Curriculum Corner
By Anat Garzberg-Grant
As a school we have been working on building Student Voice, Choice and Agency into our planning and classroom practice as per our School Strategic Plan. In this fortnight’s newsletter, I would like share some of our progress with everyone.
Here are our school’s Student Choice and Student Voice Definitions which have been developed with the staff and some of the children:
Student Choice
Student Choice is the ability to make a purposeful decision, based on scaffolded options.
Student Voice
Student Voice is the ability to make a purposeful decision that is adaptive to considering alternate perspectives.
We would love to hear your thoughts, if you have any feedback please email me at: anat.garzberg@education.vic.edu.au.
Some examples of Student Choice:
Year Three planning was rich in student choice, providing learners with an opportunity to choose and analyse persuasive pieces that engaged their interests. Sam and Shanosh in 3A shared; "We chose this piece of writing because we realised that this connects to our Global Goal of 'Reduced Inequalities' because this piece of writing is about equal rights for women in football."
The depth of thinking at this young age- and the connections Sam and Shanoah made to their Inquiry learning are absolutely outstanding and a true product of what a curriculum rich in conceptual connectedness can do to support growth in complex learning topics in our young learners who are well on their way to meeting Global Goal Target 10.2 in no time!
Student Voice and Choice in the Success Criteria
Here are some different ways that Student Choice, Voice and Agency have been incorporated into the classroom through the success criteria:
Student Choice:
- Students selecting where they would like to enter in on the success criteria
- Students selecting where and how they move through the success criteria
Student Voice:
Students sharing their thoughts on the success criteria, to influence change
Year 1- Miss Gabriel’s learners co-created this success criteria – the children demonstrated their voice in
their success criteria, as they created it whilst also aligning it to the Learning Intention.
Year 1- Miss Gabriel’s learners co-created this success criteria – the children demonstrated their voice in
their success criteria, as they created it whilst also aligning it to the Learning Intention.
Year 1- Miss Farch annotated the Success Criteria, with students
sharing their view on what success could look like.
Year 1- Miss Farch annotated the Success Criteria, with students
sharing their view on what success could look like.
Year 2- Miss Williams annotated the Success Criteria using student voice, making the language of success accessible for all students in 2E.
Year 2- Miss Williams annotated the Success Criteria using student voice, making the language of success accessible for all students in 2E.
Year 5C: Students in 5C selected their entry point in the success criteria and then drew arrows to reflect how they moved through the success criteria throughout the lesson.
Year 5C: Students in 5C selected their entry point in the success criteria and then drew arrows to reflect how they moved through the success criteria throughout the lesson.
In all of these cases this enabled the children to:
- Understand their learning and make informed decisions when choosing their entry point
- Connect to their previous learning /schema
- Interact with the success criteria and have meaningful influence.
In terms of our teachers, this enabled the opportunity to:
- Gather an indication of where learners might enter on the success criteria
- Assess understanding, enabling them to make changes according to student need/voice and
- Provide a classroom environment where the children are actively engaged in all aspects of their learning.