Recess Choice Board for Special Education

About this resource

EVERYTHING INSIDE — 21 pages, 228 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
• 5 recess choice cards, 2 inches square, sized for velcro dots: slide, ball, run, parachute, frisbee — with an at-a-glance reference table and a sample pairing to start from
• Every card twice: a full-color page and a black-and-white ink-saver page
• 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, and what to do when a student changes their mind
• A Choice Log (16 rows: date, time, 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 school week 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 all five recess cards on one sheet
• A hand-off page so a paraprofessional, a recess supervisor 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: 10 labels and a spine strip
• Start Here, a contents page with page thumbnails, and a "what's next" back page

A real choice between five concrete recess options, not a step-by-step recess routine to complete. 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 recess turns into a line on a page a case manager can bring to a meeting.

The Cards

• Recess choices (5) — slide, ball, run, parachute, frisbee

Every picture was chosen to be named in one word by a young child, in color AND in the black-and-white set. The parachute card depicts the large group parachute used at recess and PE in elementary schools, not a skydiving parachute or any other object — a real, concrete, nameable recess choice.

The Board

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

The board carries no pictures, so it prints 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 real options and picks one.

What This Is, And What It Is Not

It is a fillable PDF: type into the board's name field, 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 recess options, 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, paraprofessionals and recess supervisors who build choice-making into recess for 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

Part of the Visual Supports Collection, alongside Choice Board and Snack, Play and Work Picture Cards, First-Then Board and Activity Picture Cards, Break Cards and Choice Board, and Recess Routine Visual Schedule 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.