WEBVTT 00:00:01.900 --> 00:00:07.140 Welcome to Giving Students a Choice. 00:00:07.140 --> 00:00:12.509 My name is Kailey Adams. I teach a first-grade/second-grade combination class here at Fall Creek Elementary 00:00:12.509 --> 00:00:14.219 in East Bend, North Carolina. 00:00:14.219 --> 00:00:21.219 When students have choice, they find it much easier to write and write for an extended 00:00:21.259 --> 00:00:25.949 period of time. They have more to say and it matters more to them because they’ve 00:00:25.949 --> 00:00:28.679 chosen the topic that they’re writing about. 00:00:28.679 --> 00:00:32.390 The quality of their writing is better. The amount that they’re able to write about 00:00:32.390 --> 00:00:37.620 a topic is more extensive, so it’s very important that students feel like they have 00:00:37.620 --> 00:00:42.820 a choice of genre and the type of writing that they do. 00:00:42.820 --> 00:00:48.900 When I first started teaching here at Fall Creek, the students were given prompted writing 00:00:48.900 --> 00:00:55.900 topics, and the writing was very uniform. It was very boring for the students. I had 00:00:56.690 --> 00:01:01.250 several students every day that would say, “I don’t know what I’m going to write.” 00:01:01.250 --> 00:01:06.680 When the county decided to work with Appalachian State University in their writing cohort for 00:01:06.680 --> 00:01:13.400 their graduate program, a shift began. Our school chose to go with a Writer’s Workshop 00:01:13.400 --> 00:01:19.920 model, which allows the students a lot more freedom, and it’s produced far better-quality 00:01:19.920 --> 00:01:25.159 writing and the students love to write. 00:01:25.159 --> 00:01:31.290 At the very beginning of the year, the students were asked to bring in composition notebooks, 00:01:31.290 --> 00:01:37.750 and these notebooks are what we call our writing journals. They also brought in photographs, 00:01:37.750 --> 00:01:44.710 stickers, any form of two-dimensional artwork that they wanted to use to decorate and personalize 00:01:44.710 --> 00:01:49.909 their writer’s notebook. We wanted to show them from the very beginning of the year that 00:01:49.909 --> 00:01:54.049 that was their notebook. It was their writing. It was something that they should be proud 00:01:54.049 --> 00:01:57.310 of and that they should be excited about. 00:01:57.310 --> 00:02:04.260 Each child was asked the first week that they had their journal to make a list of topics. 00:02:04.260 --> 00:02:09.780 And we wrote those down on the first page inside the journal, and it was just a list 00:02:09.780 --> 00:02:14.469 of topics that were important to each child, that they thought they might want to write 00:02:14.469 --> 00:02:19.709 about sometime later on. So that on that day when that child comes in to school and says, 00:02:19.709 --> 00:02:22.859 “You know, I’m not really sure what I want to write about,” they can turn back 00:02:22.859 --> 00:02:27.239 to that list of topics and come up with something that, “Oh, I remember that vacation that 00:02:27.239 --> 00:02:28.560 I went on.” 00:02:28.560 --> 00:02:33.129 We talk about what makes a good writing topic. Something that we like. Something that we 00:02:33.129 --> 00:02:37.560 know a lot about. Something that we want to write about. Something we want to share with 00:02:37.560 --> 00:02:39.239 other people. 00:02:39.239 --> 00:02:45.930 It really allows them to just get right into writing every single day. And a lot of times 00:02:45.930 --> 00:02:52.930 students will be writing a story about their dog, and it reminds them of some other time, 00:02:53.450 --> 00:02:56.709 and it’s not appropriate to write about it right that minute in the center of this 00:02:56.709 --> 00:03:00.989 story. But they go back to their list, jot it down really quickly, and it’ll be there 00:03:00.989 --> 00:03:04.010 the next time they don’t have something to write about. 00:03:04.010 --> 00:03:11.010 During writing time, the students have a writer’s bookcase, and on that bookcase there are six 00:03:11.499 --> 00:03:17.969 or seven different kinds of paper. The students have choice of their paper, their writing 00:03:17.969 --> 00:03:23.079 utensils. There’s different pencils. And all of those things factor into their desire 00:03:23.079 --> 00:03:28.590 to create a piece that they want to publish, that they’re proud of, that is uniquely 00:03:28.590 --> 00:03:29.939 theirs. 00:03:29.939 --> 00:03:34.019 The students have a choice of where they sit in the room, and that allows them to find 00:03:34.019 --> 00:03:39.790 a space that they can focus. So they have choice of their materials. They have choice 00:03:39.790 --> 00:03:45.559 of where they sit in the room. It allows them some freedom as opposed to me telling them, 00:03:45.559 --> 00:03:50.790 “This is what you have to write. This is where you have to sit.” They are also always 00:03:50.790 --> 00:03:56.919 on different steps of the writing process. They have choice as to which step they’re 00:03:56.919 --> 00:04:03.019 working on, and that allows them to really guide their own writing and guide their own 00:04:03.019 --> 00:04:05.230 learning. 00:04:05.230 --> 00:04:11.260 The biggest change in this shift of including choice and adding more freedom to the entire 00:04:11.260 --> 00:04:16.199 writing process is that those students who came in at the beginning of the year struggling 00:04:16.199 --> 00:04:22.720 for every word, they’re what we call fluent writers. They spend 20, 30, 40 minutes of 00:04:22.720 --> 00:04:29.370 solid writing time filling pages upon pages simply because they got to choose what they 00:04:29.370 --> 00:04:34.180 were going to write about and they’re passionate about whatever that is. It’s just been a 00:04:34.180 --> 00:04:39.909 remarkable change for the kids and for us. It’s far more exciting for us to teach writing 00:04:39.909 --> 00:04:42.729 and for us to work with our kids. 00:04:42.729 --> 00:04:47.759 To learn more about Giving Students a Choice, please explore the additional resources on 00:04:47.759 --> 00:04:49.379 the Doing What Works website.