Student agency refers to learning through meaningful and relevant tasks driven by our students’ interests, and often self-initiated with appropriate guidance from teachers. To put it simply, student agency gives students voice and often, choice, in how they learn.
The Clarity for Virtual Teaching and Learning Framework (C4VTL) strengthens student agency by designing tasks that allow for students to have voice and choice in how they show what they know for school and district focus standards. It is important to prioritize standards to develop clusters of focus standards systematically in districts and schools because it is virtually impossible to teach, assess and re-teach every state standard.
There are just too many standards.
In this Lunch & Learn, Kara Vandas, lead author of the C4VTL framework, and Dani Andrus discuss the power of student learning menus and share examples. They address how menus can be used in virtual and face-to-face learning spaces and how they can be used to strengthen student agency by offering students voice and choice in how they learn best.
Virtual teaching and learning can be done with quality AND be used as a vehicle to strengthen student agency.
