Giving Students More Choice in Señor Wooly

For years, we’ve preached that one of the quickest paths to student enjoyment of Wooly is through freedom of choice.

We believe that, at least some of the time, students should have the opportunity to work on stories that interest them.

That’s the idea behind Student Choice Assignments.

How Student Choice Assignments work

The concept is simple: you set the number of Wooly Coins students need to earn, and students decide where they want to earn them.

They can work on any story they have access to.

For example, imagine you create a 1,000-coin Student Choice Assignment. One student might earn all 1,000 coins on Vibra viral. Another might earn 200 coins on Pan, 300 on No lo tengo, and 500 on Diego y sus amigos.

Same goal. Completely different paths.

You set the goal. Students choose what they work on.

Of course, choice only works if students actually have choices. If you’re going to use a Student Choice Assignment, make sure students have several stories available to them.

It can also be a great excuse to give students access to stories you haven’t had time to use together as a class.

What about “double dipping”?

There’s one important thing to understand about Student Choice Assignments.

Let’s say you’ve assigned Nuggets 1–3 of Me duele. At the same time, students also have a 2,000-coin Student Choice Assignment.

A student will eventually realize something: Wait. Can I earn my Student Choice coins while I’m doing the Me duele Nuggets?

Yes.

Students may feel like they’ve discovered a hack. In reality, we designed it that way.

We experimented with preventing students from earning Student Choice coins on stories that already had a specific Nugget assignment. It sounded reasonable. In practice, it created a mess of restrictions around an assignment that was supposed to be about freedom.

So we decided to let students have the win.

And during our testing, something interesting happened.

Student Choice Assignments motivated students to complete Nuggets they otherwise might not have touched. Teachers reported students going back to stories they had missed months earlier and choosing to work on them.

Whether you accept late work is obviously up to you. But the part that interested us was simpler: students were choosing to do the work.

Student Choice gets a lot more flexible with Wooly Premium

In August 2026, we introduced Wooly Premium, which gives teachers much more control over Student Choice Assignments.

Instead of opening Student Choice across every available story, you can choose exactly which stories students are allowed to work on. Want students to earn coins, but only within the Víctor trilogy? Go for it.

You can also create Student Choice Assignments based on Nuggets rather than coins. Tell students to complete a certain number of Nuggets across all available stories, a selection of stories, or even a single story.

The basic idea hasn’t changed: you set the boundaries, and students get some freedom inside them. Premium just gives you a lot more control over where those boundaries are.

Choice doesn’t mean giving up control

Student Choice Assignments aren’t meant to replace the stories and Nuggets you assign to everyone. Sometimes you know exactly what you want the class working on.

But sometimes it’s worth setting the destination and letting students choose how they get there.