5 Ways To Build Student Ownership in the First Month of School
The first month of school sets the tone for the entire year. The problem for me, is that I often struggled on scaffolding that first month.
When I taught middle school, I spent too much time playing games that first month, trying to build relationships but ultimately missing out on a opportunity for real learning to take place.
When I taught high school, I went the opposite route and spent too much time with rigorous learning activities, setting myself up for disaster later on when we tried project-based learning and genius hour.
When I worked with my elementary teachers as an instructional coach, we spent way too much time going over all the compliance that needed to happen in a classroom, wishing I had spent more time building a classroom community first.
My first month outlook completely changed when I became an instructional coach. The best part about being an instructional coach (and eventually administrator) is getting in to work with so many amazing teachers. I got to spend time planning, developing, and observing all kinds of lessons and activities over the years.
What I saw in the first month, changed my outlook, because I witnessed how master teachers were setting up their students for the rest of the year. They were actively scaffolding student ownership, building classroom community, and cultivating a learning environment where the students were not only engaged, but also empowered.
Here are FIVE ways anyone can build student ownership in the first month of school!
1: The Discussion Game
My students rolled into class like any other day, and not much was changed. The tables were still set up in small groups, the projector was on with their “Do Now” activity on the board. And, the Homework for the week was written for each day.
The only difference was that each seat had a white envelope on it, filled with five cards of all different colors.
This was the opening of our first discussion game. I got the idea from our colleague Melisa Perlman and have seen variations of this game all over the place online. The best part about it is that it is simple to create, simple to explain, and completely modifiable depending on your subject, grade level, or classroom setting. You can do this in-person or online - both work!
Here’s the basics. Each student gets a number of different colored cards to use throughout the discussion. They must play each card once, but can play the question card multiple times after using all other cards.
Red Card = Question
Blue/Yellow Card = I know (because)
Pink Card = I feel
Green Card = I think
Orange Card = Connect (to yourself, to the world, to another text/idea/subject)
*Can add orange as needed.
Each card is worth a point (if you want to grade this activity, completely up to you and your classroom/school) and the goal is to replace assessing only the final product (quiz) and instead the process of learning (having an active discussion).
This scaffolds the student-centered classroom in two ways.
First, the game is centered on your subject, concept, content, text for the lesson. Students have to be engaged with that content in order to respond with the above answers and questions (I think, I know because, I feel, Connect, etc).
Second, it models the many ways you can contribute to an active learning discussion. This helps the students who may be shy or want to hide during the discussion.
2: Assessing the Process (not the product)
I distinctly remember when I stumbled across the “GRIT Rubric” created by the College Track program in San Francisco. “College Track is an afterschool, college preparatory program that works to increase high school graduation, college eligibility and enrollment, and college graduation rates in under-resourced communities.” The program is awesome, but what blew me away was the GRIT acronym and student rubric. College Track has broken the word Grit down into four factors: Guts, Resilience, Integrity, and Tenacity. From their site:
It takes a lot beyond academic readiness to succeed in college. Tackling challenges like dealing with a difficult roommate, finding the financial aid office and registering for classes requires resiliency and tenacity, and these are two character traits that College Track San Francisco is targeting. The site is working to make habits of mind and GRIT visible to all students by recognizing positive character traits that are linked to college success.
They went a step further and created a rubric for students that assesses the PROCESS of learning, not the final PRODUCT. Our team has since adapted this rubric to work with all kinds of K-12 grades and subject areas (here is an editable Google Doc for you to check out).
It doesn’t matter what age students may be, when we assess the learning process, they start to own their own work, and understand what matters. Try it a few times and see what happens! You can assess them or they can self-assess, both work great.
3: Playlist and Conferencing
To keep it short: A playlist is a planned-out list of learning activities (with resources/material) that both the student and the teacher have access to at all times.
This is similar to what many of us do with learning management systems such as Google Classroom, Canvas, Schoology, or even Seesaw.
Here’s how Catlin Tucker, author of Power Up Blended Learning (and the Getting Started with Blending Learning Course) describes what makes a Playlist stand out from other blended learning strategies:
The playlist concept stems from the Individual Rotation Model in which each student works from an individual playlist of activities. I’ve used playlists for formal writing, grammar, and projects. The goal of the playlist model is to allow students some control over the pace and path of their learning.
When I design a playlist, I always start with a template. I include all of the activities that I believe MOST students will benefit from then I customize individual playlists to ensure that students who need additional scaffolding receive it and those who are ready for next challenge get it.
Playlists pull together a mix of activities designed to build specific skills. Students control the pace of their learning and teachers can customize individual learning paths with the playlist model.
In her blog post on Building a Playlist, Catlin shares one of her templates and examples of how this might work. One of the ADDED bonuses to a playlist being used in the first month of school, is that it allows you to conference with your students.
I’ve learned so much about student conferencing from my Empower and Launch co-author John Spencer. He shares his simple methods that you can use with any grade level in this blog post (and an excerpt below):
The following are the three types of conferences I use with students:
Advice Conference: This conference is all about learning specific skills that students are missing. Each student must ask the teacher a series of questions based on an area where he or she is struggling. This is a chance for targeted one-on-one attention and explicit help with a strategy. Students guide the process, tapping into the teacher’s expertise. This has the added bonus of encouraging students to embrace the idea that mistakes as a part of the learning process. It sets up a classroom culture where every student must be humble enough to admit that they are still struggling in some area of reading.
Reflection Conferences: Instead of telling students what to do, the goal is to draw out student reflection. The teacher uses a series of reflective questions to lead students through the process of meta-cognition and into the setting and monitoring of goals. As the year progresses, the teacher asks fewer follow-up questions and the students begin sharing how they are doing without the aid of pre-chosen questions.
Mastery Conference: Unlike the reflection conference, the focus here is less about reflecting on the process and more about students judging their own mastery of the content. We use the Standards-Based Assessment Grid as a way to figure out the level of mastery on particular standards.
4: Choice Boards and Learning Menus
The “Choice Board” activity provides this information in a variety of formats and experiences. As students choose their activities, you’ll get a better grasp of what types of activities work for them, and which ones they find engaging.
Throughout the activities, students should be recording what they are learning, and what they understand through a guided set of notes.
The end result is that all students should be prepared to successfully complete the photosynthesis lab activity.
Previously, in a traditional classroom setting, students may have not been engaged through a presentation or did not connect to the instructional delivery method. Here, they have the choice to go with what works best for them as a learner.
A STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE FOR YOUR CLASSROOM: CHOICE BOARDS
Identify a unit/concept or skill and what you want students to know/do/make in order to demonstrate their understanding/proficiency.
Create or choose an assessment/performance task that allows students to demonstrate mastery.
List various instructional methods, resources, and strategies to prepare students for the assessment/performance task.
Choose four-six instructional methods to turn into choice-board activities. Each activity should be a similar length in time and cover common material. Here is where you can add different types of technology or hands-on experiences to the learning process.
Create a workflow for the students to follow. Have notes and formative checks as part of the choice-board design process. Allow for reflection during each activity when planning how long students will complete the activity.
Introduce the different choices to students and describe what the goals of the activity are (as well as the assessment this is leading up to).
Let students pick activities based on their interests/needs.
As the teacher, a few of the activities/options might need more guidance than others. Make sure you aren’t just “managing” this activity, but instead truly acting as a guide and expert learner when the opportunity is available.
Once the choice-board activities are complete, put students into small groups to “jigsaw” their reflections. Bring students from different activities together to reflect on their learning experience and share (this can be written, audio, or video reflections – think Flipgrid).
Listen to reflections and check the formative pieces for each activity to see if students are prepared for the assessment. If not, feel free to go through one more activity together as a class or talk about any topics/concepts they did not understand during the activity.
Give the assessment/performance task.
BONUS OPTION: Make your assessment into a choice board with multiple performance tasks that allow students to demonstrate an understanding of the content and skills.
As you can see, the process takes more time on the front end from the teacher, but you’ll know that students are prepared for a performance task by going through this activity.
When I began using this strategy in the classroom, these activities also turned into online experiences that could be done at any time. My ultimate goal as a teacher was to see my students succeeding and demonstrating their understanding of concepts and skills at a high level. The simple act of “giving students choice” changed how my students viewed our assessments, and how they prepared for assessments.
LEARNING MENU CHOICE BOARDS
Learning menu choice boards are different because they provide options in a specific order (like you would have when ordering a few courses from a menu).
The teacher directs the menu process, but the student is given control over his/her choice of options, order of completion, etc.
Here is an amazing example from Tom Spall, with a rubric, and the ability to modify the menu.
Spalls Digital Cafe Learning Menu
Tom and his team take this menu idea a step by developing five different choice boards that could work in any classroom once edited and used with your content/skills/activities. Check out these three examples and Tom’s article on his blog for all the links to resources and templates!
5: Design Sprint
Before jumping into full-fledged Design Challenges, Project-Based Learning, and Genius Hour, I would always do an activity that followed the simple process shared below. This Design Sprint PSA can be done in any subject and in any grade level (with modifications of course).
I’ll break down the example PSA Design Sprint that I use all of the time in workshops to show how this is possible. The key elements are that you choose content that you want the students to learn, but give them a choice in which content they choose.
After that, the project is simple.
Research what the world needs to know about ____, and what they can do about _____.
Then create a PSA to demonstrate that information and understanding.
For my example, I want my students to learn about the United Nations 2030 Goals. So it would look like this:
Research what the world needs to know about one of the UN 2030 GOALS, and what they can do about _____.
Here is the step-by-step process for scaffolding PBL with a Design Sprint:
STEP #1: PRESENT THE CONTENT THAT STUDENTS ARE GOING TO LEARN (THEN GIVE CHOICE ON WHICH AREA THEY LEARN MORE ABOUT)
Note: Some students will have background knowledge, others may not have much background knowledge and that is ok.
For this example, I give learners the topic of the UN 2030 Goals. The content they are going to learn is about these UN 2030 Goals (which works well because most folks don’t have a deep understanding or much knowledge about the goals).
Second, I ask them to get into small groups (2-3 people) and choose a goal that resonates with them personally. This is key because the more meaningful and relevant the activity becomes, the more effort and commitment the team will have towards the project.
It’s also important to note that I do not give a lot of time for this activity. Thirty minutes max amount of time. It should be a one-class activity in school where time and resources may be limited.
STEP #2: HAVE STUDENTS RESEARCH THE CONTENT (WHAT DOES THE WORLD NEED TO KNOW ABOUT IT AND WHAT CAN THEY DO ABOUT IT)
Once the goal (content) has been chosen it’s time to research! The key here is to research quickly and efficiently.
If you have younger kids, provide stations that have bits and pieces of the research ready to consume. Things like videos, articles, pictures, graphs are key to giving young students a head-start on the research.
If you have older students (or adult learners) feel free to point them towards a couple websites or directions to research online. For the UN 2030 Goals I always choose GlobalGoals.org as a starting place.
The other important piece to remember during this research step is that you must give a specific time of how long (or else they’ll get stuck in more and more research). You have to also give very specific things they are looking for (such as what the world needs to know about the 2030 goal and what they can do about it to help out).
STEP #3: CREATE A PSA
Here is where we climb up Bloom’s taxonomy and get students making and creating. When you use this activity with a specific piece of content (2030 Goals, Periodic Table of Elements, historical figures, scenes from a play, author study etc) the project becomes about demonstrating your understanding of this content through creating the PSA.
You can give the option of creating a PSA much like the examples or learners can create it with video, with a slideshow, a skit, or any other type of way to spread their knowledge and understanding.
We are scaffolding PBL here so a key point to remember during the creation stage is that many times students will want to mimic or copy what they saw as the example (or exemplar) given to the whole class.
This is something to keep an eye on, but also a teaching moment.
Once students are finished creating, the project is not yet done! Two key pieces remain. First, they have to share this with a bigger audience than just themselves and their classmates.
Sharing it with the world gives the students an authentic audience. As a teacher, I’d try to find various audiences for my students to share their work with, but sometimes throwing it up on Youtube and social media is enough to get the positive peer pressure working!
Finally, you’ll want to have the students reflect on what they learned, what they created, and what they would do differently.
This reflection continues the learning well after the “project” has been completed.
Final Thoughts
Each of these activities promotes student ownership and agency in different ways. I made the mistake of throwing my students into 20% Time and Genius Hour projects without scaffolding throughout the year, and many struggled because they were not ready for such an abrupt change to the game of school.
If you want to learn more about how I went beyond the first month of school into student ownership - you can download my free 52-page guide here: The Epic Guide to Student Ownership (includes 5 more ways to empower your students)!
