Practicing off the Menu

Understanding one’s learning preferences is so important for any individual to be able to truly take control of his or her own learning. I’ve been incorporating choice in summative assessment for a couple of years now. But, I had been struggling this year when it came to thinking about providing more opportunities for students to choose their own practice options.  Who knew my inspiration for a possible solution would come from Panera.  


I feel like this is not an original idea at all. But, it’s new to me so I want to share it out. I have often heard of student playlists and menus of options, but wasn’t sure how I could put that idea into practice. That was at least until I asked my students what options they wanted for practice. They gave me a variety of different options to build from. Using these student generated options, I created a Pick 2 Practice menu inspired by Panera.
  

A Pick 2 Practice session will run one day in a block.  It happens the day after a topic has been introduced. Students are required to pick and complete 2 different options from the menu to practice the material from the day before.

Our current menu options are:

1. Guided Practice: I lead a Pear Deck session of about 10 questions for those who want to walk through problems as a small group. Since I need to lead this, it is something that is done the first half of the practice session.
2. Kahoot: I lead a Kahoot! the second half of class centered around the topic we are covering. It provides a very different experience from the guided Pear Deck. It is faster and I provided little guidance.
3. Practice Problems: These are conceptual and calculation practice problems students can complete on their own or with peers. They can be completed
•  On paper and students correct with an online answer key
•  Online using our LMS which is Canvas.  Questions are corrected automatically. It doesn’t tell them what the correct answer is, though.
4. Simulations & Games: There are so many great physics simulations and games out there. I can’t resist having my students get some practice playing them.  I pull a variety of them and let students have some choice which ones to explore. I was able to link a bunch of them through our LMS (Imagine a hyperdoc would be just as good). Then, they explain the connections between the activities and the concepts we are studying.
5. Videos: In the age of YouTube and the Flipped classroom, there are so many great videos out there that can speak to learners by making connections to a variety of different interests and with dynamic visuals and demonstrations. Learners can go through at their own pace rewinding and pausing when needed. I linked a handful of videos in our LMS, again a hyperdoc would be perfect for this, too. Learners then are required to write a reflection on the videos by providing specific examples that tie to the concepts.

After doing a couple of Pick 2 Practices in class, I asked for some feedback from students. The responses were overwhelmingly positive:

"I liked how we had different options depending on what helps us learn the best."
"I liked the Kahoot and I liked that we got to choose how we learned that day we weren't limited to specific options."
"I loved the pick 2 options."
"I like that it was an option to pick which ones you wanted to do that felt the best for yourself. "

This set-up is not perfect yet.  Based on student feedback, there is always room for more options
"I liked that i could follow along if i didn't understand it, but I think there should have been a more hands on thing we could have done, whatever that means"

So, building in hands on explorations will be key in the future.  Also, I’d like to come up with a way of conferring with learners when they finish their practice options. As it works now, when students finish, they turn in the Pick 2 sheet.  This still requires going through a pile of 90 papers to check that everyone has done the work. A quick conference where learners went over their Pick 2 sheet could be even better in terms of face-to-face communication and cutting paper work.  I could imagine even asking more guided questions about how well the options fit their needs as learners including why did you make these choices and how well they worked.

I really feel like I've finally found a way to work the menu of options into the classroom. I'm surprised at how