PTS Name: Engaging and Supporting All Students in Learning
Element: Facilitating learning experiences that promote autonomy, interaction,
and choice
Indicators
As teachers develop, they may ask, “How do I…” or “Why do I…”:
- Use the classroom environment to provide opportunities for independent and collaborative learning?
- Participate in and promote positive interactions between all students?
- Support and monitor student autonomy and choice during learning experiences?
- Support and monitor student collaboration during learning activities?
- Help students make decisions about managing time and materials during learning activities?
Descriptions
Examples may include, but are not limited to:
- Providing student choice of assignments, projects, and assessments from a menu of options
- Supporting group work so that students make responsible choices about managing their time
and materials
- Varying student work structures (individual, pair, small and whole group) so that students have a variety of ways to interact with both the content and their peers
- Creating student-led structures for lessons (presentations, performances, role-plays, mini-lectures, etc)
Problems of Practice
Challenges with this element frequently include:
- Fear that student choice will diminish the opportunity for students to master new learning and/or lead to a loss of classroom control
- Despite being placed in collaborative working groups, students are given individual assignments (e.g. having students sit in small groups to answer a worksheet together)
- In collaborative work groups, one or two students do the majority of the work or some students get away with little/no involvement
- Student conflicts, acting out, and off-task behavior take place while students work collaboratively and nothing is done to support more effective collaborative group behaviors