Maximizing Student Agency through Individualized Instruction

Abstract

This chapter focuses on independent literacy learning, offering strategies for maximizing student engagement in independent reading and writing. Beginning with a discussion of independent reading, the chapter encourages educators to create a classroom culture that promotes student agency and provides tools to build executive function skills that support the enactment of that agency. This approach includes fostering student choice in reading materials through culturally sustaining book tastings and pairing independent reading texts for students to think about the intersectionality of character identities. The chapter then moves into independent writing activities, outlining practices and structures that can make writing more accessible—including the development of topic banks to spark ideas as well as tactile and visual timers. The next section covers different structures for one-on-one conferences that include progress monitoring and goal-setting, emphasizing critical considerations for how to take up these practices in Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (CSP)/Disability Sustaining Pedagogy (DSP)-informed ways. Next, the chapter includes two Teacher Voices which demonstrate the flexibility of dynamic independent literacy learning, particularly related to student agency in lesson direction and content. The chapter concludes by outlining a nuanced approach to celebrations of student work that infuses CSP/DSP principles as a means of recognizing student identities influencing the final product.