Giving Students Choice Whenever Possible

One of the things I love about being an adult is getting to choose. What to make for supper. Whether to read a professional book or take a class. What I’m going to blog on today. If I am more engaged and energized when I get to choose, certainly my students must be, too. In fact, research shows that choice increases student learning in all kinds of ways, including increasing ownership and intrinsic motivation, and activating brain areas for efficient learning, so I try to offer it whenever I can. As I’ve worked on this, I’ve found more and more ways to do it, including increasing content with jigsaw activities, having students choose vocabulary, offering several different prompts for writing or other assessment, or even just introducing background information, as I did Tuesday in AP Language. 

The piece we were going to read was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” Last year I was searching for background information and found this great Time magazine article relating how Time itself had decried King as an outsider and the Birmingham demonstrations as “poorly timed,” but 8 months later named King “Man of the Year.” This year I wanted to supply that article, so I made copies and put 4 in the middle of each pod. 

11th graders discussing rhetorical context for King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail"

But I also wanted more opportunity for students to exercise choice in exploring the rhetorical context. Sometimes students have remembered that the summer reading we did—Malcolm Gladwell’s David and Goliath—has a chapter that addresses the Birmingham protests. I got several copies of the book out of the storage cupboard and stacked them on a shelf. Several Chromebooks were unreserved in the computer lab next door, so I grabbed them. Finally, running my eyes over my classroom library shelves, I spotted the graphic novel March, which is one more medium for communicating the history of the Civil Rights movement, and might even capture someone’s attention enough to make them want to keep reading. I pulled it off the shelf and put it on display.  

I have the advantage of teaching this class first period, so if I leave things on the desks, I can count on one or two of the students who come in early to start browsing—those who aren’t scrambling to finish their math homework, get that burning question about that science test answered, or use every pre-8:25 minute to catch up on sleep. Then during ragged time after the period-opening vocabulary quiz, as students finished at different rates, I asked them to first read the article on their desk, and then, if they had time, continue their research into the rhetorical context of “Letter from Birmingham Jail” any way they wanted—pointing out the stack of David and Goliath copies on one side of the room, the Chromebooks at the back, and March on the top shelf of the bookshelf at the other side.

The result? Students engaged in every resource, had lively small group discussions when I asked small groups to share their findings with each other, and when I asked each small group to share one thing they’d discussed with the whole class (my usual protocol), we learned an important tidbit that informed the rest of our discussion over the next 3 days: that the letter was written on scraps of paper and smuggled out piecemeal. We wondered how that process had affected the organization.

Here are some other ways I’ve given my 10th and 11th grade English classes choice this week: 

• Writing: Pick 1 of the 3 poem rough drafts you wrote, and bring it to a final draft.
• Poetry assessment: Pick 1 of these 4 poems to analyze by fully annotating it, showing your mastery of relevant literary terms and reading strategies, and whatever else your brain does to grapple with the poem.
• Vocabulary: Yesterday I assigned each 11th grader one page from “Letter” to comb for 2 or more vocabulary words—primary focus on good argument words, but could be any words they don’t know, or, if there are no unknown words, ones they probably wouldn’t naturally use in their writing and want to try. We ended up with words from seldom to concur to zeitgeist! I’ll condense them into a class list of 20 for next week.

In each of these activities, students were engaged and learning. I will continue my quest to provide choice for students whenever possible not only because it increases student learning, but also for a purely selfish reason: teaching is so fun and energizing when students are engaged in their own learning.

10th graders annotating the poem they chose out of 4 provided