Overview
Math and science concepts can be difficult for students to master. Each student has different learning needs and preferences. Student choice gives students the opportunity to have agency over their learning while supporting scaffolding and differentiation in instruction.
This resource provides students with options for how they can learn and show their mastery of the content. It utilizes tools like menus and rubrics that can be used to guide students in what they’re learning while offering added flexibility.
See this Strategy in Action
Communication Modes Used by this Strategy
The Learning Benefits
- Student choice allows students to feel like they have control over their learning.
- Student choice is a strategy you can use for scaffolding or differentiating instruction. Menus, for example, give students guidelines on how to scaffold their learning, opportunities to challenge themselves, and confidence in proving mastery of the content.
Classroom Tactics
There are many ways to introduce student choice in the classroom. Here are some tried-and-true methods to use in your everyday instruction:
- Menus provide students will scaffolded activities and guidelines on how to make choices about their own education.
- Rubrics provide students with guidelines on how to obtain the learning outcomes they desire.
How Speak Agent Makes It Better
Speak Agent uses digital tools to enhance this strategy while incorporating the six communication modes: reading, writing, speaking, listening, viewing, and representing. When students open a lesson in Speak Agent, they are given options on how they want to practice with the academic content language. Activities can be completed in any order, started and continued later, and replayed as many times as they want.
- Multiple modalities for providing answers (writing, recording their voice).
- A choice of which recording to send to their teacher (as in the My Voice activity).
- Access to an instant translation feature to view content in their home language while providing responses in English (translanguaging).
- Control over narration speed, font type, and font size.
- A choice between reading text passages and listening to a narration.
- The ability to highlight key information or dim the screen around key information.
Around the Web
- How to Give Students More Agency in Class Without Losing Control (Education Week)
Related Content
- Other strategies in the series:
- Article: Language Strategies Benefit All Students
