Digital Choice Boards- Helping Students to Take Ownership of their Learning

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By Kerri Lambert, Instructional Technology Teacher Specialist

Back in the spring of 2021, we were searching for a vodcast idea that would give our teachers a strategy to manage the stressful world of hybrid teaching. We landed on the idea of digital choice boards; choice boards were not a new idea for most teachers, but the idea of making them digital allowed all students- both those in school and at home- to take part in the activities. Plus, by creating digital choice boards, students had access to accessibility and multimedia tools for both consumption and creation of information. For teachers, digital choice boards made it easy for them to keep track of all the various pieces that the students completed.

So why are we revisiting it now? Because this is the time of year when the sun is shining, the birds are chirping, it’s finally getting warmer and the playground and ball fields are calling, so it takes every trick in the book to keep our students actively engaged in learning in the classroom. So why not let them take ownership of their learning? Choice boards let teachers guide their student’s learning, while letting them make decisions based on what works best for them. Choice boards can be set up in any number of ways, based on the content or skill that is being learned. The content can be chosen for students and the choice be in the manner in which they learn about that topic, or the skill can be chosen with the choice given in the subject matter. And that’s one of the beautiful things about choice boards- even the teacher has a choice!

There’s no reason to rehash all the benefits of digital choice boards, or for that matter how to create one; for that you can just rewatch the vodcast, or take a look at the slide deck we created. Instead, let’s take a look at where teachers can find digital choice boards that can easily be used with students as is, or with some minor tweaking:


Discovery Education:


As mentioned in our October blog post, Discovery Education has been creating some fantastic ready to go, student learning activities. Among them are dozens of choice boards on topics such as celebrating women in history, life science, social-emotional learning, the Olympics, and STEM careers. In these DE boards, students are engaged with multimedia elements like video clips, audio clips, and/or images that are paired with standards based learning activities. These activities can be completed offline and turned in electronically or with other paper and pencil assignments. Want to find these great choice boards? Open Discovery Education from Classlink, and just search “choice boards.”


Wixie:


Wixie is another application that we have access to in AACPS that has been hard at work developing templates and choice boards for teacher and student use. While Wixie has plenty of seasonal and holiday choice boards to select from, they also have reading and math choice boards that focus on skills. For reading, vocabulary and comprehension boards (for literature and informational text) are great options for allowing students to show what they know in a manner that works best for them. For Math, the “Show Your Work” math board gives students six strategies to show how they solved a problem. All six are strategies used within AACPS: place value blocks, part-part-whole, ten frames, hundreds chart, decomposition, and number lines. If you like our virtual field trips, pair them with the field trip choice board for an easy station or center. To find these and other options in Wixie, open Wixie from Classlink, and within the templates folder on the left search “choice board.”


Digital Take-Out:


OIT is always expanding Digital Take-Out, our go to resource for premade activities. A few months ago, we added a page devoted entirely to choice boards. Most of what you will find are blank templates, but there are a handful of templates that are ready for student use. And speaking of blank templates…


SlidesMania:


SlidesMania is a website that provides free Google Slide and PowerPoint templates to teachers and other users. As of this writing, they have about a dozen templates in a variety of themes that you can use that are specifically designed for choice boards! Just plug in content and you’re good to go. I love the new TV & Remote choice board template; students use the remote to pick a “channel” that they want to watch. It’s perfect for a skill where you have lots of videos that students can learn from. Another favorite is the movie themed slide deck. After selecting their ticket, students are presented with a learning task. To personalize this slide deck, add your bitmoji as the ticket seller!

Hopefully this blog post has gotten you excited about trying out digital choice boards with your students. They are a great solution for differentiating self-directed, independent work time!
For more resources on choice boards, click here to view a list of articles and support resources.

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