Leveled Student Choice & Engagement

All my courses, but collecting baseline data from my Band D. I choose this specific group of students because I’ve noticed a decrease in attendance for this particular section in the past 3 weeks, post-spring break. 

• My colleague Michelle: Helped design curriculum throughout this unit

• Reading Schedule + intro activity 

• The 3 texts linked below - background research on student engagement

• Novels: 

  1. Parable of the Sower

  2. Divergent 

  3. Ender’s Game

  4. City of Ember

Baseline data

I collected baseline data to identify these specific behaviors through a survey at the start of the unit and a tracker that I used for parts of the unit (during literature circle meetings) to track students who were on their phones, staring, leaving w/pass, leaving w/o pass, late (10 minutes or less into the period), and talking/distracting others.

Measuring success

I wanted to stress independent choice and measured these strategies’ success through final PT grades and anecdotal evidence. After the unit, students graded themselves and their peers’ on an accountability rubric. With the results, I think many students were able to gain a sense of accountability for themselves and others which helped alleviate some of the earlier issues I’d notice. Students were less likely to leave class or come late when they knew that their peers depended on them to work/learn/engage with the content.

Grades: Marking Period 5 versus Marking Period 6 

Student Reflection: Performance Task / reflection of literature circles

Work completion: Turn in rates on student role sheets 

I found this unit to be a huge success – in reviewing some of my 11th grade student’s brag sheets, they all marked this unit as a fun, engaging way to learn ELA foundational skills. When it comes to my classroom, I think that student voice is the only voice (within reason). Before this unit began, they stated that they wanted to read more books like Hunger Games so we decided on dystopian fiction. I think this unit only was successful because I implemented ideas from my students and thus increased engagement. Students like K, who hadn’t read any of the books previously, finished the entirety of his chosen text, Divergent. He also raised his grade significantly, a 70 to an 80, from Marking Period 5 to Marking Period 6. 

I plan to use this strategy again next year but in the fall with a different genre of texts. I’m interested to know how you’d arrange literature circles or student-guided units to get more students to read/engage outside of class. Due to attendance,  it  was difficult to track who was in which group or who was on which chapter, etc.