Student choice and voice in learning are essential. It is important that we provide a variety of opportunities for our students to develop skills in ways that meet their specific interests and needs. We need activities and tools that will help students to develop content-area knowledge and skills, while also developing essential social-emotional learning (SEL) skills to best prepare them for their future.

As educators, when choosing learning activities and digital tools to use in our classroom, we must also be focused on how our choices will enable us to meaningfully assess our students. Assessments should help students to be able to identify where they are on their learning journey and offer a variety of ways for students to show what they have learned and can do. Assessments should enable us to gather evidence of student learning as they build skills in the content area, promote more engagement in learning and increase motivation for learning through the power of choice and voice. Assessment for learning helps us to keep students on track throughout our course and informs our instruction.

Read the full article about centering student choice by Rachelle Dene Poth at Getting Smart.