Choice Boards for All Ages
I teach or have taught undergrads (both education and non-education majors) and graduate (education) students in various literacy and research courses. My K-12 teaching was in ELA and I am now in teacher education at a small liberal arts college in the Midwest. The course I will be discussing here is my Literacy for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Learners course (soon to be titled Engaging Diverse Learners for undergrads). A choice board is provided for students to critically respond and create/apply their learning from 3 diverse voice books (i.e., picture book, middle grade, graphic novel, young adult). After critically reading one of their book choices, my students pick one of the choices (see example) to represent and use for a future classroom or to demonstrate their learning. The example choice board here is for education students but can be easily remixed for one specific text or in a general education writing/reading course.
Why choice boards? They support UDL (Universal Design for Learning), multimodality, and creative application in design to ultimately amplify student’s voices. They also model ways for teachers (in-service and pre-service) to use in other domains or contents. A note of caution: you should consider the digital tool knowledge of your learner so there is not a learning curve for the tool and content. You will also need to equate the time and application of each option but using choice boards allows for choice and increased ownership in assessing our learners.
