What does choice look like?
Sheena Iyengar can answer what good choices look like. Know that her expertise and humanity have driven much of this classroom model. Remember that it is the quality and importance of choices not a vast array of choices that motivate students.
Using this information, a Bazaar is set up for students from which they will choose a project. Three or four choices seem appropriate. Enough difference must exist in their choices so they can determine which one is most important to them. Choice does not exist in a vacuum. These first steps are critical but see how choice expands with the growth of the culture of choice at the bottom of this page.
In my art class, students must first go to their Art Homepage in Canvas and click on the 'Bazaar' image to get to their choices.
This particular Art Bazaar offered an interesting and quirky insight.
The first time I offered this selection no one chose the yellow tile for the printmaking project. Well!
Since this is a marketplace, I yanked it off the shelf, took it back to Research and Development, which occupies most of my personal workspace. I added a Kahoot and better videos and a promise of more intriguing printmaking processes. No, I didn't remove the unwieldy title, but I did add 'New, Improved' to the tile. Students began choosing the project! Choice is one way students can drive their own education, but being a consumer in this marketplace is another way that their expectations can create a demand for more dynamic projects. GET NIMBLE!
For those thinking that this model is suitable only for broadly structured classes like art, look at this example:
If Sci-Fi is the theme, offer choices. What? You already do? Great. Now there's a way to guide each group of readers.
Or there's this 6th grade math Bazaar:
You can use the same rubric for each of these projects. Cover the same content area but give choice in the approach to it.
Or this Social Studies Bazaar in 5th grade:
I happen to know an art teacher who likes working with 5th grade social studies teachers. The Bazaar model works very well for interdisciplinary projects.
Other spins on Choice
Strategies toward student choice
Voice and Choice, Schoolwide
For more information about how students choose Bazaar projects
or how projects link to modules and group pages,
or how group homepages operate,
click on 'About Canvas' above!