I have to admit, choice board is certainly new to me. What interesting is instead of teacher-imposed activity on students, choice board allow equal and independence of learning a particular topic or skill. What I learn from my reading and discussion with peers, choice board has several characteristics:
- A choice board may have few choices of activities that caters to different learning styles.
- These activities have the same learning objectives.
- A choice board may have compulsory and alternative activities. For example, do 1 compulsory activity and choose 2 activities. Some teachers would make a nine-choice tic-tac-toe style board because of this.
- Teacher may prepare different choice board for different category of students. For example, mainstream, special needs, gifted.
- A choice board may be made into end of class activity or integrated into the TnL itself.
- Clear instructions on each activity on the choice board must be provided.
Here are some example of choice board for language learning. It is not an easy task to do but to deprive our diverse-ability students to equal learning would be unfair. I have a hard time designing these simple choice board while trying to compensate the learning styles. However, the class would be nonetheless interesting and a slight turnover of autonomy as students get to decide something for their learning.
