When Students Take the Lead: Empowering Students through Data and Discussion

Outline

Welcome and Introduction (10 minutes):
Activity: Introduce the session with a brief overview of the intended outcomes.
Discussion Prompt for Pair-Share: What are our hopes and dreams for the students we serve?
Objective: Set the tone for the session and connect participants with the themes of student engagement and empowerment.

Setting the Stage: One School’s Story (15 minutes)
Activity: Presenters will share their experience creating a student-led ILT and empowering students to analyze and set goals from their own data using a mix of video clips, testimonials, artifacts, and data.
Participant Reflection: Using a note-catcher, participants will reflect on how this approach is different from or similar to their own practices.
Share Out: Volunteers will be asked to share some of their reflections.

Deeping the Learning: Elevating Student Voice (20 minutes)
Activity: Break into small groups. Each group is given access to a set of scenarios, artifacts, and videos to review collectively, along with essential questions to guide the discussion.
Small Group Task: Groups will explore the scenarios, artifacts, and/or videos, using the essential questions to analyze the systems and structures the school team created to launch their student-led ILT and the impacts on student outcomes.
Share Out: Groups share their insights with the larger group.

Interactive Application: Develop or Enhance Your Strategies for Student Voice (30 minutes)
Activity: Each participant or school team develops a next-step plan of how they may use some of the strategies discussed to increase student engagement and agency in their own classroom or at their own school.

Gallery Walk: Getting Ideas and Giving Feedback (15 minutes)
Activity: Display plans around the room. Have participants do a gallery walk. With sticky notes, participants will leave feedback, questions, or ideas for consideration.

Reflection and Next Steps: (5 minutes)
Reflection Prompt: What is one action you will take back to your school to increase student engagement and agency in their learning?
Activity: Participants share one key takeaway and how they will apply it to their role.

Supporting research

Student progress monitoring conducted by teachers has been cited by many as positively impacting student learning outcomes. Marzano (2009) investigated what happened when students took the lead on their own progress monitoring, determining that this practice increased achievement by 32 percentile points.
Additionally, in his Visible Learning: The Sequel, Hattie (2023) notes promising effect sizes from self-reported grades (0.96), self- and peer-grading (0.54), classroom discussion (0.82), and self-efficacy, all of which are featured in Blackstone-Millville Regional School District’s story.

Works Cited:
Hattie, J. (2023). Visible learning, the sequel: A synthesis of over 2,100 meta-analyses relating to achievement. Routledge.

Marzano, R. J. (2009). The Art and Science of Teaching / When Students Track Their Progress. Educational Leadership, 67(4). https://doi.org/https://ascd.org/el/articles/when-students-track-their-progress