Banquets vs. Menus -Jen Howard

The major epiphany that I had as a result of attending this past fall’s MTC Conference on Personalization through Differentiation was that there are some simple ways I could personalize assignments that I’ve been missing out on. Several teachers shared the idea of the menu of options: students can reach the same objectives via different routes.

I kept thinking about the assignment my freshmen were working on in my absence: a project I’ve done many times. It’s called the Short Story Seminar. Students essentially become the teachers and present a lesson on an author and story from the unit. Over the years I continually tweak the assignment and add and subtract elements. I’m proud of the fact that I’ve been able to see the quality of the projects improve over the years as I revise the rubric, and present both a sample “what to do” presentation of my own and a “what not to do” version.

But as I listened to the very first full group presentation, it hit me: why did all of the projects have to take the same form?

Why couldn’t students who were kinesthetic learners add an element of movement—a skit or movie? Why couldn’t a musically inclined student include music as a part of his or her project?

Our first session was with Kathleen Malanowski and Tanya Lynch, who are the division heads for NBP’s lower school. But even though I teach high school, I can definitely see possible applications for my students. The NBP team use both Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences and Costa and Kallick’s Sixteen Habits of Mind as resources. They ask students to self reflect and set their own learning goals.

Overall, they shared, you can use these various categories of learning to offer a menu of options for activities and assessment.

They also suggested that at some points you can and should ask students to work in the areas have been avoiding because these are weak areas they need to develop. This idea was particularly intriguing for me, as one of my standard objections to the idea of always personalizing learning is that the “real world” often won’t allow us to tailor our choices or work to fit what we do best (often, in fact quite the opposite happens and we must find a way to make our skills fit in with what’s already in place).

But, while students are learning new concepts and skills, it may be a very good idea to—at least sometimes—allow them to process the information in the ways they feel most comfortable.

For my part, I’m definitely going to put a menu in place for my next project. After all, I don’t like a banquet with just one or two choices—I like to pick for myself. ;)