VARK Book Clubs Before beginning the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, students completed a VARK questionnaire and were grouped according to their identified preference (visual, audio, reading/writing or kinesthetic). As we moved through the unit, students completed activities within their book clubs that were tailored for their modality of preference. This proved very successful as students were able to approach tasks in ways that were most efficient and effective for them.	Murder Mystery Students were presented with a highly-engaging case called the Alvarez Assasin wherein the students used evidence from the scene of the crime and witness testimonies to determine who killed the librarian Mr. Alvarez. After participating in a socratic seminar to discuss who's guilty, students had the choice to write a creative story explaining Mr. Alvarez's untimely death or write an argumentative piece to prosecute in court.	Student Choice I believe that the key to student buy-in is student choice. Allowing students of all abilities and interests to feel as though they can have choice and be successful is such an important part of fostering a culture of learning. Allowing student choice for as many elements of a formative or summative assessment is key, and allows the student to show their understanding in a way that is tailored to them, much like the persuasion project shown above.
Station Menus In MS English classes, I created literacy stations that had different activities focused on reading, writing, language (word work), speaking & listening, and creative representations related to each unit. Students had a choice about which activity they would complete at each station, and if they wanted to complete it individually or with the group they were circulating with.	Layered Projects To allow students to work at their own pace and to create more opportunities for one-on-one conferencing with students, I decided to try out layered curriculum projects. While the first attempt at this concept proved to be a wonderful way to gauge reading comprehension, I learned the important lesson of posting sign up sheets as well as modeling how students should move through the layers in a time-oriented way to meet their goals.