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7 Things That Happen When Students Own Their Learning

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7 Things That Happen When Students Own Their Learning

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Watch this short YouTube Video

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7 Things That Happen When Students Own Their Learning

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Giving power to my students? Won't that mean school days full of texting, non-educational movies and zero learning? Maybe not ...

Empowering students is not the same as abdicating control of your classroom. The ASCD's journal Educational Leadership defines student empowerment as "student ownership of learning." That is a good way to look at it - helping students take control of their own education. But how do you do that?
Let Students Choose
Homework Assignments

Give them a page of math problems, but let them choose any 10 to complete. If you usually do written book reports, allow students to write a traditional report, film a book review, or create a comic-book-style summary of the major events. You can't do it for every assignment, but why not try it occasionally?

Tests (within reason)

Make up an essay test with three different questions and let students choose which one to answer. Or create a test with 20 short answer questions and ask them to pick 10. Some teachers even let their students choose between a long multiple-choice test, a short multiple-choice test plus a brief essay, or a long essay-only test.
Need Differentiated Instruction professional development in your school? Contact the K-12 Teachers Alliance to plan your training. Engage Students in Evaluations
Self-Evaluation

Take five minutes at the end of a class period for students to respond to the following questions:

What did I learn today?

What do I still have questions about?

Could I use this knowledge to take a test, complete an assignment, or accomplish something in my life?

This makes them responsible for their own learning in a very concrete way.

Self-Review / Peer Review / Teacher Review Cycle

Take an essay, lab report, or other comparable assignment. Create a rubric for it. When the assignment is due, provide students with the rubric and ask them to grade themselves. Then give each student another copy of the rubric and have them evaluate a classmate's paper. Then collect the assignment and use the rubric to evaluate it yourself. Have students compare the three completed rubrics - the self-evaluation, the peer evaluation, and your evaluation - and ask questions.

This can help students recognize where they may be too hard (or too easy) on themselves and it may help you recognize attitudes in yourself that impact your grading. Average the results of the three rubrics to get a grade so students realize their self-evaluation actually matters.

Student Feedback

Consider having students evaluate you, the course, or a specific assignment. Maybe students really liked a book you planned to get rid of, or maybe students felt they rushed over material they needed more time to study.

While you will always get jokers who suggest no homework or pizza every Friday, you may find some interesting ideas as well, and students feel heard.
Put Students in Charge
Learn Students' Goals

Ask students what they want to get out of your course or this school year. Students may be uncomfortable - they are used to being told what to do - but if you push past their joking to get real answers, you might discover that some students genuinely want to learn, and even those without a passion for your subject may be motivated by goals like raising their GPA or getting into college.

Solicit Input on Class Activities & Homework

Next ask them: how do we get there? Invite their input on class activities, homework schedules, etc. Write down suggestions without arguing with them.

Once students have had a chance to share, you can provide an alternative perspective: "Yes, I'm sure you'd like to have no homework all year, but we have to get through this textbook and there isn't enough class time, so we have to have homework." Maybe you can find a compromise.

For example, Sarah was a high school honors English teacher. The class required reading a lot of novels, but her students felt overwhelmed. After gathering student feedback, Sarah was able to adjust her schedule. Rather than homework every night, she gave students due dates once a week when larger sections of the novel were due. This allowed students to plan their workload and still kept the English class on track.
Broaden Students' Sense of Responsibility
The fastest way to empower students is to make their work matter in the real world. Try service learning or project-based learning. By creating an environment where their effort will impact other people, you can help students recognize the tremendous power they can have, even while they are still students.

Having students write an essay on "why I shouldn't do drugs" is boring and the kids won't care. Turn that essay into an assignment to film an advertisement that will be posted on the Internet and screened at a school assembly and watch the difference in student attitudes!

At times, empowering students can feel like a risky move. But if you can bear with a little bit of chaos, you may end up with more engaged, interested, and empowered students as a result!
How do you empower students in your classroom? Share in the comments section!

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Empowering Students to Take Ownership of Learning

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Giving power to my students? Won't that mean school days full of texting, non-educational movies and zero learning? Maybe not ... Empowering students is not the same as abdicating control of your classroom. The ASCD's journal Educational Leadership defines student empowerment as "student ownership of learning."

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Student FeedbackConsider having students evaluate you, the course, or a specific assignment. Maybe students really liked a book you planned to get rid of, or maybe students felt they rushed over material they needed more time to study.While you will always get jokers who suggest no homework or pizza every Friday, you may find some interesting ideas as well, and students feel heard.

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Student FeedbackConsider having students evaluate you, the course, or a specific assignment. Maybe students really liked a book you planned to get rid of, or maybe students felt they rushed over material they needed more time to study.While you will always get jokers who suggest no homework or pizza every Friday, you may find some interesting ideas as well, and students feel heard.

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Giving power to my students? Won't that mean school days full of texting, non-educational movies and zero learning? Maybe not ...

Empowering students is not the same as abdicating control of your classroom. The ASCD's journal Educational Leadership defines student empowerment as "student ownership of learning." That is a good way to look at it - helping students take control of their own education. But how do you do that?
Let Students Choose
Homework Assignments

Give them a page of math problems, but let them choose any 10 to complete. If you usually do written book reports, allow students to write a traditional report, film a book review, or create a comic-book-style summary of the major events. You can't do it for every assignment, but why not try it occasionally?

Tests (within reason)

Make up an essay test with three different questions and let students choose which one to answer. Or create a test with 20 short answer questions and ask them to pick 10. Some teachers even let their students choose between a long multiple-choice test, a short multiple-choice test plus a brief essay, or a long essay-only test.
Need Differentiated Instruction professional development in your school? Contact the K-12 Teachers Alliance to plan your training. Engage Students in Evaluations
Self-Evaluation

Take five minutes at the end of a class period for students to respond to the following questions:

What did I learn today?

What do I still have questions about?

Could I use this knowledge to take a test, complete an assignment, or accomplish something in my life?

This makes them responsible for their own learning in a very concrete way.

Self-Review / Peer Review / Teacher Review Cycle

Take an essay, lab report, or other comparable assignment. Create a rubric for it. When the assignment is due, provide students with the rubric and ask them to grade themselves. Then give each student another copy of the rubric and have them evaluate a classmate's paper. Then collect the assignment and use the rubric to evaluate it yourself. Have students compare the three completed rubrics - the self-evaluation, the peer evaluation, and your evaluation - and ask questions.

This can help students recognize where they may be too hard (or too easy) on themselves and it may help you recognize attitudes in yourself that impact your grading. Average the results of the three rubrics to get a grade so students realize their self-evaluation actually matters.

Student Feedback

Consider having students evaluate you, the course, or a specific assignment. Maybe students really liked a book you planned to get rid of, or maybe students felt they rushed over material they needed more time to study.

While you will always get jokers who suggest no homework or pizza every Friday, you may find some interesting ideas as well, and students feel heard.
Put Students in Charge
Learn Students' Goals

Ask students what they want to get out of your course or this school year. Students may be uncomfortable - they are used to being told what to do - but if you push past their joking to get real answers, you might discover that some students genuinely want to learn, and even those without a passion for your subject may be motivated by goals like raising their GPA or getting into college.

Solicit Input on Class Activities & Homework

Next ask them: how do we get there? Invite their input on class activities, homework schedules, etc. Write down suggestions without arguing with them.

Once students have had a chance to share, you can provide an alternative perspective: "Yes, I'm sure you'd like to have no homework all year, but we have to get through this textbook and there isn't enough class time, so we have to have homework." Maybe you can find a compromise.

For example, Sarah was a high school honors English teacher. The class required reading a lot of novels, but her students felt overwhelmed. After gathering student feedback, Sarah was able to adjust her schedule. Rather than homework every night, she gave students due dates once a week when larger sections of the novel were due. This allowed students to plan their workload and still kept the English class on track.
Broaden Students' Sense of Responsibility
The fastest way to empower students is to make their work matter in the real world. Try service learning or project-based learning. By creating an environment where their effort will impact other people, you can help students recognize the tremendous power they can have, even while they are still students.

Having students write an essay on "why I shouldn't do drugs" is boring and the kids won't care. Turn that essay into an assignment to film an advertisement that will be posted on the Internet and screened at a school assembly and watch the difference in student attitudes!

At times, empowering students can feel like a risky move. But if you can bear with a little bit of chaos, you may end up with more engaged, interested, and empowered students as a result!
How do you empower students in your classroom? Share in the comments section!

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Empowering Students to Take Ownership of Learning

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Giving power to my students? Won't that mean school days full of texting, non-educational movies and zero learning? Maybe not ... Empowering students is not the same as abdicating control of your classroom. The ASCD's journal Educational Leadership defines student empowerment as "student ownership of learning."

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Self-Review / Peer Review / Teacher Review Cycle

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Self-Review / Peer Review / Teacher Review Cycle

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Take an essay, lab report, or other comparable assignment. Create a rubric for it. When the assignment is due, provide students with the rubric and ask them to grade themselves. Then give each student another copy of the rubric and have them evaluate a classmate’s paper. Then collect the assignment and use the rubric to evaluate it yourself.  Have students compare the three completed rubrics – the self-evaluation, the peer evaluation, and your evaluation – and ask questions.

This can help students recognize where they may be too hard (or too easy) on themselves and it may help you recognize attitudes in yourself that impact your grading. Average the results of the three rubrics to get a grade so students realize their self-evaluation actually matters.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Giving power to my students? Won't that mean school days full of texting, non-educational movies and zero learning? Maybe not ...

Empowering students is not the same as abdicating control of your classroom. The ASCD's journal Educational Leadership defines student empowerment as "student ownership of learning." That is a good way to look at it - helping students take control of their own education. But how do you do that?
Let Students Choose
Homework Assignments

Give them a page of math problems, but let them choose any 10 to complete. If you usually do written book reports, allow students to write a traditional report, film a book review, or create a comic-book-style summary of the major events. You can't do it for every assignment, but why not try it occasionally?

Tests (within reason)

Make up an essay test with three different questions and let students choose which one to answer. Or create a test with 20 short answer questions and ask them to pick 10. Some teachers even let their students choose between a long multiple-choice test, a short multiple-choice test plus a brief essay, or a long essay-only test.
Need Differentiated Instruction professional development in your school? Contact the K-12 Teachers Alliance to plan your training. Engage Students in Evaluations
Self-Evaluation

Take five minutes at the end of a class period for students to respond to the following questions:

What did I learn today?

What do I still have questions about?

Could I use this knowledge to take a test, complete an assignment, or accomplish something in my life?

This makes them responsible for their own learning in a very concrete way.

Self-Review / Peer Review / Teacher Review Cycle

Take an essay, lab report, or other comparable assignment. Create a rubric for it. When the assignment is due, provide students with the rubric and ask them to grade themselves. Then give each student another copy of the rubric and have them evaluate a classmate's paper. Then collect the assignment and use the rubric to evaluate it yourself. Have students compare the three completed rubrics - the self-evaluation, the peer evaluation, and your evaluation - and ask questions.

This can help students recognize where they may be too hard (or too easy) on themselves and it may help you recognize attitudes in yourself that impact your grading. Average the results of the three rubrics to get a grade so students realize their self-evaluation actually matters.

Student Feedback

Consider having students evaluate you, the course, or a specific assignment. Maybe students really liked a book you planned to get rid of, or maybe students felt they rushed over material they needed more time to study.

While you will always get jokers who suggest no homework or pizza every Friday, you may find some interesting ideas as well, and students feel heard.
Put Students in Charge
Learn Students' Goals

Ask students what they want to get out of your course or this school year. Students may be uncomfortable - they are used to being told what to do - but if you push past their joking to get real answers, you might discover that some students genuinely want to learn, and even those without a passion for your subject may be motivated by goals like raising their GPA or getting into college.

Solicit Input on Class Activities & Homework

Next ask them: how do we get there? Invite their input on class activities, homework schedules, etc. Write down suggestions without arguing with them.

Once students have had a chance to share, you can provide an alternative perspective: "Yes, I'm sure you'd like to have no homework all year, but we have to get through this textbook and there isn't enough class time, so we have to have homework." Maybe you can find a compromise.

For example, Sarah was a high school honors English teacher. The class required reading a lot of novels, but her students felt overwhelmed. After gathering student feedback, Sarah was able to adjust her schedule. Rather than homework every night, she gave students due dates once a week when larger sections of the novel were due. This allowed students to plan their workload and still kept the English class on track.
Broaden Students' Sense of Responsibility
The fastest way to empower students is to make their work matter in the real world. Try service learning or project-based learning. By creating an environment where their effort will impact other people, you can help students recognize the tremendous power they can have, even while they are still students.

Having students write an essay on "why I shouldn't do drugs" is boring and the kids won't care. Turn that essay into an assignment to film an advertisement that will be posted on the Internet and screened at a school assembly and watch the difference in student attitudes!

At times, empowering students can feel like a risky move. But if you can bear with a little bit of chaos, you may end up with more engaged, interested, and empowered students as a result!
How do you empower students in your classroom? Share in the comments section!

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Empowering Students to Take Ownership of Learning

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Giving power to my students? Won't that mean school days full of texting, non-educational movies and zero learning? Maybe not ... Empowering students is not the same as abdicating control of your classroom. The ASCD's journal Educational Leadership defines student empowerment as "student ownership of learning."

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Take five minutes at the end of a class period for students to respond to the following questions:

What did I learn today?

What do I still have questions about?

Could I use this knowledge to take a test, complete an assignment, or accomplish something in my life?

This makes them responsible for their own learning in a very concrete way.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Giving power to my students? Won't that mean school days full of texting, non-educational movies and zero learning? Maybe not ...

Empowering students is not the same as abdicating control of your classroom. The ASCD's journal Educational Leadership defines student empowerment as "student ownership of learning." That is a good way to look at it - helping students take control of their own education. But how do you do that?
Let Students Choose
Homework Assignments

Give them a page of math problems, but let them choose any 10 to complete. If you usually do written book reports, allow students to write a traditional report, film a book review, or create a comic-book-style summary of the major events. You can't do it for every assignment, but why not try it occasionally?

Tests (within reason)

Make up an essay test with three different questions and let students choose which one to answer. Or create a test with 20 short answer questions and ask them to pick 10. Some teachers even let their students choose between a long multiple-choice test, a short multiple-choice test plus a brief essay, or a long essay-only test.
Need Differentiated Instruction professional development in your school? Contact the K-12 Teachers Alliance to plan your training. Engage Students in Evaluations
Self-Evaluation

Take five minutes at the end of a class period for students to respond to the following questions:

What did I learn today?

What do I still have questions about?

Could I use this knowledge to take a test, complete an assignment, or accomplish something in my life?

This makes them responsible for their own learning in a very concrete way.

Self-Review / Peer Review / Teacher Review Cycle

Take an essay, lab report, or other comparable assignment. Create a rubric for it. When the assignment is due, provide students with the rubric and ask them to grade themselves. Then give each student another copy of the rubric and have them evaluate a classmate's paper. Then collect the assignment and use the rubric to evaluate it yourself. Have students compare the three completed rubrics - the self-evaluation, the peer evaluation, and your evaluation - and ask questions.

This can help students recognize where they may be too hard (or too easy) on themselves and it may help you recognize attitudes in yourself that impact your grading. Average the results of the three rubrics to get a grade so students realize their self-evaluation actually matters.

Student Feedback

Consider having students evaluate you, the course, or a specific assignment. Maybe students really liked a book you planned to get rid of, or maybe students felt they rushed over material they needed more time to study.

While you will always get jokers who suggest no homework or pizza every Friday, you may find some interesting ideas as well, and students feel heard.
Put Students in Charge
Learn Students' Goals

Ask students what they want to get out of your course or this school year. Students may be uncomfortable - they are used to being told what to do - but if you push past their joking to get real answers, you might discover that some students genuinely want to learn, and even those without a passion for your subject may be motivated by goals like raising their GPA or getting into college.

Solicit Input on Class Activities & Homework

Next ask them: how do we get there? Invite their input on class activities, homework schedules, etc. Write down suggestions without arguing with them.

Once students have had a chance to share, you can provide an alternative perspective: "Yes, I'm sure you'd like to have no homework all year, but we have to get through this textbook and there isn't enough class time, so we have to have homework." Maybe you can find a compromise.

For example, Sarah was a high school honors English teacher. The class required reading a lot of novels, but her students felt overwhelmed. After gathering student feedback, Sarah was able to adjust her schedule. Rather than homework every night, she gave students due dates once a week when larger sections of the novel were due. This allowed students to plan their workload and still kept the English class on track.
Broaden Students' Sense of Responsibility
The fastest way to empower students is to make their work matter in the real world. Try service learning or project-based learning. By creating an environment where their effort will impact other people, you can help students recognize the tremendous power they can have, even while they are still students.

Having students write an essay on "why I shouldn't do drugs" is boring and the kids won't care. Turn that essay into an assignment to film an advertisement that will be posted on the Internet and screened at a school assembly and watch the difference in student attitudes!

At times, empowering students can feel like a risky move. But if you can bear with a little bit of chaos, you may end up with more engaged, interested, and empowered students as a result!
How do you empower students in your classroom? Share in the comments section!

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Empowering Students to Take Ownership of Learning

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Giving power to my students? Won't that mean school days full of texting, non-educational movies and zero learning? Maybe not ... Empowering students is not the same as abdicating control of your classroom. The ASCD's journal Educational Leadership defines student empowerment as "student ownership of learning."

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THE teachers at Summit Public Schools in California don’t stand in front of the class and deliver the same lesson. In fact, they don’t teach lessons at all. Instead, semi-autonomous software guides children through the syllabus, with a teacher on hand to answer questions and explain more complicated concepts.

The idea is that children work best when setting their own goals and moving at a pace that suits them. Evidence from early pilot studies shows that pupils learn more effectively this way than with traditional teaching.

SPS students use an e-reading system called Curriculet. This lets teachers add notes and thoughts to the texts students are working through. It also feeds student progress back into a Personalised Learning Plan, an online dashboard that tracks the pupils’ entire educational life. Based on data gathered on their school performance, the dashboard tailors the lessons and content it serves to each student. For example, a student might set a goal to read the next 10 pages of an e-book this week. The system would monitor her progress, giving regular feedback, to keep her on track. If she falls behind, a teacher can step in and tweak her program.

“The most dramatic impact is in maths for children aged 7 or 8, who doubled their ranking nationally”

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(Image: Summit Public Schools)

THE teachers at Summit Public Schools in California don't stand in front of the class and deliver the same lesson. In fact, they don't teach lessons at all. Instead, semi-autonomous software guides children through the syllabus, with a teacher on hand to answer questions and explain more complicated concepts.

The idea is that children work best when setting their own goals and moving at a pace that suits them. Evidence from early pilot studies shows that pupils learn more effectively this way than with traditional teaching.

"We've automated the activity that teachers in normal settings spend the bulk of their time on - grading things and delivering lectures," says Diane Tavenner, CEO of Summit. "Things that are not of high direct value to students, we are trying to remove or eliminate."

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Summit is one of a group of US schools that are using technology to completely change the way students are taught. The overhaul for Summit's four schools began three years ago. Today 2000 students, aged between 11 and 18, use Google Chromebooks, which are cheaper and easier to set up than a conventional laptop because most of the software runs in the cloud. A web platform tracks goals and keeps learners motivated.

SPS students use an e-reading system called Curriculet. This lets teachers add notes and thoughts to the texts students are working through. It also feeds student progress back into a Personalised Learning Plan, an online dashboard that tracks the pupils' entire educational life. Based on data gathered on their school performance, the dashboard tailors the lessons and content it serves to each student. For example, a student might set a goal to read the next 10 pages of an e-book this week. The system would monitor her progress, giving regular feedback, to keep her on track. If she falls behind, a teacher can step in and tweak her program.

While teachers can motivate their students, they don't have the time to closely monitor each child's progress in their class. For a cloud-based computer, with full access to learning materials and ways of measuring their progress, this is simple. "The key change is that there's technology to leverage to allow for a far greater degree of personalisation that we really couldn't do before," Tavenner says.

Summit's scheme fulfils some of the fundamental tenets of goal-setting theory, says Chris Hulleman, an educational psychologist at the University of Virginia. This is the idea that people perform better when they set their own goals and receive specific feedback on their progress. No teacher could keep track of and give feedback on the goals of a classroom of individuals, the way that software can.

"People perform better when they set their own goals and receive specific feedback on progress"

"Differentiation is vital to setting effective goals," says Hulleman. "You can't just do one thing and every child is going to learn. Kids come with background knowledge and different skill levels."

The scheme also asks students to think about their long-term goals - such as where they want to go to college and what they want to study. "The platform allows kids to set their college goals and relate that back to their daily behaviours," Tavenner says.

Schools around the US are making similar moves away from teacher-led lectures and towards systems that use technology to give students control over their own learning.

East coast public school network Achievement First, which runs 29 schools between New York and Rhode Island, is launching its own personalised learning program called Greenfields in 2015. And in the second half of the year, SPS will roll out its learning platform to 20 schools across the country, giving away the technology they have developed to thousands of students.

Although this kind of education clearly has a big future, one of the biggest benefits of tech-driven learning at a school like Summit is that it frees up human teachers to do other, more important things than grading papers and ensuring pupils are following lectures.

Instead, teachers lead group discussions or manage group projects, devoting their time to things that automated systems can't easily do. "We think the teachers' time is very high value and should be used as such," Tavenner says.

This kind of personalised education is cutting-edge, but it seems to be delivering results. Think-tank the RAND Corporation, in partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, studied 23 new charter schools around the US that were experimenting with personalisation techniques for student learning. RAND found that student achievement in maths and reading had improved faster than the national average since these programs began. The most dramatic impact is in maths for children aged 7 or 8, where personalised learning almost doubled their ranking nationally, on average raising them from the 33rd percentile into the 64th.

"The most dramatic impact is in maths for children aged 7 or 8, who doubled their ranking nationally"

Many of these programs are not as technologically advanced as those at SPS and Achievement First, but the techniques are the same. Educational feedback through technology, rather that from human teachers, seems to make it easier for students to go at their own pace.

Matt Keller, director of the Global Learning XPRIZE, says learning based on laptops means an end to missed lessons and falling behind. "You can have a world where every child learns at her own pace, which I think is the future of learning," he says. "A world-class education in the palm of your hand."

Massive failure?

Do we need classrooms at all? Why not educate students entirely through computers, letting people learn anywhere with net access?

This was the promise of the Massively Open Online Course, or MOOC. But so far, completion rates are appallingly low. Even Sebastian Thrun, who launched Udacity in 2012 and amassed more than 1.6 million students, described it as a "lousy product" in an interview when he realised how few students were finishing his courses. The idea was that MOOCs would encourage diversity, but so far most students are rich men who have no trouble accessing education. So online courses like Coursera and edX are making lessons more accessible via mobile devices that are standard for net access in poorer countries.
This article appeared in print under the headline "Turn on, tune in, don't drop out"

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Personalised learning lets children study at their own pace

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
THE teachers at Summit Public Schools in California don't stand in front of the class and deliver the same lesson. In fact, they don't teach lessons at all. Instead, semi-autonomous software guides children through the syllabus, with a teacher on hand to answer questions and explain more complicated concepts.

# data[].attributes.body
Give them a page of math problems, but let them choose any 10 to complete. If you usually do written book reports, allow students to write a traditional report, film a book review, or create a comic-book-style summary of the major events. You can’t do it for every assignment, but why not try it occasionally?

Tests (within reason)

Make up an essay test with three different questions and let students choose which one to answer. Or create a test with 20 short answer questions and ask them to pick 10. Some teachers even let their students choose between a long multiple-choice test, a short multiple-choice test plus a brief essay, or a long essay-only test.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Giving power to my students? Won't that mean school days full of texting, non-educational movies and zero learning? Maybe not ...

Empowering students is not the same as abdicating control of your classroom. The ASCD's journal Educational Leadership defines student empowerment as "student ownership of learning." That is a good way to look at it - helping students take control of their own education. But how do you do that?
Let Students Choose
Homework Assignments

Give them a page of math problems, but let them choose any 10 to complete. If you usually do written book reports, allow students to write a traditional report, film a book review, or create a comic-book-style summary of the major events. You can't do it for every assignment, but why not try it occasionally?

Tests (within reason)

Make up an essay test with three different questions and let students choose which one to answer. Or create a test with 20 short answer questions and ask them to pick 10. Some teachers even let their students choose between a long multiple-choice test, a short multiple-choice test plus a brief essay, or a long essay-only test.
Need Differentiated Instruction professional development in your school? Contact the K-12 Teachers Alliance to plan your training. Engage Students in Evaluations
Self-Evaluation

Take five minutes at the end of a class period for students to respond to the following questions:

What did I learn today?

What do I still have questions about?

Could I use this knowledge to take a test, complete an assignment, or accomplish something in my life?

This makes them responsible for their own learning in a very concrete way.

Self-Review / Peer Review / Teacher Review Cycle

Take an essay, lab report, or other comparable assignment. Create a rubric for it. When the assignment is due, provide students with the rubric and ask them to grade themselves. Then give each student another copy of the rubric and have them evaluate a classmate's paper. Then collect the assignment and use the rubric to evaluate it yourself. Have students compare the three completed rubrics - the self-evaluation, the peer evaluation, and your evaluation - and ask questions.

This can help students recognize where they may be too hard (or too easy) on themselves and it may help you recognize attitudes in yourself that impact your grading. Average the results of the three rubrics to get a grade so students realize their self-evaluation actually matters.

Student Feedback

Consider having students evaluate you, the course, or a specific assignment. Maybe students really liked a book you planned to get rid of, or maybe students felt they rushed over material they needed more time to study.

While you will always get jokers who suggest no homework or pizza every Friday, you may find some interesting ideas as well, and students feel heard.
Put Students in Charge
Learn Students' Goals

Ask students what they want to get out of your course or this school year. Students may be uncomfortable - they are used to being told what to do - but if you push past their joking to get real answers, you might discover that some students genuinely want to learn, and even those without a passion for your subject may be motivated by goals like raising their GPA or getting into college.

Solicit Input on Class Activities & Homework

Next ask them: how do we get there? Invite their input on class activities, homework schedules, etc. Write down suggestions without arguing with them.

Once students have had a chance to share, you can provide an alternative perspective: "Yes, I'm sure you'd like to have no homework all year, but we have to get through this textbook and there isn't enough class time, so we have to have homework." Maybe you can find a compromise.

For example, Sarah was a high school honors English teacher. The class required reading a lot of novels, but her students felt overwhelmed. After gathering student feedback, Sarah was able to adjust her schedule. Rather than homework every night, she gave students due dates once a week when larger sections of the novel were due. This allowed students to plan their workload and still kept the English class on track.
Broaden Students' Sense of Responsibility
The fastest way to empower students is to make their work matter in the real world. Try service learning or project-based learning. By creating an environment where their effort will impact other people, you can help students recognize the tremendous power they can have, even while they are still students.

Having students write an essay on "why I shouldn't do drugs" is boring and the kids won't care. Turn that essay into an assignment to film an advertisement that will be posted on the Internet and screened at a school assembly and watch the difference in student attitudes!

At times, empowering students can feel like a risky move. But if you can bear with a little bit of chaos, you may end up with more engaged, interested, and empowered students as a result!
How do you empower students in your classroom? Share in the comments section!

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Empowering Students to Take Ownership of Learning

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Giving power to my students? Won't that mean school days full of texting, non-educational movies and zero learning? Maybe not ... Empowering students is not the same as abdicating control of your classroom. The ASCD's journal Educational Leadership defines student empowerment as "student ownership of learning."

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Teachers meet at regular intervals to review how closely their instruction is aligning with the competencies; they use an online database to continually track individual student growth.

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At Pittsfield, student-led discussions, small-group work, and individual projects dominate. The traditional grading system has been replaced with a matrix of "competencies," detailing the skills and knowledge students are expected to master in each class.

Students are graded on a scale of 1 to 4-with 2.5 considered "proficient"-and those numbers are converted into letter grades for their transcripts. Teachers meet at regular intervals to review how closely their instruction is aligning with the competencies; they use an online database to continually track individual student growth. Additional online classes allow students to further challenge themselves and earn college credit. Family engagement is considered a key part of each student's progress. And the Extended Learning Opportunities (ELO) program allows students to earn credit for workplace experiences that reinforce their academic studies, such as interning at a dentist's office or the local radio station.

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What Happens When Students Control Their Own Education? - Education Writers Association

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At Pittsfield, student-led discussions, small-group work, and individual projects dominate. The traditional grading system has been replaced with a matrix of "competencies," detailing the skills and knowledge students are expected to master in each class. Students are graded on a scale of 1 to 4-with 2.5 considered "proficient"-and those numbers are converted into letter grades for their transcripts.

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At Pittsfield, student-led discussions, small-group work, and individual projects dominate. The traditional grading system has been replaced with a matrix of “competencies,” detailing the skills and knowledge students are expected to master in each class.