Real learning happens when middle school students are encouraged to create knowledge through classroom experiences filled with personal meaning. How can you, as a teacher, offer your classes purposeful assignments that build understanding without sacrificing the content you're required to teach? In a word, choice.

In "What Choice Do I Have?" you'll discover how giving students a voice in how they learn and what they learn from opens up your classroom to inquiry and engagement while offering authentic teachable moments. Terry Bigelow and Michael Vokoun's smart, ready-to-implement, and classroom-tested activities will find a place next to your planning book because they give you and your students multiple entry points for both the development of language arts skills and the comprehension and retention of content. Their choice-based activities and projects:

• span reading, writing, listening, speaking, and vocabulary
• contain specific directions for usage
• draw on the latest scientifically based research in support of student choice
• are illustrated by classroom vignettes that show how real teachers use them every day.
• can be used in all secondary classrooms and includes specific adaptations for
  • differentiated instruction
  • English language learners (ELL)
  • exceptional student education (ESE)