Free Choice
Overview
Free choice supports learner interests and allows more complex social interactions to develop. Scheduling at least 30 minutes of free choice or collaborative play time allows learners to have the opportunity to engage in activities that make learning feel meaningful and supports the development of a broad array of cognitive and social and emotional skills.
Example: Use This Strategy in the Classroom
Watch how preschoolers play and listen to them explain their perspectives on free play. By allowing learners to have agency in how they play, they participate in authentic social interactions and develop their Motivation for exploration.
Design It into Your Product
Videos are chosen as examples of strategies in action. These choices are not endorsements of the products or evidence of use of research to develop the feature.
With 38 games and counting, Toca Boca empowers students to play for the sake of play. By engaging in free play through open-ended interactions, student Motivation can increase, and students can practice their Emotion and Self-regulation skills.
Additional Resources
Additional examples, research, and professional development. These resources are possible representations of this strategy, not endorsements.
Factors Supported by this Strategy
More Active Learning Strategies
Creating and acting out texts or original narratives can enhance literacy for young learners, solidifying their comprehension and building Narrative Skills.
Students activate more cognitive processes by exploring and representing their understandings in visual form.
When young children draw and are encouraged to explain their drawings, they are sharpening the cognitive and motor skills involved in conventional writing.
When students explain their thinking process aloud, they recognize the strategies they use and solidify their understanding.
Visiting places connected to classroom learning provides opportunities to deepen understanding through firsthand experiences.
Games help students visualize new information and immerse themselves in the learning process.
Imagining allows students to step back from a problem or task and think about it from multiple angles.
Reading aloud allows students to hear and practice reading and fluency skills.
Playful activities, including pretending, games, and other child-led activities, can support the development of learners' Metacognition and also inspire their narratives and writing.
Project-based learning (PBL) actively engages learners in authentic tasks designed to create products that answer a given question or solve a problem.
Response devices boost engagement by encouraging all students to answer every question.
