Student-Led Learning

STUDENT-LED LEARNING OVERVIEW
Student-led learning is a core component of culturally responsive teaching. Student-led learning empowers students to take ownership and pride in their education. Student growth is an active, collaborative, and social process. I want my students to practice and believe that they each have meaningful, important, diverse contributions to add to the classroom. Therefore, after direct instruction, I engage students in a range of instructional strategies that strengthen their leadership skills. I vary my role as teacher, facilitator, coach, and observer to provide my students with the space to take on leadership opportunities. 

Peer learning and student surveys are two regular methods I implement in my classroom to ensure that students are being heard. Through peer learning, students vocalize their learning, and in doing so, practice their communication skills. Peer learning also allows me to monitor student learning and adjust instruction in response to the level of understanding. I often catch misunderstandings, questions, and note exceptional understanding when students are communicating with their peers about Algebra II.

I use student surveys to gather feedback and learn more about my students. Student surveys help me create lessons that are relevant to my students' interests and their community. While I conduct informal surveys through regular conversations with students, I also conduct five formal surveys spread across the year. Regular surveys allow me to gauge changes in student circumstances, interests, strengths, and weaknesses. Student surveys are valuable to me because I adapt my lessons to my students' responses and suggestions.

Please scroll down or click on the table of contents below to learn more about peer learning and student surveys.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Peer Learning
Student Surveys

Peer Learning
The images below represent a typical day in my Algebra II class. Each class period, I have 2-4 students come to the front of the classroom to show and explain their work during the You Trys. The presenters are encouraged to use mathematical vocabulary and provide space for their classmates to interact by asking questions, answering questions, and providing feedback. During parter practice, students work with their desk partner to complete the classwork. I provide question stems and hints on the board to facilitate partner practice. Students explain their work to their partner, which helps them understand the lesson on a deeper level.
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This student used the slope formula to explain how she found the slope of line segment CD.
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These students are checking answers with each other.
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This student used the concept that slope is rise over run to visualize the calculation of slope.
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The student on the right is showing the student on the left how to create polynomial transformations.

Student Surveys
The images below are of part of the survey I gave to each student at the beginning of the school year. Cropped from the images below are questions about the student's name, preferred nickname, birthday, family members, years spent in DC, neighborhood, living situation, and best friends. These questions allow me to gauge my students' support network and provide vital information for family communication.

Shown below are questions about my students' interests and involvement in school. I use their responses to adapt my lessons to topics that interest them. While I build off instructional resources I have used in the past, I am flexible with incorporating new ideas into my instruction. For example, I noted that several students enjoy music and dance, so we create a class song and dance about the quadratic formula. The questions about what they like and dislike about the subject and their previous math teacher help me avoid pitfalls as I build relationships with my students. The final question is open-ended, because I want to leave students with space to share anything they want to. Through the final question, I learned that one of my students has a fraternal twin, and another found word problems to be difficult.