Throughout the semester I have collected memos based on my research question revolving around choice. Here are a few of my memos that I’ve collected:
- When teaching my writing workshop lesson I gave them the choice to write whatever they wanted and however they wanted. They all wrote multi-paragraph writings and didn’t stop writing until I asked for their attention back on the board. (November 14th 1:00 pm)
- The student I tutored was wanting to involve a hula hoop activity in their last lesson with me and when I brought them in and had prepared an activity for her she was shacked. (November 19th 9:15 am)
- When asking my cooperating teacher about choice in the classroom she replied with “Middle school doesn’t have time for choice, we have too much to cover” (October 19th 12:00 pm)
- Students were given a list of tasks to complete in a specific order, when a student proposed doing the activities in whichever order they wanted to do my teacher went on a tangent about students needing to do what they’re told. (8:15 am)
- When giving the student I tutored the choice of the book she seemed to enjoy the book more than the book she had no choice of previously (October)
- At the beginning of my lessons while tutoring my student couldn’t make decisions about what she wanted to do
- Once I gave my student two to three options for activities she was able to choose and enjoy the activity a lot more than when I gave her an activity to do
- Eventually, my student was able to propose her own activities for me to make for her and have the choice as to what we were going to do for the week of tutoring.
- After teaching my lessons with choice involved my students were asking for me to teach another less for weeks!
- Every lesson I taught that involved choice I didn’t have major behavior issues.
Reflection on memos
A common theme I’ve seen within my semester of memos is that students want choice! They want to have the ability to choose what they do and how they do activities. I knew my students would enjoy my lessons, but I was surprised by the fact that they wanted me to teach again or even want me to read their writings from the day I did teach. I was also surprised that the student I tutored originally couldn’t choose what she wanted to do with no guidance, but after doing research I realized that when students aren’t exposed to choice from the start they’re not going to be able to make open ended choices; this is something that needs to be scaffold. Lastly, I was surprised by the lack of choice in my classroom during partnership. Even when students proposed an option of choice they were shut down immediately.