Teacher Discusses Student Choice at Roots

Roots teacher, Samantha Gambino, explains how choice is integrated into the student day, particularly during independent learning time.

Transcript: Samantha Gambino: say okay, we have these four authors. Let’s all choose which author we all as a group want to be learning about and we want to talk about. For example, we did Dr. Seuss a few months back, and it was overwhelmingly, the kids wanted to do Dr. Seuss. There were a couple of a scholars who were like, you know, we don’t really want to do Dr. Seuss. So the next unit they were able to choose more so like, what the unit would be. And then, student choice is really strong in the grove, I think, because they get to choose a lot of their playlist. So their playlist is where they go to each station. And the coaches do one-on-one conversations with them, and they say, how are you feeling about your playlist? Where would you like to go more? And scholars will say oh, I need to go to the iPad center more ’cause I want to work on my reading app. And so, that’s where they get a lot of choices more so in the grove, less so in the whole group classrooms.

Type: audio

Topics:
Actively Engaging

Sub-topics:
Choice and agency, Self-directed learning