2 02 3
ENGLISH TEACHING FORUM
30
americanenglish.state.gov/forum
TEACHING TECHNIQUES
Motivated to Work:
The Power of Choice Boards
by LAURA LODER BUECHEL
Those of you with children might recognize
the phenomenon of something getting done
when you ask, “Are you going to clean your
room or the bathroom today?” and nothing
getting done when you say, “Clean your room
today.” It’s the same in the classroom—giving
learners a choice often leads them to do
something instead of nothing. This can be
simple: “You can do Exercise 5, or you can
do Exercise 6.” Even better, though, are
choice boards.
Suppose you would like your learners to work
on expanding and reviewing their vocabulary.
All the learners could perhaps create an
acrostic, but why limit it to everyone having
to do the same thing? Perhaps some learners
are more analytical, others like lists, and
others just need to focus on spelling. The idea
behind choice boards—sometimes called
tic-tac-toe boards—is that you give learners
a few options (see Choice Board 1) and have
them choose three activities in a row (across,
up and down, or diagonally), as in tic-tac-
toe. In the worst case, a learner finishes one
option; in the best case, some entrepreneurial
learner does all nine options. Most learners,
however, will do at least the three that they
have chosen—because they chose to do them.
CHOICE BOARDS FOR DIFFERENTIATED
INSTRUCTION
Tomlinson (2014, 20) writes that
“teachers can differentiate through” the
following:
• Content (the information and ideas students
grapple with to reach the learning goals);
• Process (how students take in and make
sense of the content);
• Product (how students show what they
know, understand, and can do); and
• Affect/Environment (the climate or tone
of the classroom) according to a student’s
readiness, interests, and learning profile.
Theisen (2002) picks up on this notion and
provides examples, also of choice boards,
in world-language classrooms because
choice boards can cover pretty much all of
Tomlinson’s points. Among the reasons choice
boards are useful are the following:
• They allow learners to determine what
they themselves would like to focus on.
• They help learners to become independent
managers of time, as learners have to plan
what they can do in the time allocated to
working with the board.
• They help learners become decision-
makers and take charge of their own
learning, as many examples can be
generalized to other topics.
• They often allow for more creativity than
just having students complete coursebook
activities linearly.
2023
ENGLISH TEACHING FORUM
31
americanenglish.state.gov/forum
• They allow for individualization and
differentiation, as options can be more or
less difficult or personalized.
• Once choice boards are made, teachers can
reuse them (for example, Choice Board 1
could be used for another topic) and are
thus time-savers.
Choice boards help with planning and
regularity in a class, contributing to a
positive classroom environment, or
organizational scaffolding from which
many learners profit. A structure that
often works for me in a 45-minute lesson
with 10- to 12-year-old children is
as follows:
Choice Board 1: Winter Words
Winter Acrostic!
Using “Winter Wonderland,”
write an acrostic!
Shape Art!
Draw your favorite winter
scene, but use words and
sentences!
Snowake Words!
Create snowake words
with the language below
in the middle:
• … ing
• … ed
• snow
• cold
• winter
Send Warm Wishes!
On the board, write as many
nice wishes as you can
think of to your classmates
for the new year!
ABC List!
Take a nice piece of paper
and cut it out in the shape of
a sled or snowperson.
Now write an ABC list of
winter words on there,
rst in pencil, then in pen
after your teacher has
checked it!
Word Shapes!
Look at the list of winter
words in your book. With at
least 10 of them, draw the
word shape. Leave it in the
front of the room for another
student to ll in!
Make a Winter Word Cloud!
Go through your book.
Write any word that you can
associate with winter into the
word cloud!
Find Words!
What words can you spell
from the letters in …
WINTER WONDERLAND?
List them! You can only use
each letter as many times
as it appears in “Winter
Wonderland”!
Create Cards!
Choose 5 to 10 winter words
that you think are dicult to
remember or spell. For each
one, make a Frayer card.
2 02 3
ENGLISH TEACHING FORUM
32
americanenglish.state.gov/forum
• 5 minutes: Bell-ringer on the board
(e.g., a tongue twister or joke)
• 10 minutes: Controlled activity with
the entire class (grammar review?
short video? spelling game?)
• 10 minutes: Quiet work on the choice board
• 10 minutes: Partner work on the choice
board
• 10 minutes: Sharing and celebrating work
and planning next steps
With this structure, I can start lessons with
something fun, then pick up on an issue I
noticed needed some work from the previous
lesson or a topic from the coursebook that
needs direct instruction. Then I move into the
open work, the choice boards, which can steer
the content, the process, and the products
that the learners create, all important in
differentiated instruction.
In Choice Board 1, learners can decide what
to do but also which words to work with. If,
as is often the case in the classroom, you have
some learners who speak English at home
and some who don’t, you can use different
word lists for different learners, take away
the models/scaffolds on the board, more
stringently correct certain work, or offer
an alternative choice board with a focus
on sentences. In my experience, a simple
vocabulary choice board like this is open
enough for every learner at every language
level to contribute; thus, it takes their
readiness and interests into account.
Choice Board 2 is based on working with a
nonfiction text; the basis could also be a story
or a short video. It is possible with such a
choice board to work with two different texts.
In this example, you could take two of the
same texts about Pancake Day from Newsela
or adapt a text with ChatGPT on differing
Lexile or Common European Framework of
Reference for Languages (CEFR) levels—or
Choice Board 2: Based on a text about Pancake Day (search on iSLCollective)
Scanning – Laser eyes
Make an alphabetical (ABC)
list of all the countries listed
in the text! Find them on the
map and write down their
neighboring countries.
Go through the text again. List
all the numbers and note what
they are about.
Vocabulary development –
Look it up!
Choose 5 words you do
not know.
Look them up on dictionary.
com in English. Write the
word, your guess, and the
denition in your notebook or
make a Frayer card for each
word!
Expansion – Carnival?
Write 5 sentences about
the Carnival celebration
in Switzerland or a similar
holiday in your village. Where
is it? What do people do?
What is unique about this
celebration? Why is there
Carnival?
Gist – Captions
Under each of the pictures,
write one sentence in English
that describes what the
picture shows.
Strategies – Big Fox
Fill in the BIG FOX about the
text!
Pronunciation –
Read it out loud
Read the text out loud to a
partner or on your iPad (record
yourself). Do this until you feel
condent!
Gist – Summarize the text in
German
In 5 good German sentences,
describe what the text is
about.
Or if you can: Retell it to your
teacher/senior in school/
neighbor!
Reduction – Hashtag it!
What is this text about? Make
a list of 5 hashtags that best
summarize the text.
Give them to your friend.
Listen to your friend explain
what they mean!
Visualizing language –
Picture this!
Match the pictures to the
parts of the text they match.
Add at least four new pictures
to the text.
2023
ENGLISH TEACHING FORUM
33
americanenglish.state.gov/forum
Choice Board 3: Based on a coursebook unit for Swiss primary-school learners in
their third year of learning English
Conversation with a
forester
Use Peaksay and practice
until you Win the Battle!
https://www.peaksay.com/
classes/ 63c8ba618b6ef
7893a0c4a/join
Practice the telephone
game
0 pair
1 pear
2 bird
3 beard
4 food
5 foot
6 owl
7 all
8 leave
9 leaf
Give your phone number to
your partner, for example
“pair – food – food,” and your
partner writes down the
numbers (044). Swap roles.
Two truths and a lie
Using the SIMPLE PRESENT
tense, write two truths and a
lie about nocturnal animals!
• Owls sleep at night.
• Bears sleep during the
day.
• Squirrels never sleep.
Add these to the envelope.
Test yourself with the ones
that are there!
Describe the picture
Choose a picture from the
unit. Write 10 sentences
using the PRESENT
CONTINUOUS tense!
For example (page 35):
• The squirrels are chatting.
• The woman is holding a
tree.
More? Add adverbs
and adjectives to your
sentences!
• The squirrels are chatting
agitatedly!
• The middle-aged woman
is holding a pear tree.
Unique treehouses
Search for pictures of
“unique” or “cool”
treehouses. Choose one
you think looks great.
Glue it to a piece of paper.
Then write!
• Describe it: It is made
of … . / It has … .
• What do you see in the
picture? There is/are … .
• Why do you like this?
I like it because … .
• What would you do in
your treehouse?
A walk in the forest
Play the game on page 50
with a partner.
DOs and DON’Ts
Think of a place (the pool?
your grandparents’ house?).
Make a list of things you
should NOT do there and
things you SHOULD do
there (6 DON’Ts, 6 DOs).
Don’t show your partner
where you are! Write the
DOs and DON’Ts. Then read
them to your partner.
Your partner guesses
where you are!
Read The Giving Tree
Read The Giving Tree out
loud. Rewrite the story in
your own words (at least
8 sentences).
Then make two lists:
(1) what we get from
branches and (2) what we
can make with apples.
Record yourself
Do page 44. Record yourself
reading out loud. Send it to
your teacher when you are
happy with it!
2 02 3
ENGLISH TEACHING FORUM
34
americanenglish.state.gov/forum
Choice boards, by nature, are excellent means of
providing differentiated instruction, and the examples
provided here can be adapted to any age or topic.
you can choose two different texts, but on the
same topic, from iSLCollective where there
is a filter for the CEFR level. It could also be
useful to have two separate choice boards for
such work, one with easier activities requiring
learners to produce less language and/or
fewer sentences, and one with more-difficult
activities on it, where learners are expected
to produce more.
Choice Boards 3 and 4 are based on
coursebooks used in Swiss schools; these
examples show how some of the coursebook
activities might be used, while others were
deemed not necessary. The teacher wanted to
work more authentically and with the larger
aims of learning but without the books in order
to offer differentiated, open instruction and
creativity. Choice Board 3 integrates some
of the coursebook aims (in the context of
“forests,” the present simple and negations are
taught). The story of The Giving Tree (Silverstein
1964) is mentioned here because an adaptation
is included in the coursebook, but the original
story is just as easy and more authentic.
We see in this example various foci, from
phonemic awareness to grammar, as well
as individual and group work or pair work.
Furthermore, pair work is placed in the board
in such a way that no learner could choose only
to do pair work (there is only one such instance
in each row, so that learners cannot chose three
in a row with only group work, as this might be
their only selection criteria). In this case, it was
difficult to decide whether each learner should
at least do one grammar activity or if it was
more important that they did not choose only
group work due to management issues.
Choice Board 4 is also based on a coursebook
but makes the learners work strategically to
focus more on process and strategies and less
on “just doing” the coursebook exercises.
If your coursebook has an end-of-unit test,
you can use choice boards diagnostically to
start the unit so you know where learners
have to focus. You can create a choice board
with practice on the language that the learners
did not yet master from the book, mixed in
with open, creative activities, or activities
adapted for another focus (such as reading
a transcript out loud instead of doing a
listening activity). Students can retake the
test after choice-board work, or the choice-
board products could be used as evidence of
learning. The activities that are computer-
based here could easily be used in pair work if
no computers are available.
Learning Menu 1 illustrates how Choice Board 3
has been turned into a menu students use
to complete more activities; the activities
are ranked by the teacher as more or less
important. Note that learners have to complete
both main courses. Teachers could easily adapt
the main course for different learners by
offering two versions of this menu, whereby
the main course is easier (or more difficult).
What is done with learner products is another
step that can lead to learners expanding on,
understanding, or appreciating each other’s
work. Sharing work also expands learners’
repertoire of language and social skills and
embraces the power of “not one correct
answer,” but creative interpretations. Choice
boards, by nature, are excellent means of
providing differentiated instruction, and the
examples provided here can be adapted to any
age or topic.
HOW TO INTRODUCE CHOICE BOARDS TO
YOUR CLASS
For some classes, especially those with
elementary school children, choice boards
need an introduction. It is useful to start
2023
ENGLISH TEACHING FORUM
35
americanenglish.state.gov/forum
simply, such as with Choice Board 1 on
vocabulary. You can use each of the activities
on the board as an isolated activity whereby
everybody does everything. In this case, the
model activities could be based on another
season, perhaps autumn. Then, when winter
comes, you can repeat the activities in
the form of a choice board with different
language, appropriate for the season. By now,
everyone is familiar with the concept, and
they can just do the work. Alternatively, some
teachers may prefer to introduce a choice
board in local language-arts instruction and
then use a similar one in English lessons.
When you use a choice board for the first
time, upon handing it out, have the learners
quietly read through the options. They can
help each other understand the choices, as this
is also an exercise in reading comprehension.
Afterwards, learners can prioritize the three
in a row they would like to do with a 1, 2,
and 3—or prioritize all of the activities from
1 to 9 if you want them all done. Another idea is
to have learners estimate how much time their top
activities will take so they learn to think about this,
even if their time estimations do not match reality.
This type of time estimation is related to time
management and is part of learning.
I find it useful to say that the first time slot of
a lesson allocated to choice-board work (in
other words, if you have a 20-minute slot in
the lesson, then the first 10 minutes) must
be for individual quiet options, while the
second part can be for pair work. Sometimes
I use a randomizer to form pairs for the day,
with pairs changing each day so that the usual
Choice Board 4: Using the coursebook for Swiss middle-school learners in their
fth year of English (14- to 15-year-olds) selectively
Record yourself reading
one of the texts out loud
(page 54 or 55) until you
are happy with the result.
Then use the speech-to-
text dictation function on
OneNote and see if what the
computer recognizes is the
text you see on those pages.
Write 6 questions based
on pages 56–57. When
you are done, your teacher
should correct them. Then
rewrite each question on a
slip of paper and put it in the
quiz jar.
Go to https://search.azlyrics.
com/ and search for “There
might” and “It could” and
“There must be.” Use “Lyrics
results” and write down two
lines for each structure from
some songs. Do you know
those songs?
Copy the postcard on
page 63 onto a sheet of
paper but leave 15 gaps.
Let a classmate ll in the
gaps (without opening their
book). You do the same!
Read one of the gap-lls out
loud, lling in the words as
you go.
Choose 10 words you want
to learn. Make a Frayer card
for each one.
Work with a partner. Try to
remember the conversation
on page 66. Record
yourselves!
Write 5 questions from
the transcript used in
Checkpoint A, Step 2. Then
play a game with your friend
who has done the same
thing. Read a question to
your partner. If they get it
right, they roll the die and
get the points. Swap roles.
Look at page 65. Take one
example and write it out.
Type the full sentences
from the language review
on page 58 into a OneNote
le. Record yourself reading
the sentences out loud and
use the Immersive Reader
function to help until you
are happy with what you
hear.
2 02 3
ENGLISH TEACHING FORUM
36
americanenglish.state.gov/forum
Learning Menu 1: Choice Board 3 adapted as a learning menu
Appetizers – Choose 2! Main Course – Do both! Desserts – Choose 2!
Conversation with a
forester
Use Peaksay and practice until
you Win the Battle!
https://www.peaksay.com/
classes/ 63c8ba618b6ef
7893a0c4a/join
Describe the picture
Choose a picture from the
unit. Write 10 sentences using
the PRESENT CONTINUOUS
tense!
For example (page 35):
• The squirrels are chatting.
• The woman is holding a tree.
More? Add adverbs and
adjectives to your sentences!
• The squirrels are chatting
agitatedly!
• The middle-aged woman is
holding a pear tree.
Practice the telephone
game
0 pair
1 pear
2 bird
3 beard
4 food
5 foot
6 owl
7 all
8 leave
9 leaf
Give your phone number to
your partner, for example
“pair – food – food,” and your
partner writes down the
numbers (044). Swap roles.
A walk in the forest
Play the game on page 50 with
a partner.
Two truths and a lie
Using the SIMPLE PRESENT
tense, write two truths and a
lie about nocturnal animals!
• Owls sleep at night.
• Bears sleep during the day.
• Squirrels never sleep.
Add these to the envelope.
Test yourself with the ones
that are there!
Unique treehouses
Search for pictures of
“unique” or “cool” treehouses.
Choose one you think
looks great. Glue it to a piece
of paper. Then write!
• Describe it: It is made
of … . / It has … .
• What do you see in the
picture? There is/are … .
• Why do you like this? I like it
because … .
• What would you do in your
treehouse?
Read The Giving Tree
Read The Giving Tree out loud.
Rewrite the story in your own
words (at least 8 sentences).
Then make two lists: (1) what
we get from branches and
(2) what we can make with
apples.
Record yourself
Do page 44. Record yourself
reading out loud. Send it to
your teacher when you are
happy with it!
DOs and DON’Ts
Think of a place (the pool?
your grandparents’ house?).
Make a list of things you
should NOT do there and
things you SHOULD do there
(6 DON’Ts, 6 DOs). Don’t show
your partner where you are!
Write the DOs and DON’Ts.
Then read them to your
partner. Your partner guesses
where you are!
2023
ENGLISH TEACHING FORUM
37
americanenglish.state.gov/forum
It is best to clearly state, or write on the board, how many
activities students are expected to do in what time frame and to
use an hourglass or other timer so learners manage their time.
suspects don’t have a chance of misbehaving
when lessons are more open, and so that
learners learn to work with different people.
It is best to clearly state, or write on the
board, how many activities students are
expected to do in what time frame and to
use an hourglass or other timer so learners
manage their time. Sometimes what a learner
wants to do the most will not fit into the
allotted time, and this is a valuable learning
moment—to plan on doing what one has time
for or to break up the activity into parts.
At the end of the lesson, you can have the
learners take out a Post-it sticker and mark
on their board where they will start the next
lesson; they can also write a to-do list for the
next lesson on this Post-it. If you have learners
using interactive or paper notebooks, they can
put their work in those, and you can regularly
collect them to check how well they are doing,
allow time later for revisions, and perhaps even
use the products for grading if you have to.
CONCLUSION
When you are creating choice boards, think
about the needs, interests, and skills of learners
in your classroom so that you have a selection
of activities that support a range of these things.
If spelling is a difficulty, then be sure to include
many spelling activities but in creative ways
to account for learners’ interests or ages (for
example, by asking them to make shape poetry).
If you have learners who are excited about
graffiti, have them hashtag or graffiti a picture.
If you live in a region of the world where a
certain celebration is important, then make
sure to include cultural connections. If you are
obliged to work with certain coursebooks but
are not satisfied with them, you can cover the
minimum by allowing for work via the choice
board, or work with texts and transcripts in the
books more creatively than the books provide
ideas for. You see this with Choice Board 2,
about Pancake Day: there is a text in our
local coursebook that students find relatively
boring; thus, I chose a more interesting text,
although this choice board would work just as
well with the coursebook text.
Searching Google Images will turn up
more ideas than you can imagine! Think
about narrowing your search, for instance
+a topic (space) +an age (elementary school)
+a focus (reading) +choice board, and you will
be inspired. I often take the ideas I find there
and simplify the language or put a small
example somewhere on the page or on the
board for the learners to refer to.
Choosing to experiment with choice boards in
your classroom can lead to many interesting
discoveries. They will provide your learners
with valuable skills, even if it does take a bit of
time for them to learn to manage themselves
in such an open situation—but that is one of
the main aims of public education.
REFERENCES
Silverstein, S. 1964. The giving tree. New York:
HarperCollins.
Theisen, T. 2002. Differentiated instruction in the
foreign language classroom: Meeting the diverse
needs of all learners. LOTE CED Communiqué 6: 1–8.
https://sedl.org/loteced/communique/n06.pdf
Tomlinson, C. A. 2014. The differentiated classroom:
Responding to the needs of all learners. 2nd ed.
Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Laura Loder Buechel is a teacher-trainer at Zurich
University of Teacher Education in Switzerland. Her
main passions are practicing what she preaches in the
elementary-school classroom and convincing university
students to think outside the box. You can find out more
about her here: https://phzh.ch/personen/laura.loder
