PERTS Elevate Resource Library

Increasing Student Choice

Incorporate a new opportunity for student choice in your classroom so that students feel more invested and engaged in their work

Grades 3-5, 6-8, 9-12 All subjects

Overview

When students choose what they work on, they feel more invested in learning. This practice incorporates new opportunities for student choice.

For an example of a teacher who used this practice (and a few others) in their classroom, listen to the story of middle school math teacher Anna Stewart.

Through this activity you will be able to:

  • Identify and integrate opportunities for diverse learning preferences and interests into your lessons.
  • Provide students with opportunities to make choices about how they learn best and opportunities to interact with their peers.
  • Reflect on student feedback to refine your instructional practices.

Conducting the Practice

  1. Select a lesson plan you are using in the next few days or week.

  2. Review the lesson plan you selected.

    • What opportunities for student choice might you incorporate into this single lesson? Consider different learning paces, learning styles, and student interests.
    • Choice could take the form of materials, a process to complete a task, or work partners. If you are in doubt about students' interests, ask!

  3. Create a short list of materials you'd need to incorporate student choice into the lesson plan. Are students choosing the books they read? Make sure a selection is available or that students have access to the library. Are students choosing their partners? Make sure the seating arrangement accommodates a variety of choices.

  4. When you provide the opportunity for choice, tell students that you are allowing them to make choices about their schoolwork because it is important to you that they have the opportunity to make choices about how they learn best.

  5. Check in with the students about how the opportunities for choice felt. What went well and where is there room for improvement?

  6. Set a goal to introduce choice into at least one lesson each week. Take note of how students responded and what choices they made for their own learning.

This practice was adapted from the Meaningful Work Guide developed by the Learning and Development Group at the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research in partnership with PERTS.