You want to provide your students with choice so they will start to take ownership of their learning. You see other teachers doing it and it looks great, but you just don’t know where to start. It all feels so overwhelming.
I get it. I’ve been there.
But my guess is you already use choice in the classroom even if you aren’t aware of it. We do it without thinking about it.
Mesha, fellow middle school math teacher, and I discussed how it can be so simple and why choices are important.
Keep reading to see how our conversation kept coming back to how to keep it simple
Do you remember the first time you used choice in the classroom?
I think the first time I used choice was right after covid. We switched to asynchronous learning. Someone put out a choice board and I looked into it and really liked it. I gave it to my students and more students did more work that day than normal.
How often do you use choice?
I use it at least one way every day. My students are allowed to sit on the floor or in the hallway. They have assigned seats for warm up time but independent time they can sit where they want. They can use color pens on their notes. As far as assignments go at least two times a week, sometimes more.
Something as simple as pen color is choice. It can be done every day.
They can write on all the surfaces in my room so they always have the option of writing on their desk or paper.
What is your favorite way to implement choice?
My favorite way…I like providing more than one way to show their knowledge. For example maybe i will give them a color by number or a riddle. Or maybe printable or digital. For digital options i use desmos or google slides because i do a lot of card sorts or cut and paste. If i have a card sort, i will make drag and drop on google slides. It doesn’t take that long for me to do that. A lot of sellers on tpt are selling the two options together. I think people don’t realize they don’t have to choose but can give that choice to students.
Choice boards aren’t my fav because they are more work.
Something as simple as two assignments and you choose.
Or what order they do something in. so simple and no extra prep. I want you to do these three things but you get to choose what order
What challenge(s) do you face with implementing choice?
Sometimes it is extra work. Sometimes it is prep. Especially last year because i only had prep every other day. It was hard. Still did it.
And then something simple but knowing how many copies to make without making too many. Because if I’m given a choice of 2-3 worksheets I don’t want to make 80 copies of 1 worksheet but at the same time you can’t make 30 because then you run out.
Something small but stands out.
Fix…i end up making a lot of copies. Then on days when we didn’t have as much to do or I have an early finisher, they can work on that. Even if they’ve done it they can do it again. I use it for extra practice or something to do after a test. Extra practice doesn’t hurt them and most of them don’t remember the answers.
What benefits have you seen from giving your students choice?
Number 1 I immediately saw an increase in student engagement. Automatically they were like I get to pick what I do. I taught summer school. I used choice with them every day where I gave them two different worksheets to pick from. They were shocked. Lots of times they do both because they finish the first one. They don’t feel like its extra work because they got to pick. Student buy-in was great.
With a lot of my students with mods who do less work when I’m giving them a choice I don’t have to do that. They think they are doing less. It doesn’t stand out. They feel like they are doing the same as others. It helped me with my accommodations as well.
The Rest of the Conversation…
This is just a small piece of our conversation. We ended up chatting for almost an hour and it was so much fun.
We talked about This or That Boards and Tic-Tac-Toe Boards and how our students respond to those things.
Spoiler Alert…student responses are all good. You can grab the template for those two boards and more here.
Read more about why I love choice boards in this blog post.
Or if you want to start small, you can grab a template and sample choice board for warm ups here.
Want to hear the whole conversation? Listen here.
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