Choice Boards

Choice Boards are a simple strategy that teachers can use to provide their students with choices in the kinds of activities they are going to complete. Although the teacher specifies which activities the student will choose from, the student gets to choose one from several sets of options. This strategy provides moderate levels of choice and requires a moderate degree of self-directedness from the students.

For students with a greater degree of self-direction, you could use the Choice Board strategy in a slightly different way. You might include assignments associated with several skills within a lesson, or even several lessons. The example that follows this explanation is an example of this higher level application. To incorporate even more choice (assuming a higher degree of self-direction on the part of the students using it), you could offer the choice of completing the chosen tasks in any order as well. Thus, students in the same class could be working on multiple tasks, some at the same time as others, some at different times, depending on the order they selected. The most important rule in creating Choice Boards is that each of the possible sets of choices needs to lead to the same essential understanding of content or skill. Parallel options within each set also need to be at a similar degree of difficulty and provide increasingly complex opportunities for high-level thinking. Otherwise, students may end up selecting options because of how easy they are.

When students in a particular classroom have very different ability levels, you can further adapt the Choice Board structure. One way is to create more than one Choice Board so that students who are below or above the readiness level of the initial Choice Board have work that is at the appropriate degree of challenge for them. In this way students have the same degree of choice available, and their tasks are adapted to different ability levels. This is an excellent way to ensure respectful work for all students, regardless of their ability level.

Click here for an example based on a Choice Board that Carol Tomlinson describes in her book, The Differentiated Classroom (1999). Students can select one activity from each of the three sets of activities provided. They will circle their choices and sign the sheet as a record of their plans.