Students At Bat

This article was about teaching students to act responsibly by giving them opportunities to make meaningful decisions. Many students today are given few opportunities today to make decisions on their own, which leads the to be irresponsible in other aspects of their life. The article suggest the following ways to create decision making opportunities within your classroom.

1) Let students decide how to use their time.

2) Let students choose classroom rules.

• If students create the rules themselves they will feel more accountabilty to follow them.

3) Let students choose work locations.

4) Let students choose tasks.

• Within-task choiecs are those where you give the student an assignment with multiple options on how to accomplish it.
  

5) Let students develop rubrics.

6) Implement student-led conference

It must be kept in mind that this process takes time and practice; start with smaller decisions and work to bigger ones. Most students with learn that poor choices lead to not so fun consequences and they will see that their decisions control these consequences. By supporting them, students will begin to become responsible decision makers in and out of the classroom.

I enjoyed this article. It was short and concise, giving the right amount of information needed. The suggestion for teaching responsibility were great. Allowing students to make choices and decisions in school helps them become responsible adults. By making the decisions themselves, most students will hold themselves accountable and take more responsibility in getting the work done.