Student Content Creation Choice Board
Student Choice Board Pyramid
Student choice is becoming more popular in classrooms! A great way to organize student choice is by creating a choice board. Choice boards are a simple instructional strategy affords students the ability to choose how they want to demonstrate content understanding and content mastery. Choice boards come in all shapes and sizes. Some of the most popular choice boards come in the form of tic-tac-toe boards, learning menus, or "This or That" option boards!
The Student Choice Board Pyramid provides students with multimedia activities that they can choose from and then encourages students to work on a project that they can publish for others to see. That's right... I said publish! Often times, students get assigned a project which they work on for a few days, turn into the teacher, it gets graded, and then it goes to the Academic Graveyard... never to be seen again! The activity options in the Student Choice Board Pyramid are structured to be put on a class website, YouTube Channel, or attached to a Teach Newsletter!
Click Here For Your Free Copy Of The Student Choice Board Pyramid!!!
Level 1: Research Options
Level 1 of the pyramid is where students get to know the content they are working with. Students do research and present their research to the teacher in the form of a display wall, storyboard, shownotes, or they can come up with their own way (with teacher approval) of showing their research! Each activity is represented by a slide in the slide deck and comes with an activity explanation (you type into the template) and a rubric for that activity.
I'll use "Create a Display Wall" as an example.
Level 2: Creating a Product
Level 2 consists of three options that students can choose from. These options include making a video, podcast, or a screencast. Like level 1, each activity comes with a description (you should describe your requirements and resize the "Make a Video" image) and a rubric to help students meet the needs of the assignment!
Here is the "Create a Video" as an example.
Level 3 and 4: Interview or Reflection and Publish
When students get to Level 3: Interview or Reflection, their finished product (Level 2) is complete and they should be ready to present the product to the teacher in the form of a written reflection or scheduled interview with the teacher. After the interview or reading of the reflection, the teacher can offer feedback to the student and ask the student to make changes. Once again the activity description and rubric should be found on the slide! If the teacher accepts the project as is or if the teacher accepts the project after changes, then the student can publish their work on the class site!
Here is the "Reflection and Publish" slides aa examples.
If you want to see some examples of projects that students are working on or have created, go to www.hvspn.com for access to the Hopewell Valley Student Publications Network! Here you will find student blogs, artwork, photography, short stories, poems, and podcasts that are published on all the major podcast players!
About the author, Eric
Eric Guise is a media specialist and technology coach with more than a decade of experience as a teacher.
Eric was named the 2016 Biology Teacher of Year by the New Jersey Biology Teachers Association and is currently pursuing an EdD in Leadership in Digital Transformation in Educational Technology.