When implementing choice into lesson plans while tutoring my student I collected data from pre assessments and post assessments.
The student I tutored was struggling with her writing. She didn’t want to write more than a few sentences each time we would write together. I was getting worried because as a sixth grader she needs to write multi paragraph papers. I had originally given her choice on whatever she wanted, but what really stuck her interest was when I told her to write whatever genre she wanted. Once she realized she could write in any genre she wanted she took her freedom of choice and ran with it. Below I have attached a picture of her writing before and after.
I administered the DSA to the student I tutored and collected data from her. Her pre assessment was taken before I had started any tutoring or intervention and her post assessments were given to her two months later. We worked a lot with the features: Long Vowels, Controlled Vowels, Other Long Vowels, Complex Consonants, and Abstract Vowels. We used open sorts, closed sorts, sorting using basketball, and sorting within hula hoops. After all these activities I got the following data based on her feature score on the DSA:
When administering a running record for the student I tutored I started with a second grade level because that was what her teacher asked me to start at. This was a level M book from Fountas and Pinnell. You can just see by her rate, and her chunking of words that her fluency improved. When practicing her reading skills we worked with books that she got to choose and she had the ability to choose another book whenever she wanted. We would read out loud every day and practice our prosody and comprehension strategies. Attached below are two recordings of her reading a level M book.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1eodiUlIMSnKtrI4aP9AIY7Mb4gvrzw8v
During my time in Partnership I had to teach multiple lessons, one being a writing workshop. During my writing workshop lesson I allowed my students to write about anything they wanted. I wanted them to have the choice to write on any subject and genre. My ultimate goal for them was to write as much as they could and get their ideas on to a piece of paper. These students don’t usually get the opportunity to do whatever they want when it comes to school work so I knew they would be excited. Their feedback and response to my instruction was amazing! Every student wrote for the entire period and were so eager to share with the class. Below I have attached a video of my lesson:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eDEqA7EEjaM_-IcBDttxxNHBRdkmLBRL/view
Another lesson I taught was a small group math lesson. I was challenged to find a conceptual gap shared by multiple students. The conceptual gap I found was adding and subtracting decimals. During my time with these students I showed them three types of manipulatives and how they can help them understand decimals conceptually. We used base ten blocks, money, and a one hundred chart. After our time together I let them choose whatever manipulative they wanted to take their post assessment with. Below I have pictured; my students working with each manipulative and the data of their pre and post assessments after learning conceptually about adding and subtracting decimals.