Taking a Gradual Release (GRR) Approach to Student Choice

Published 27 days ago • 1 min read

If you’ve read my blog before, you know that I love to share sharing practical ways that we can empower our students to own the learning from day one. This is the core idea that AJ Juliani and I wrote about in our book Empower. It’s a journey I began in my second year of teaching middle school and continued for a decade. Each year, I experimented with new strategies, new ideas, and new protocols.

For the last eleven years, I’ve continued this journey as a professor with my students and watched as they implemented student-centered learning in their own classrooms. I’ve had the honor of leading workshops, giving keynotes, and doing in-depth coaching with teachers around the world and I continue to gain new insights and learn new strategies from them as well.

I’m still learning and growing in this area. Sometimes I give too much guidance and support. Others times, I don’t provide enough scaffolds. It continues to be a messy process and now, coming up on twenty years in education, I am feeling okay with the idea that this process will always be messy. Growth often happens as we learn from our mistakes. Today, I’d like to share an older article I wrote about four years ago (and refined two years later).

Sometimes choice is overwhelming. It can help to take an incremental choice.

The core idea is that we should take a gradual release approach to student voice and choice. It's actually a topic I'm covering in a back to school session today. I've been in Mobile, Columbus, Plymouth, and now Chicago this week.

The big idea is that we can gradually add more voice and choice through taking a gradual release approach to student agency.

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Let's Work Together!

I would love to work with your school, district, or conference! You might be interested in keynotes or workshops on intentional tech integration (including AI), deeper learning, PBL, and empowering students.

I still have some availability this fall and next spring. I'd also love to do something more in-depth throughout the school year. My workshops include access to my self-paced courses so participants can continue their professional learning after the day's event.

Please reach out to me at john@spencereducation.com or fill out the form on my speaking page, and I'll get back to you as soon as possible. I can send you a PD catalog with all the details.

Dr. John Spencer

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