What is Voice?

 

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. Being heard is a fundamental need for all humans, but learners seem to experience this need more acutely. In a world where learners rarely have a lot of opportunities to be heard, they relish the opportunity!

You may say, “I asked them what they wanted, and I didn’t get a single response.” True! That’s why I said we need to intentionally develop opportunities for learners to be heard. Learners want to be heard, but they are still learning how to do this well. Often learners want to speak out of turn, or without any evidence to back up their ideas, or are too afraid of what others might think. The protocols discussed in previous PBL Simplified videos will help immensely here, so be sure to check those out.

One great way to do this is to institute a student voice group. Select 5-7 learners to meet with you to discuss common topics learners may want to talk about regarding your learning environment. Pick the group to create opportunities for all learners. Don’t pick only the top performing learners. This is a great opportunity for equity to be able to hear the voice of all learners. It doesn’t mean you will take every suggestion given by the group, but it does mean that learner voices are being heard, which is really the empowering part. We are looking to engage and empower our learners not only to increase classroom participation, but also to help them learn to be engaged citizens of the world.

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