Student Choice in Education

Student choice is a topic and idea in education that can sometimes be hard to come to grips with. Of course it sounds good to have students be a part of their learning but to truly allow them to have say in what they learn and what is covered in the classroom is a whole other issue. 

Our education system has always and to this day is designed by curriculum companies giving teachers the information to instruct and ways to pass this information to the students. You will rarely if ever find a curriculum that asks the students what they want to learn and to base your instruction around that. However through some work being done at my school and some personal research, I am continuing to try different ways to incorporate students ideas into our daily classroom instruction. 

It started by having one of my team members sharing a reflection sheet that she was going to use on an assessment in her classroom. I took it and gave it to my students as well. It asked the students to grade themselves and then explain why they gave themselves that grade. The students were surprisingly very honest and knew what to grade themselves because they knew how confident they were in their skills. They also were able to describe why they were not necessarily as confident in one skill compared to the other. To me this was true student involvement in their learning. I am now able to use these reflections as a guiding tool in my classroom and will instruct students and what specific skills they need based on their reflections. Below are some specific examples of students assessing their skills on either standard algorithm multiplication or solving for volume using the equation Length x Width x Height.

Now while I did feel that this was one step forward to incorporating student choice in my classroom, I saw something on Twitter the day before break that challenged me to do more. The article was titled, "Taking the Manage out of Classroom Management" and it really challenged you to incorporate your students ideas into your classroom. So I decided let's give this a shot. 

I showed the students a Ted Talk about a 12 year old who asked one simple science question that turned into her and other students being the youngest published scientists in the world. This prompted the students to come up with one topic or question they want to discover about in science. It was amazing to see some of their questions. They were things I would have never even thought of. Some examples were:

• What is the physical limit of our body?
• Why do our hands get sweaty when were nervous?
• How do our reactions react?
• Why do we need more inventions when they pollute our earth?
• Ocean levels and temperature
• What are possible planets to live on?

These were just some of the examples that my students came up with. Now I am challenged with what to do as an educator? Do I go back to my curriculum and instruct students with what the curriculum says or do I embrace this student choice and let them discover and solve their own real-world questions? I think I know what the students would rather do and what I think is more beneficial to their learning. Why not let them discover their answers and tie the curriculum into what they discover? That is true authentic learning that is based on #StudentChoice.