The term Student Agency means that students have ownership of their learning process. There are many ways to increase student agency in your classroom and because this is a foreign concept for most students, it will have to be developed over time. In a traditional school environment, students are told where to go, when to go and what they will do when they get there. Typically, all students are doing the same thing at the same time and have very few choices.

In the blended learning environment, we want to develop students as independent thinkers, problem solvers, communicators, and creators. As it is for us adults, work is much more rewarding when you have some elements of autonomy in the process. We aim to build agency through several areas:

• Independent Learning Skills- teaching routines and procedures for independent work on and offline ensures that students feel successful, work collaboratively, support peers and troubleshoot technology issues. This not only builds self-confidence, it allows the teacher to work with others without disruption.

• Choice- Give students choices in their learning path, their pacing, where they work, what tools they use and how they demonstrate understanding.
• Voice- Students have opinions and love to contribute them. Create democratic processes that allow students to share their voice and build a learning community. Class meetings, self-advocacy, room design, voting opportunities, jobs, leadership roles can give students an opportunity to be heard. Give students opportunities to share their voice with an authentic audience i.e. blogs, video, art
• Goal setting- Teach students to understand and use their data, identify their strengths and areas of focus (both academic and non- academic), set attainable goals and identify how effort impacts their ability to reach goals.
• Progress monitoring- This goes hand in hand with goal setting. Utilize some systems where students can monitor their own progress towards goals. These can be online data dashboards, checklists, grade sheets, wall charts and data binders.