This month, in honor of this most important month long celebration, the newsletter will be dedicated to the idea of customization. So many new pizza places that allow you to create-your-own pie. I think Kramer had the original idea in an episode of Seinfeld, but I digress. What might this look like in our classrooms? When learning objectives are clear and connected to anchor standards/skills, how can we offer students the opportunity to customize their learning experiences? Choice is a tool of empowerment where students can have agency in their academic journey.

The RAFT strategy is a great way to give students choice when creating a piece of writing. The image below outlines the main idea of the acronym and I have included an article that has some ideas for all subject areas - yes, that includes mathematics, science, and health.

Sometimes altering the audience and purpose of a short writing assignment changes the context in which students have to express their understanding. For example, writing a letter to a fellow student about the importance of the quadratic formula wouldn't show as much as a letter written to a parabola hovering above the x-axis.