Student Voice

For the preassessment lesson in our Unit on Hermit Crabs my cooperating teacher displayed a wonderful example of using student voice. One of our learning goals is to teaching the difference between living and non living things. As a way to pre assess this we were going to give students a worksheet where they were asked to circle only the living things. My cooperating teacher suggested that we instead have student draw a picture of what they think a living this is and why and draw a picture of what a non living thing is and why. This was a great example of student voice because all the students had such difference answers, and different ways at looking at the same questions. Their different answers to the same questions wouldn't have been heard if we had gone with the inital circling activity. This made me realize the importance of student voice when pre assessing and activating background knowledge in a lesson. Allowing students the opportunity to answer open ended question that they can answer from thier individual perspective provides teaching with the tools they need to decipher what students understand and what pre conceived notions they possess.