Classroom Connections to the Spring Conference

At the Spring Conference I was able to attend several sessions by presenters who spoke about implementing more student choice in the classroom. One connection I made from the Spring Conference that (funny enough) I unknowingly began the day before the conference was using student choice and voice in the construction of rubrics for their assessments.

Specifically, in my Honors LA 10 classes I asked my students to write a blog post addressing this question: "Is the United States of America a dystopian society?" Students really took to the prompt and began writing immediately - they had lots to say. One thing I purposefully did when assigning this prompt was to leave my expectations rather vague. I didn't have any requirements aside from "address the prompt in a blog post." I did, however, tell my students that we would work together to create the rubric for this assignment, which would give them much more direction. They seemed perfectly okay with this idea.

When we began constructing the rubric, students brainstormed as a class to develop their learning targets. What did they want to be assessed on and how would I assess it? What's intriguing is that, by the end of the exercise, they actually created higher standards for themselves than I (if I had created the rubric alone) would have done!

While I did start this process the day before the Spring Conference, it was enjoyable for me to share this new aspect of student choice with the members in my sessions. Other teachers were sharing the common ways to offer choice, like

Crayons or Markers? You decide!
What book do you want to read?

but it lead to good conversation when we began brainstorming more out-of-the-box ways to include student choice in our lessons. 

Comments

  1. AnonymousApril 15, 2018 at 10:22 AM

    That's really cool how well it connected to what you were already doing! Sounds like it gave you some new ideas for implementation as well. How do you best guide the students in the right direction when giving them choice?

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousApril 16, 2018 at 5:42 AM

    Giving students choices can be a very powerful tool. It is interesting that your students held themselves to higher standards than you would have expected. Do you think this would be the case all of the time or was this particular lesson on a topic they felt unusually comfortable with and passionate about?

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousApril 17, 2018 at 9:47 PM

    Creating a rubric as a class is a great metacognition strategy. I'm pleased your students had higher expectations of themselves, so often I find our students or staff making very fixed mindset statements about their ability. You were making a class rubric for that one lesson based on the prompt correct? Any thoughts how to adapt that strategy to a trimester curriculum or final assessment?

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