Choice Boards for Special Education

About this resource

EVERYTHING INSIDE — 23 pages, 252 type-in fields

• One Choice Board with a CHOICES panel and a MY CHOICE panel, plus two desk-size boards on one sheet for a folder or a second student — the same board for all three contexts, so only which cards go in it changes
• 15 choice cards, 2 inches square, sized for velcro dots, across three everyday contexts, five cards each: snack (pretzel, juice, grapes, cookie, popcorn), play (ball, bike, kite, dinosaur, robot) and work (computer, writing, cutting, puzzle, keyboard) — each context on its own page with an at-a-glance reference table and a sample two-card pairing to start from
• Every card twice: a full-color set (one page per context) and a combined black-and-white ink-saver set for the photocopier
• 12 blank choice cards with a type-in word line, for anything the printed set does not cover
• A how-to page: before the first day, the two moves every time, how many choices to offer, which context when, writing down what changes, what to do when a student changes their mind
• A Choice Log (16 rows: date, time, context, choices offered, choice made, made independently Y/N, initials)
• A weekly roll-up (8 weeks) with a percent-made-independently graph
• A filled example — an invented student, one day on the log and three weeks on the roll-up, every percent re-counted from its own row
• A family page with a kitchen-size board and six home choices, two per context, on one sheet
• A hand-off page so a paraprofessional or another classroom runs the same board the same way
• A phrase bank: 20 lines in 5 groups (spoken lines for the board, written starters for the log, the roll-up and the note home)
• A storage and binder label sheet: 12 labels and a spine strip
• Start Here, a contents page with page thumbnails, and a "what's next" back page

A choice-making system for three everyday contexts, not a request-to-leave or calm-down system. Most choice-card sets stop at the picture; this one adds the log, the weekly roll-up and the phrase bank behind it, so a choice made on a student's own each week turns into a line on a page a case manager can bring to a meeting.

The Cards

• Snack choices (5) — pretzel, juice, grapes, cookie, popcorn
• Play choices (5) — ball, bike, kite, dinosaur, robot
• Work choices (5) — computer, writing, cutting, puzzle, keyboard

Every picture was chosen to be named in one word by a young child, in color AND in the black-and-white set; a word that failed in either set was left out of both — a cracker had no clean Unicode picture, a "blocks" card drew a brick wall instead of building blocks, and "glue" drew a lotion bottle, so all three were dropped rather than mislabeled. Cards are 2 inches square; the board slots are 2.25 inches so a card sits inside with room for a velcro dot.

The Board

• Choice Board — a CHOICES panel and a MY CHOICE panel with name, date and context fields.
• Two desk-size choice boards — two boards on one sheet, cut apart, for a folder or a second student.

The boards carry no pictures, so they print the same in color or black and white. There is no request card and no all-done pocket: nothing is being asked for and nothing ends — a student is simply offered two or more real options and picks one.

What This Is, And What It Is Not

It is a fillable PDF: type into the board's name and context fields, the log, the roll-up, the family page, the hand-off page and the blank cards, or print and use a pen. The card pages print on cardstock or plain paper and cut along dashed lines. It works offline with no account or subscription. It is NOT an editable online slideshow or word-processor document.

It is a way to offer a student a real choice between concrete options at snack, play and work time, and a place to write down which one they picked. It is not a request-to-leave system, a reward chart, a point system with rules, or a program of any kind, and it promises no outcome. It carries no prompt hierarchy, fading schedule or mastery rule; how the board is used with a student, and for how long, is what your team's plan says. The goal line and the criterion field are blanks for your district's own wording and your team's own number. The log counts one thing: whether the choice was made on the student's own.

Who This Is For

Special education teachers and paraprofessionals who build choice-making into snack, play and work routines with early, pre-reading or emerging-language students, case managers who need that use to show up as data, and the families who get the home page sent home.

More In The Collection

This is the fifth set in the Visual Supports Collection, alongside First-Then Board and Activity Picture Cards, Break Cards and Choice Board, Calm-Down Choice Cards and Self-Regulation Board, and Feelings Chart and Check-In Cards; more picture-card sets are being added to the collection regularly, all on the same cards-plus-data shape.

Pictures (color pages): Noto Emoji by Google, Apache License 2.0. Pictures (ink-saver pages): Fluent Emoji, Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation, MIT License.