Monday Night Musing #1: Serpens & Student Choice

Salvēte omnēs!

I'm starting up a new series with the goal of getting more posts. It's called 'Monday Night Musings' - each Monday from now until the end of June, I will set a timer for 15 minutes and write about something on my mind that day. These may not be everyone's cup of tea and they will lack much of the detail and forethought that goes into a longer post. But hey, you're here, so let's get to it!

Tonight I want to reflect on something simple - the idea of student choice. I have used the 'Serpens' assessment, first introduced by Rachel Ash on Pomegranate Beginnings, essentially since I read the original post. I have made many tweaks and adjustments and revisions to the process and tried it out with different units and levels of students. But the one reason I come back to it twice a year, even though I know it will be one of the most difficult things for me to get in the gradebook, is that it is built upon the idea of student choice, one of the elements of the innovative classroom. I try each day to incorporate many of these, knowing that you can't hit them all at once. But often when I incorporate student choice, it comes in the form of customization of stories and characters. Or in determining partners or groups. Sometimes they can choose between two parallel readings. Rarely do I give them a choice of the task they will be doing. Serpens is one of those times, and it is worth it!

My incomplete list of why it is worth using assessments that include student choice:

1. When students see their options in front of them, they engage in a way that is different than if the lesson is challenging them or simply interesting to them.
2. Students who normally feel put upon by school because of their struggles relative to their peers get an enormous sense of power than they don't usually experience.
3. You as the teacher have a great chance to teach decision-making skills - obviously if students need help making choices, or even by interviewing them about why they've made their choices after the fact.
4. Students compare themselves with others, but minus the typical level of judgment. In other words, they respect each other's choices much more easily because you are providing many good options.
5. The assessments will all look a little bit different! When you're scoring them, sometimes that can be enough to keep your interest. 
6. Students develop fond memories of work they've done on them - many students today recalled details from the last time they worked on 'Serpens' in the fall semester, and the tone was positive and light-hearted. 

Okay, the timer's telling me to stop, so that's it for now. How do you incorporate student choice in your classroom? Do you ever use it with assessments?