Children have the right “to voice their opinions on activities and decisions which shape their lives, and the right to receive and share information in different ways” Articles 12 & 13, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) (Bucknall, 2012, p. 4)
Why?
Providing choice in student learning has multiple benefits ranging from increased student engagement, to allowing for differentiation through providing appropriate challenges. The following chapter from “Learning to Choose Choosing to Learn” by Mike Anderson, ASCD may be of interest.
Similarly, student voice is important not only for sharing opinions and decisions on a student’s personal life and school matters, but also on emerging social issues. Research shows that even children of primary school age are aware of community, national and global issues, including racism, violence, and poverty, and would also like to be better informed and more involved in helping to solve problems (Holden, 2006; Taylor et al., 2008; Bucknall, 2012). In fact, student voice can allow for personalized, diverse educational experiences as it begins and ends with the thoughts, feelings, visions, and actions of the students themselves (Toshalis & Nakkula, 2012).
“Providing students with a place to voice their needs and interests, and a place for choice in the process, starts with teachers” (Garry, 2018, p. 5).
Students might:
- own their learning journey and develop as self learners
- share ‘power’ over the learning plan with instructor
- discover their passions
- experience contextually-relevant learning that is related to their own homes, families and neighbourhoods.
- share and discuss learning interests with parents and siblings
Let’s explore a few opportunities!
CHOICE
- Choice of Meaningful, Contextually-Relevant Content
- Learning is most engaging when it is relevant to students’ personal lives.
Encourage students to respond to your questions by looking around in their environments; home, backyard or neighbourhood. For example, in Math, you might ask them what 2D shapes or 3D shapes, patterns or mathematical representations they see in the world around them; at home, from a window or outside. - In a science lesson on features of mammals or reptiles, encourage students to come up with their own examples from a book or an online image, take a photo, label it, and share with the class. The various shared examples will foster a better understanding across students, and allow for peer feedback.
- Learning is most engaging when it is relevant to students’ personal lives.
- Choice of Books
- Ask students to read books of their choice and prepare general questions that would support their development of skills. Pernille Ripp (teacher and author) offers sample question in her article, “Switching to Remote Learning While Still Offering Choice”.
- Choice of Instruction
- Choice of Activity
- There is a rich pool of choice boards that have been developed recently by educators for various subjects. John Spencer shares “4 Ways to craft choice menus” in his blog and describes how a teacher might create choice boards that don’t overwhelm learners.
- Here are a few:
- Interesting choice boards on acts of kindness, math, family time and reading choices developed by W. R. Odell School.
- To develop subject activities in relation to competency goals, S. Moore and K. Campbell created these to support a home learning individual education plan (IEP). Visit 5 Moore Minutes for more on inclusive ed.
- This blog post by Caitlin Tucker shares an example of a Choice Board with offline activities to engage students through a process of reflection, documentation and sharing.
- An inspiring choice board developed by educator, Laurie McIntosh, for kindergarten activities on literacy, numeracy, wellness, and more.
- While not specifically a choice board, these schedules of literacy, numeracy, and outdoor learning activities developed by Grand Erie Schools afford an element of choice, variety and structure.
- Choice of Process
- Ask your students if they prefer working individually, in pairs, or in groups?
- Choice in expression of assessment response
- Provide students with a wide range of choices regarding the way they share their response. Check this post for examples of multimodal student response systems
- For read-aloud resources, visit this post in the Scarfe Sandbox.
- Encourage students to share their findings multimodally using apps like ShowMe.
- Soroya Smith, second grade classroom teacher, shares ideas, for some apps that allow for student interaction with read-alouds.
- Choice of Mode (for online or in person learning)
- If teaching online, try not to rely too heavily on synchronous online sessions, as it might cause stress to some students. It can be supportive to NOT require the use of video camera when doing synchronous web conferences as this can make visible issues of poverty/circumstance. (That said, allowing video may also help learners feel more connected… as always, important to know your students and context)
- Give students the choice to work online, or work offline on an activity and share it afterwards using an app, for example using ShowMe. This same offer could be made for in class presentations… pre-record or present live…
- For more ideas, I was inspired by podcast by Brian Aspinall (teacher and teaching excellence award winner) and Michelle Hunter (grade 6 teacher) on creating opportunities for student choice during remote learning.
VOICE
As you are providing students with choices, consider inviting them to voice their opinions, ideas and preferences.
- Feelings
- At the start of a class session, you might encourage students to share their feelings for the day (once a safe environment and guidelines for the community have been clearly established – you know your context). An anonymous quick poll might be incorporated here instead of ‘vocal and identified’ sharing. Providing opportunity for students to voice their emotions in a safe, supportive environment, helps you know where the class is at and also allows students to feel they are not alone.
- Interests and Preferences
- In order to allow for personalized learning, encourage students to share their interests and learning preferences to inform the creation of choice boards..
- Issues that matter: Students as Researchers
- An interesting movement, Students As Researchers (SARs) creates a new role for children in social research and gives them a voice (Bucknall, 2012, p. 3). By allowing students to act as researchers (SAR), their perspectives and voices are allowed to come to center stage and students are empowered “to bring realities of everyday life to the attention of the staff” (Thomson & Gunter, 2007). Choice of research topics allows school staff to perceive unseen issues. Students might even explore their own feelings, the challenges and possibilities with respect to remote learning, and what suggestions they have. Similarly, students could search societal issues of concern. For example, students could discuss their roles at a time of the pandemic.
- Podcast to share ‘voice’
- All class response strategies rather than students sharing one at a time in a whole group can provide more inclusive opportunities to engage in class discussion. Similarly, incorporating various discussion strategies in the classroom can improve thinking, sharing and learning.
- Podcast to share ‘voice’
- As a means to share their opinions or research, students could create their own podcasts, videos, vlogs, blogs, images/memes where they voice their opinions and share with a larger audience. In a reflection on their own experience creating podcasts with students published in Edutopia, “A Way to Promote Student Voice – Literally”, teacher Paula Diaz provides some suggestions and examples.
Guest Post: Nashwa Khedr, EDCP graduate student, project assistant 2020; editing & contributions by YD
References:
Bucknall, S. (2012). Children as Researchers in Primary Schools. London: Routledge, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203116302
Holden, C. (2006) ‘Concerned citizens: children and the future’, Education, Citizenship and Social Justice, 1(3):231–247.
Garry, Adam, et al. Personalizing Learning Through Voice and Choice: (Increasing Student Engagement in the Classroom), Solution Tree, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ubc/detail.action?docID=5105830.
Taylor, N., Smith, A. and Gollop, M. (2008) ‘New Zealand children and young people’s perspectives on citizenship’, International Journal of Children’s Rights, 16:195–210.
Thomson, P. & Gunter H. (2007) The Methodology of Students-as-Researchers: Valuing and using experience and expertise to develop methods. Discourse: studies in the cultural politics of education, (3), 327-342.
Toshalis E. & Nakkula, M. J. (2012). Motivation, Engagement, and student voice . The Students at the Centre series. A Jobs For the Future Project. Retrieved from http://www.edugains.ca/resourcesSV/StudentVoiceResearch/MotivationEngagem entandStudentV oice.pdf
United Nations (1989) ‘Convention on the Rights of the Child’, UN General Assembly, Document A/ RES/44/25. Online.
