How to allow for learner freedom and encourage learner agency has always been a question for me. In my inquiry journey into learner agency, I have always prided myself in the fact that I gave my students freedom, invested in i-time and considered the classroom environment, but found it really challenging to take it into other areas.

This year home learning has been a struggle. I was doing all the heavy lifting and it did not sit well with me. I shared my feelings with my class regarding my struggles and listened to the struggles my students were facing. We decided to try out something new. The students would self-assign home learning!

I shared these questions with the students in the first week:

What is the purpose of home learning?

What do you think your home learning for this week should be?

What might you ACHIEVE as a result of your CHOICE? (dispositions, skills, etc.)

I was blown away by the responses.

One of my students wrote, “The purpose of home learning is to extend the learning of school to home, and strengthen what has been worked on at school. Home learning should be, in primary at least, a task that is enjoyed and done with more motivation than ‘it needs to be done’. Home learning strengthens important skills like time management and self-organisation skills. Homework is a mandatory, boring task, which needs to be completed, and feels like a load of… work. Home learning is a task that is enjoyed and done willingly, with passion. A lot of things are learnt from home learning”.

I was amazed at how most of my students responded to the idea. The sheer diversity of what they presented, within the big picture of the curriculum, was an eye-opener.

Home learning	Purpose
Test for violin inquiry. Try different tests and document their outcomes and keep trying, until I have a positive result. Read and analyse 1 chapter of Holes	To teach me more about how sounds get transmitted and projected. I want to use this information in my science inquiry to deepen the experience. To make me understand what I am reading and appreciate it more.

 

Home learning	Purpose
Making one of the recipes I have created	My inquiry is creating a cookbook so if I want to publish it, I have to test all the recipes so I know if they work. This could be a start on testing my recipes. It will also help me improve my fractions and measurement because they both have a lot to do with cooking and creating a recipe because you have to get everything precise.

 

There are so many examples that I am tempted to add everything in this post.

At the same time, I have to say that what worked for most of my students did not work for all of them. Some of them struggled to assign any home learning to themselves. I think it is a matter of habit, as children are told to follow instructions too many times as a part of school life. Once I conferred with them, eventually, they were able to assign themselves home learning.

My question is, is it the novelty factor? Or is this learner agency in action?