passions, many learners' first reaction was to Google, “What do I really want to do?”

Some places to start are to offer choice within parameters: -When you present your findings to our community partner, you may select your presentation style from this list: PPT, Prezi, Trello, or Wix. -We are studying effects of business pollution on the environment. Your group will need to select one of the forms of pollution from this list… -As we research , you may find your information from this list of trusted websites… The main point is voice and choice is not a free for all. It turns out wide open parameters do not increase creativity. In fact, it is working with parameters that often brings out the most creativity, so don’t be afraid to start small. You will see engagement go up with your learners as you find their sweet spot for voice and choice.

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