Ep 113 // Using Choice Boards in the Elementary Classroom With Purpose!
Inside This Week’s Episode: — We know that offering choice to students is a powerful motivator. Choice boards provide a simple way for teachers to encourage students to ownership of their learning and helps develop students’ abilities to make key decisions. In this episode we explore how to use choice boards with meaning and purpose in the classroom.
Links & Resources Mentioned in the Episode
EPISODE 91: The TRUTH About Learning Styles
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Choice is a Powerful Motivator.
Studies have shown the benefit of giving students choice in their learning. One of the ways teachers do this is by implementing the use of choice boards in the classroom.
A choice board is simply a collection of activities (they can be digital, nondigital, or a combination), usually formatted visually on a grid. Students are then invited to choose one or more of those activities to complete. They are the ones choosing which activity interests them. So - right away, they are taking ownership of their learning.
Benefits of choice boards:
We know that choice is a powerful motivator. And, not only is it a powerful motivator, but developing our students’ ability to make key decisions about their learning experience is an essential component to a 21st century classroom. We want our students to be confident decision makers, choosing activities and projects that they think will best represent themselves as learners.
Now, 5 or 10 years ago I would have said that choice boards help support the diverse learning styles in your classroom (learning styles like visual learners, auditory learners, kinesthetic learners, and so on) - but recent studies have shown that learning styles are actually not a critical factor in student learning.
But - what we do know is that not all students enjoy doing the same types of activities to show their learning. Choice boards make it easy to support the diversity in your classroom - specifically diversity as it relates to how students like to learn.
Choice boards also allow students to take more control of the pace of their learning. As teachers, we’re not trying to herd students along at the same pace, keeping students together. But instead, we give them their choices, and the support they need, and let them set the pace.
Finally - choice boards free the teacher up for having to orchestrate a whole-group activity and instead allows them to support individual students, and provide on-the-spot feedback.
Designing Choice Boards:
One of the beauties of a choice board is that there is no-one way to make an effective and purposeful choice board. They can come in all shapes and sizes - and serve different purposes.
One of the initial decisions that need to be made by you, the teacher, is determining the learning objective you are trying to achieve.
For example, you might design you choice board to be aligned with a certain set of standards.
Maybe your choice board is designed to give students a variety of choices centering around a specific strategy that students can use again and again.
You can also design thematic choice boards.
Or, you can create choice boards that are used as end-of-unit project boards or choice boards that are used as a way to review content.
Let’s dive in a bit into each of these.
Standard-Aligned Choice Boards
I first mentioned standard-aligned choice boards. The purpose of these choice boards is to provide students with several activities and tasks that allow them to practice and engage with target standards. You might choose 2-3 focus standards and have several activity choices for each. That way, students practice those strategies in a way that is most appealing to them.
Let’s say you have 3 math standards you want students to review. Create 3 columns on your choice board grid, and then create 3 or so different rows under each standard with related activities for that standard.
Strategy-Based Choice Boards
For your strategy choice boards you’ll want to develop a board that presents students with a variety of strategies that they can use again and again. This would be ideal for something like reading strategies. Place critical reading strategies in a grid format, illustrating how to use that strategy and then allow students to refer to the strategy choice board to use the strategies as needed.
Or perhaps you have a math strategy choice board with a grid of several math strategies that can be used to solve a particular type of problem. Again- strategy choice boards are used repeatedly because the choices on these boards can be applied to many learning experiences.
You could even create a large strategy choice board to display in your classroom for easy reference.
Thematic Choice Boards
One of my favorite types of choice boards to create are thematic choice boards. These are choice boards that have activities that all center around a particular topic. These are great when you want to highlight a certain holiday or season, or even just a special topic.
One of the things that I started doing this year for our LINKtivity® Learning members is to create thematic choice boards. Each month, I email them a choice board centered around a theme.
For example in January, I created a Winter Olympics choice board. In the center square of the choice board was a link to the Winter Olympics LINKtivity® available inside the membership site. Then the rest of the activities all provided students with activities to choose from related to the Winter Olympics.
One activity had them watch a video of a figure skating performance and then write their own commentary as if they were there. Another activity had them read an article about one of the athletes and then have them create a list of facts that they learned about them. Another activity had them create and design their own Winter Olympic sport. There was a wide-range of activities that would appeal to different learners.
I did another thematic choice board on plants. Again in the center of the choice board was the plant LINKtivity® and then a variety of other plant-related activities to choose from.
Review or End-of-Unit Choice Boards
Finally, we have those choice boards that are used as a way to review content or wrap up a unit with project choices. These are great alternatives to a traditional assessments. They are a perfect way for students to uniquely communicate their learning. By providing them with choice, they are way more likely to enjoy the process, and do their best work.
Your review or project-end choice board may include activities like:
creating a poster
creating a movie about the topic they learned about
design a Google Slides presentation showcasing learning
drawing a diagram
writing a summary
creating a brochure
There are all sorts of activities that you can include to appeal to different learners. The more tech-savy students might choose to make a movie or a Google Slides presentation, while another students might want to make a brochure.
Differentiating with choice boards
The format of a choice board lends itself to easy differentiation. You can create 3 or more versions of the same choice board. One choice board might include more options with more advanced tasks, while another choice board might be more simplified and include less choices to help with students who may be overwhelmed by too many options.
It’s also a discrete way to provide differentiated instruction because the choice boards will all look similar, but have tailored activities based on the student.
As an alternative to multiple choice boards, you might even choose to just include a few challenge squares on your choice board grid for students who are capable of more advanced tasks to choose from.
Be sure to include both digital and nondigital activities on your choice boards, as well to be sure that you are catering to both tech-loving and not-so-tech-loving students.
Preparing your classroom to Implement Choice Boards
Let’s cover a few logistics for using choice boards in your classroom. Since students will be doing different activities, you’ll likely need to have a variety of supplies and resources on hand that students can help themselves to.
You might consider having an area in your classroom stocked with supplies that could be used for a variety of tasks.
The obvious supplies might include:
crayons/colored pencils/markers
scissors
glue
But you might also include:
large chart paper
construction paper
other random craft items that could be used
digital devices for any online activity choices
a poster or reference card with commonly used passwords for any activities that might need a password. For example, if one of the activities includes watching a brainpop video or something else that is protected by a password - you’ll want to have those passwords easily accessible.
Keep in mind, you may have all your students working from a choice board at the same time, but you may also just have certain students working on a choice board while others are not. Keeping these supplies on hand will allow students to have easy access to them, and rely less on you.
I hope I’ve got the wheels in your head spinning a bit on how you might use choice boards with your students. It truly is a great 21st century tool to use in the classroom to help motivate and support your students.
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