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From Inclusion to Empowerment: A Rubric

This article from Edutopia briefly discussed the benefits and evidence of student voice. One of the most helpful aspects from the article is this 4-step rubric of sorts that enables teachers to see what stage they might be at, and possible next steps.
To access a more print-friendly version of the rubric, click here.

Choice and Voice in the IB Classroom

OVERVIEW

Teaching an International Baccalaureate (IB) class is hard enough: so much content, a required number of course hours, and a high-stakes exam at the end (to name a few stresses). Many teachers of IB and other high-level or intensive programs are hesitant to incorporate student voice into their lessons because they feel they don't have time or that the curriculum does not allow for it. Of those who have bravely ventured into the world of student voice in their IB classrooms, many have found that they gain time through student interest and their depth of understanding.

STUDENT CHOICE AND VOICE

The IB's mission statement is to "encourage students across the world to become active, compassionate and lifelong learners who understand that other people, with their differences, can also be right." (IBO, 2009) Giving students a voice in their education promotes interest, which not only causes them to be an active learner, but also fosters deep, authentic learning, which can prompt them to be lifelong learners. The program's emphasis on inquiry and student lines of questioning encourages students to direct their own learning within the different subject groups.

EXAMPLE

Clare teaches high school social studies in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Inspired to amplify the students' voices into her own classroom, she facilitated more student choice in her projects and class activities, including her IB classes. Here is what she has to say about her experience:

RESOURCES

Encouraging high school voices:

• Including Student Voice - Edutopia article
• Vt. High School Takes Student Voice to Heart - EdWeek article

CITATION

International Baccalaureate Organization. (2009). The Diploma Programme: A Basis for Practice.

20% Time aka 'Genius Hour'

OVERVIEW

The epitome of enquiry-based learning: each of these experiences (20% project and Genius Hour) may differ slightly, but both involve student designing their own learning from the ground up. Learners choose the topic, the resources (including contacting experts where needed) and define how they are going to reach their own goals over a set period of time. At the end, they are usually expected to present their learning and reflect on the process.
Apparently this concept of setting working hours aside for 'passion projects' began with 3M and resulted in products such as Post-It notes. Google followed the model and has since gone from a simple search engine provider to the brand that gives us Google Apps, Google Cardboard and Gmail, to name but a few.
By allocating time in our lessons for students to follow their interests and forge their own learning pathway, we can harness the impact of this model in our classrooms and let students design their own learning experiences.
(This will be more challenging to facilitate in exam classes, but you don't have to go it alone! Teachers can team up to provide perhaps a percentage of class time in their subjects which then adds up to hours per week for students to work on these projects.)

STUDENT CHOICE AND VOICE

Following this concept, students have more or less complete freedom (according to the teacher's comfort level) to pursue learning in any domain. Time is allocated specifically for students to design their own learning experience across a lesson, a series of lessons (within a subject area) or every lesson (in school days) for a limited amount of time. There is no method that can surpass this approach in terms of students having complete agency over their learning.

EXAMPLE

This is a presentation I recently used as an invitation for 6th Grade students to create their own projects. Once they had some ideas, I was then able to add parameters according to how we could (or could not) address ELA standards.

RESOURCES

• 20Time.org (includes suggestions and examples)
• 20 Time in Education (includes suggestions)
• Why 20% Time is Good for Schools (Edutopia)

Student-Selected Texts

OVERVIEW

Students provide content for learning through bringing in articles or videos, collaborating on a class slideshow that covers multiple topics, or creating discussion questions.

STUDENT CHOICE AND VOICE

One way of tapping into students' knowledge and encouraging them to take charge of their own learning is through having students bring in the texts for study. With a general outline of the kinds of texts to explore and the kind of information to bring in, students together can often teach more than the teacher ever could alone.

EXAMPLE

I tried this with our foray into mythology, attempting to uncover the role of these stories in “our story” as humans. While I have a fairly good understanding of Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology (thanks primarily to Rick Riordan’s young adult book series), there are numerous other pantheons in existence that might be of more interest to students. Students were given a starting point for research (the website www.godchecker.com) and general guidelines for the kind of information to explore, and then each created a slide a god or goddess that they found interesting.

Was that activity overall beneficial in helping students explore how myths help to tell “our story”? Here are some of their takeaways:

"Some deities were a solution to people's suffering, like another way to cope with the conditions of your life."

"There wasn't much science in the past, so they used myth to explain unexplainable things. For example, every time the volcano errupted or rumbled, people said that the blacksmith god was creating something."

"Sometimes knowing someone's gods might teach you something about their culture and what they believe."

"Gods and goddesses make up our story because they are the reason we act a certain way due to what we believe they expect us to act and do."

Socratic Seminars are also an excellent way to showcase student-selected articles. In small groups, students determine what they want to research, go out and find articles, and then narrow their findings to share with the rest of the class. The topic may be based on the curricular needs of the class, but the articles for discussion are student-selected.

RESOURCES

General Resources

• 7 Criteria for the Selection of Subject-Matter or Content of the Curriculum by Dr. Mary Alvior
• Student-Centered Learning: It Starts With the Teacher by John McCarthy, Edutopia
• Flipping the Classroom from the University of Washington Center for Teaching and Learning

Classroom Resources

• Choice Board Templates from DaretoDifferentiate
• Student Choice - Pinterest board with classroom ideas

Free Writing

OVERVIEW

While free writing has varied definitions depending on the person using the word, the general definition is an unstructured writing time to help with brainstorming, overcoming writer's block, or practicing creativity and the craft of writing. In my classroom, I use free writing for all three purposes. Students use the free writing time to type or handwrite constantly for a specific period of time (depending on the class's comfort level with free writing). The idea is that they don't have to fear the "red pen" coming to correct their writing, so they don't get held up in revising as they work. Their pencil or typing fingers should be moving the whole time.

Sometimes students already have an idea for writing and use the time to develop that idea. Sometimes students have a specific prompt that they are supposed to follow. One or my favorite ways to do free writing is to have students respond to an image, set of images, or video.

STUDENT VOICE AND CHOICE

Where does this allow for student voice and choice? How "free" is free writing in actuality? Obviously students who are choosing their own writing topics are exhibiting their voice in the classroom, especially if they are then able to develop that free writing into a class assessment. Some students struggle with total freedom ("I don't know what to write about.") and benefit from having a prompt or selection of prompts from which to choose.

EXAMPLE

We tried this recently in my class with a prompt from writingprompts.tumblr.com, using the following image:

Here's what the students said about their experience:

RESOURCES

Free Writing Tips and Rationale

• The Writer's Block by KickThePJ

• The Bulletproof Guide to Free Writing (And 10 Tips for Getting Started) from PositiveWriter.com

• College Essay Tips | Freewriting, Topic Selection, and the First Draft by College Essay Advisors

Writing Prompts and Free Writing Practice

• Nonstopskrivning exercise from Aarhus University's Study Metro

• Writing prompts from writingprompts.tumblr.com

• Visual Writing Prompts from visual-prompts.tumblr.com

• Unusual Picture Prompts from Chalk Talk

Amplifying Student Voice Beyond the School Walls

OVERVIEW

Giving students the opportunity to publish their work to an audience other than the teacher, their classmates and other students in their school gives them a powerful incentive to raise the bar.

STUDENT CHOICE AND VOICE

Publishing artefacts students produce allows their voice to reach a larger audience. This may be on topics of personal importance, issues they really care about or simply encouraging a sense of pride that what they produce matters (thereby empowering them to use this voice in other contexts too).

EXAMPLE

A Writing teacher sends his students' texts to publishers' websites.

An ELA teacher connects her classroom with one or more abroad.

RESOURCES

The following sites accept student submissions:

• Wikipedia: anyone can contribute remember, like these Science students! And don't forget it's partner site Simple Wikipedia.
• The National High School Journal of Science
• Issuu: publish to a subscribed audience of readers
• Flipsnack: publish professional-looking magazines on any topic
• Tikatok: for students to write and illustrate digital books
• If that's not enough, here are more ways to publish student texts.

The following may accept student submissions:

• A variety of student-facing magazines that may accept contributions (ages 4-15)

And if you can't find an online space to publish your student work, why not create one with Google Sites, Wordpress or Blogger? (Then come back and share it with us!)