Adding Student Choice to the Classroom

ABSTRACT This study was designed to research the impact of choice in the classroom on student time spent on task. This topic was chosen because there are various ideas and options out there as far as classroom management options. This researcher thought that adding choice to the classroom would give students ownership over their own learning, and in turn gain more interest. There were thirteen participants of this study, all were second grade students from the same class. Their ages were seven and eight years old. The school the research was conducted at is a smaller school in an urban town. The school is a school-wide title one school, with a diverse population of students. Data was collected multiple times per day for one week to determine the baseline of who was on task, without added choices. Then this researcher added choice options for assignment and seating in various areas of the day and continued to take data for another three weeks. The overall findings of this study would indicate that adding choices to the classroom does in fact increase student time spent on task