Understanding the Use of Choice Boards in the Classroom

Choice boards have completely changed the way teachers interact and engage with their students, especially in virtual and hybrid classrooms. Allowing students to choose how they want to tackle assessments and homework is a game changer for active participation and deeper connection with lesson objectives. 

Teachers have observed the choice board as a simple yet effective tool to transform assessments into creative opportunities. Whether you are teaching in person, online, or in a hybrid setting, implementing choice boards can make a lot of difference. In this blog, we will cover in-depth everything you need to know about the use of choice boards and their role. 

What is a Choice Board?

A choice board is a menu of activities that lets students decide how they want to engage with a topic and showcase their understanding. For example, if students studied climate change in science lessons, a choice board might offer them options like writing a news article, creating a detailed diagram, or filming a mini-documentary. In short, choice boards are about giving freedom to students and letting them choose the method that resonates with them.

While many design boards are designed to focus on a specific lesson, they can sometimes be broader in scope. The options for such choice boards can come directly from the teacher, or you can collaborate with students to brainstorm ideas together. Regardless of the process, the end goal for the choice board remains the same: to give students the freedom to decide how they want to showcase their learning. 

Tips for Designing Effective Choice Boards

Creating a choice board that truly supports student learning requires thoughtful planning. Here’s how you can design choice boards that align with your teaching objectives and encourage student engagement.

1. Define Your Goal

Start by identifying what you want your students to accomplish. Do you want them to demonstrate their understanding of a lesson, sharpen a skill, or work on a project? Whatever your objective, having a clear goal will guide the design of your choice board and ensure that it is according to your student needs. 

2. Brainstorm a Variety of Activities

While you are trying to design a choice board, think about the different ways students can achieve the goal you have set. Try to create options that cater to diverse learning styles and use a mix of resources. Providing a diverse range of choices ensures that every student can find an activity that resonates with their interests and abilities.

3. Collaborate with Fellow Teachers

Consider working with fellow teachers to create choice boards that cover broader themes. For example, you might create subject-specific boards for an entire grade level, but expanding the scope of your choice boards will require input from colleagues. You might even design school-wide boards for summer school or remote learning programs to keep students engaged during extended breaks.

4. Involve Your Students

Don’t be afraid to get input from your students while designing choice boards for them. Let them suggest activities they would enjoy seeing on a choice board. Their input can make the process more collaborative. Moreover, when students have a say in their learning, they are more likely to feel motivated to participate.

By following these tips while you design choice boards for students, you will have both an engaging and effective choice board where your students will take ownership of their learning. 

The Benefits of Choice Boards

Choice boards are more than just a teaching tool. By allowing students to choose how they engage with the learning material, choice boards create a more personalized learning experience. Here is a list of benefits that choice boards offer.

1. Choice Fuels Motivation

Giving students the power to choose taps into their intrinsic motivation, making them more eager to engage with the tasks. When students get a say in their approach to learning, they feel a sense of ownership, which significantly enhances the learning outcomes. 

2. Caters to Diverse Learning Styles

Every classroom is filled with students who learn differently. While some students are interested in creative tasks, others may want a more structured approach. Choice boards acknowledge this diversity by offering various options catering to different learning preferences. This flexibility ensures that all students can find activities that suit them best.

3. Encourage Self-Paced Learning

One of the greatest advantages of choice boards is the freedom they give students to work at their own pace. Students who are fast learners can spend time on things that they find challenging after quickly getting done with easier tasks. This self-paced learning not only gives them confidence but helps them develop time management skills as well. 

4. Empowers Teachers to Focus on Individual Needs

Choice boards also benefit teachers by reducing the need for constant lesson-focused learning. While students are engaged in tasks, teachers have opportunities to work one-on-one with students who need more attention. Teachers can also utilize the extra time to provide personalized feedback and make a learning environment that does not compromise the engagement of the whole class.

Creative Applications of Choice Boards

Choice boards can transform how students engage with assessments, homework, and even remote learning. Let’s explore how you can incorporate choice boards into various aspects of your teaching.

Reinventing Assessments

Choice boards provide an innovative alternative to traditional assessments by allowing students to decide how they showcase their understanding. Instead of sticking to essays or multiple-choice tests, students can choose creative ways to demonstrate their understanding of a topic, making assessments both engaging and personalized.

Here are some tips for effectively incorporating assessment choice boards.

• You can keep the traditional assessment option for students who prefer them. You can use online quiz generators to save time and cater to your students’s preferences. 
• Explore free templates that are available online to save time, or you can simply use them to take inspiration.
• Maintaining a balance between creativity and sticking to the learning goals is important for effectively implementing choice boards.

Enhancing Homework Experiences

Homework choice boards reduce the monotony of repetitive homework tasks with engaging activities. They allow students to select how they want to reinforce the topics learned in class, making homework a more enjoyable experience. A family-focused homework choice board encourages collaborative learning and helps families stay informed about their children's studies. 

Teachers need to take care of the following things before making use of homework choice boards.

• They should introduce students to the board in class before sending it home to ensure that they understand it well.
• Any accessibility challenges should be taken care of in terms of materials availability or use of technology.
• It is very important to keep the tasks manageable for families as well because the purpose is to promote collaborative learning and not make it a stressful task. 

Supporting Remote Learning

Choice boards are an important resource for remote learning, offering flexibility and structure when students learn from home. These boards should be easily adaptable so teachers can update activities or texts to keep them relevant and engaging. A well-prepared choice board makes sure that students stay connected to learning even when they are not in the classroom. 

If you plan to make choice boards for remote learning, the following things need to be considered. 

• The choice boards should be dynamic and must have student-centered opportunities.
• These choice boards should cater to the diverse needs of students’ learning.

Designing Choice Boards

Creating choice boards offers endless possibilities for meeting diverse learning goals. Whether you aim to align with learning goals or provide engaging activities, it is important to define the purpose of your choice board before designing it. A well-thought-out choice board ensures that the activities resonate with students and support learning. Here are different types of choice boards you can design.

• Standards- Aligned Choice Boards
• Thematic Choice Boards
• Strategy-Specific Boards
• Review and Practice Boards
• Digital Choice Boards
• Brain Breaks Choice Board
• Project or Performance Task Boards

Standards-Aligned Choice Boards

Standards-aligned choice boards are an excellent tool for ensuring that students engage with key learning objectives while exploring the lesson content in a way that they prefer. These boards give students a chance to enjoy the learning process. 

Each column typically focuses on a specific standard or skill when designing a standards-aligned choice board. Within each column, a range of learning activities allow students to choose how they demonstrate their understanding of that particular concept. Following are the key considerations for designing standards-aligned choice boards.

1. Identify the key standards or skills you want students to work on. Each column on your choice board should focus on one particular standard.
2. In each column, provide a variety of activities that cater to different learning preferences of your students for the same skill.
3. Include activities at different difficulty levels within each column to allow students to challenge themselves. 
4. Ensure each activity has a clear explanation so that students understand what is required to demonstrate their understanding of the standard.

Thematic Choice Boards

Thematic choice boards are designed around specific themes, allowing students to engage with a subject creatively. These boards can be helpful in diving deep into subjects that are beyond the standard curriculum, like special events or holidays. 

Whether you’re focusing on seasonal changes, promoting mental health, or exploring a cultural celebration, thematic choice boards are a great way to help students understand the world around them. The key features of thematic choice boards are as follows.

1. Thematic boards are centered on a particular topic, enabling students to explore it from different angles
2. Each board has diverse activities, each of which ties to the theme to ensure that students develop complete understanding. 
3. Thematic choice boards encourage students to connect the learning experience with their personal interests or values.
4. Many thematic boards can draw connections between subjects, providing an interdisciplinary approach, such as a weather-themed choice board that can relate to science. 

Strategy-Specific Boards

Strategy-specific choice boards are designed to help students develop specific learning strategies in various contexts. Whether it is reinforcing reading strategies, vocabulary development, or other skills, strategy-specific boards encourage students to practice and refine learning in the way that best suits them. A strategy-specific choice board has the following key features.

1. The board is designed around a specific skill or strategy, such as reading comprehension, vocabulary, or problem-solving techniques. Each activity on the board lets students practice that strategy.
2. A strategy-specific board lets students choose from various activities that help them practice the specific strategy in diverse ways. 
3. One of the strengths of strategy-specific boards is that they can be used repeatedly for the same skill or across different units.
4. These boards can accommodate different learning styles by offering students multiple ways to apply the strategy. 

Review and Practice Boards

Review and practice choice boards are an interactive alternative to traditional study guides, offering students a more personalized approach to assessment preparation. Instead of simply reading through notes or completing repetitive worksheets, students are given a variety of engaging activities to choose from. The key features of review and practice choice boards are as follows.

1. Review and practice boards focus on reinforcing essential skills, vocabulary, and concepts in preparation for upcoming assessments.
2. The autonomy helps students feel more invested in their learning while also enhancing their responsibility.
3. The activities on a review board are designed to be engaging, providing students with interactive, creative, and practical ways to reinforce their learning.

Digital Choice Boards

In today’s tech-driven world, digital choice boards have become an excellent way to engage students. By leveraging digital tools like Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, or Google Slides, teachers can design choice boards that are interactive, visually appealing, and easy to share with the whole class. With advanced AI tools such as teacherbot.io available, creating creative resources has become easier than ever for teachers. Following are the key benefits of digital choice boards.

1. One of the biggest advantages of digital choice boards is the ability to include interactive elements like links to videos, websites, or resources.
2. Unlike paper-based choice boards that require printing and distributing, digital choice boards can be updated quickly.
3. Digital choice boards can be shared instantly with students via email, learning management systems, or classroom tools like Google Classroom.
4. Teachers can set up interactive features where students submit their work or engage with each other, fostering an interactive learning environment.

Brain Breaks Choice Board

Incorporating brain breaks into your classroom routine is essential for maintaining focus and enhancing overall learning. A Brain Breaks Choice Board offers students a variety of fun and engaging activities to choose from during their downtime. 

These activities can help students release stress, refocus their minds, and return to their tasks with more energy and creativity. Brain breaks do not necessarily have to be outdoor; even indoor recess games can be as fun as outdoor play. A few benefits of using brain break choice boards are as follows. 

1. Short breaks allow students to disengage from academic work and increase their ability to focus when they return to learning.
2. Many brain breaks incorporate physical movement, which helps reduce restlessness and improve circulation, boosting mood and overall classroom dynamics.
3. Giving students the freedom to choose how they spend their break time promotes independence and decision-making skills.
4. Regular brain breaks foster a more positive classroom environment where students feel supported and energized, ultimately leading to improved outcomes.

Project or Performance Task Boards

Unlike traditional assessments, where the format and structure are predefined, project or performance task boards give students the autonomy to choose the type of task they want to engage in. This allows students to express their learning in a manner that aligns with their interests, leading to higher completion rates. The key features of such choice boards are as follows.

1. Choosing their project or performance task empowers students to take ownership of their learning. 
2. Many projects or performance tasks encourage students to engage in activities that mirror real-world tasks.
3. These boards enable students to apply knowledge rather than simply recall facts.

Differentiating Choice Boards

To ensure that all students are appropriately challenged, you can create multiple versions of the same choice board, each tailored to different levels. For example, you can design a set of choice boards with different difficulty levels: one for advanced students, one for the general class, and one for students who need extra support. 

If you are opting for digital choice boards, it is super handy just to duplicate and make different versions of the choice board. You can increase the complexity of tasks for advanced learners while providing additional resources and support for the students who need it. 

Another approach is to design a single-choice board and use color-coding to distinguish tasks based on their difficulty. For example, you can use green color for more challenging tasks, making students challenge themselves while also expanding their learning. Understanding these differences in choice boards ensures that you choose the right one for your students to meet the end goals. 

Conclusion

Choice boards are a powerful tool for empowering students, allowing them to choose how they learn and demonstrate their understanding. Whether you're designing them for specific standards, reviewing key concepts, or providing creative projects, choice boards promote engagement, ownership, and creativity. By thoughtfully designing and differentiating your choice boards, you can ensure that every student can learn at their own pace.