Читать книгу The Perfect Blend - Michele Eaton - Страница 38

If the goal is to achieve true student agency, providing opportunities for choice is not enough. We must give students a real voice in their education. This means students have input on the classroom and their learning. They are empowered to shape their own learning, which moves the instruction to a truly student-centered approach.

Connie Scalzetti’s fifth-grade class at Chicago International Charter School (CICS) West Belden is a good example of enabling students to shape their own learning. Instead of using the common “exit ticket” approach in which students fill out a quick formative assessment just before leaving class, Connie has students complete an “entrance ticket,” a pre-assessment for the day’s learning that the students then check themselves. After taking a look at their data, students decide whether they are going to “Seminar,” which is direct instruction with the teacher (Figure 2.1), or if they are going to “Workshop.” Workshop has several options for the students to extend their learning with real-world application and hands-on work both independently and collaboratively.

By incorporating online learning into a personalized model of instruction such as Connie’s, you could bring blended learning together with voice and choice. Part of the teacher’s role as architect of learning in this environment is to consider structured voice and choice and to be on the lookout for students feeling overwhelmed. Often, creating opportunities for true student agency in the classroom will require scaffolding. For most students, we have trained them in what Robert Fried called the “game of school” (2005): how to be successful in a model that views them as a container that educators must pour knowledge into. Giving students control over their education could be a new experience for your learners, and we must teach them what it means to advocate for themselves as learners.

2.1 Connie Scalzetti teaching in her fifth-grade classroom