Some Research on CHOICE In Student Writing




If you are still wondering about the efficacy of providing student writers with choice, these findings by Daniel Pink succinctly sum up the situation:
‘Control leads to compliance; autonomy leads to engagement.’ (2009, p. 108).








 ‘Too often in schools, teachers own the work. We create and teach lessons, dole out assignments, and assess the results, leaving students feeling like worker bees, dutifully completing assigned tasks with little power or control. However, when we give choice, we both empower students and help them develop and take more responsibility for their own learning.’
Daniel Pink, 'How Schools Can Spend Time More Wisely ' (2009)

 Many Additional Benefits of Choice:
Through choice, you can assist students self-differentiate their learning so work is more appropriately challenging. You can also combat student apathy, helping students connect with their strengths and interests and giving them more autonomy, power, and control over their work, which boosts their intrinsic motivation. These are perhaps the two most compelling reasons to use choice as a part of daily teaching and learning in schools, but there are many other additional benefits that are important to recognize as well, for they help highlight the true power and potential of choice.'
  • Students engage in deeper, richer learning.
  • Students display more on-task behaviour.
  • Students' social and emotional learning increases.
  • The learning environment becomes more collaborative.
  • Teaching is more satisfying and effective.
Rehearsal is a natural part of writing. If teachers limit the ability of student writers to make choices, it limits both the practice of writing and the important exercise of topic and genre selection. Rehearsal cannot take place, since the writer usually doesn’t know what he or she will be writing that day. Where the teacher chooses topics and genres for the student writer, both choice and rehearsal are starved of oxygen.

Australia's Victorian Education Department Literacy Portal Website has this to say regarding choice:
'At all stages of primary school, students need the opportunity to deploy their existing skills in acts of meaningful, communicative writing.  Even when still very new to writing (and grappling with the fine motor skills of holding a pencil), young children need the freedom to experiment with drawing and writing. 
It is through this active attention to encoding text that existing skills are consolidated and developing strategies are put to work, reinforced and extended.  Independent writing is therefore a time to write and utilise the strategies and understandings gained through whole class, small group and one-to-one instruction.'

 Wilson (2006) sees independent writing as an opportunity for children to write ‘exploratively and wonderingly’(p. 9), finding voice through writing about things they find important.

 Independent writing provides students with the opportunities to employ the various skills and knowledge they have developed throughout the more supported teaching practices of modelled and shared writing as well as those areas which have formed the focus of the mini lessons or writing conferences.

 Students should have the freedom to engage in independent writing at all phases of the writing process. Independent writing is not just ‘free choice’ writing but what the student does with their work as a result of explicit instruction and scaffolds offered by the teacher. In this sense, it is the independent phase of the gradual release of responsibility  (Pearson & Gallagher, 1983; Duke, Pearson, Strachan & Billman, 2011).

 Independent writing is both the natural response to the teaching cycle, student ideas and projects (Christie, 2005; Gibbons, 2015; Hammond, 2001) as well as recognition of the gradual release of responsibility (Pearson & Gallagher, 1983; Duke, Pearson, Strachan & Billman, 2011). 

 As well as forming a part of staged, sequential teaching, independent writing can be a time the student writes with little support from the teacher, trying out ideas in a risk-free environment where genuine writing attempts are recognised and rewarded. 

 Gadd & Parr, 2016) found effective teachers involve students in the selection and construction of writing tasks whenever possible. 

 Perry and Drummond (2002) contend that ‘when students have choices, they are typically more interested in and committed to activities, and committed learners are more likely to increase effort and persist when difficulties arise.’(p. 306). 

 An example of student involvement in task construction involved a teacher inquiring of his or her students:

 ‘What things have we been doing lately that we might write about? Have a think…’

 When the students decided on a possible topic of interest the teacher asked about purpose and audience, ‘Who might want to read about this?’ and ‘What do you want to tell them about this?' 'Would you be writing to report or to persuade or to recount…?'  

 The students wrote because they had something to say (which they had decided on) and the text type to be utilised emerged from the topic rather than the other way around. The topic (and its purpose related task) drove the writing. This is a powerful motivator.

 Effective teachers provide opportunities for independent (as well as instructional) writing for students. As an instructional approach, independent writing principally involves students writing for self-selected purposes and on self-selected topics and at times and places selected by the student. This is the ultimate manifestation of choice.

The intended audience may, or may not, include the teacher (Perry & Drummond, 2002). As the teacher is expected to provide little guidance or support for most students on “what” and “how” to write during independent writing, the teacher must ensure that students hold mastery of the problem-solving and self-monitoring strategies required for successful outputs to be generated (Perry & Drummond, 2002). 

 And this from Lucy Calkin's work...
'Teachers across the study consistently encouraged their students to write independently by implementing variations of the above guidelines. Some timetabled independent writing sessions; others merely encouraged their students to write in their own time. Some allowed for total self-selection of topics; others offered topics that students could choose from if they wished. Some encouraged use of a “writer’s notebook” (Calkins, 1994)
Students produced electronic or hard copy and noted possible topics for writing and wrote on imaginative, real-life, and factual topics that they were excited about. Their independent writing was not assessed as such, but teachers were always willing to respond to writing (if asked), or help students prepare it for a wider audience (if asked), or both. But no matter how they implemented independent writing, teachers were committed to encouraging their students to write for themselves whenever possible.

  As one teacher stated: I want writing to be a real-life thing for my students…It’s not just something you do between 9 and 10; it’s something you do because you’ve got something to say…and you want to get it out of you… Um, I think my students like writing cause they know they can say whatever they want (within reason!) and they know that I’m always happy to read their writing and talk to them about it ... I want them to think of themselves as writers and understand that writing isn’t just something you do in writing time. '                    Page 42 set 1, 2017 TEACHING AND LEARNING

 'When we incorporate choice, students own the learning process. We honour their agency and empower them to become the life-long learners we want them to be. At some point, they will leave the classroom and they won’t have someone right there, right there by their side in control of their writing life. They will have to take charge and make decisions about their own learning. This is why student choice is so critical.'
Alan Wright
Igniting Writing- When a Teacher Writes, Hawker Brownlow 2011.


Some links that provide additional support for allowing students CHOICE and agency.

 http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/116015/chapters/The-Key-Benefits-of-Choice.aspx

 This article refers to choice in reading, but it is equally applicable to writing: http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Journals/ELQ/0383-feb2016/ELQ0383Top.pdf 

 A teacher outlines how he provides and promotes choice for the writers in his classroom: https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/blog-posts/john-depasquale/promote-student-choice-writing-workshop/

 Ralph Fletcher video on choice https://blog.heinemann.com/ralph-fletcher-importance-choice-writing-classroom

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