Overview
Art choice boards allow everyone to get to their ideal art time!
Art choice boards can be used at any age or grade level. The key to any good choice board is doable choices for students. You always want a variety of activities that will allow the students multiple intelligences to show.
In many classrooms or homes, choice boards are a tool to promote independent work. The teacher comes up with several options in which they are okay with and the student chooses one.
A Choice board can be used for a specific assignment or topic in Art. It can also be used for independent work for fast finishers. As well as for Art centers in your room. Your art choice board could range from 4 to over 12 boxes of choices. The beauty of the art choice board is it is what you make it!
Why use a Choice Board With Art
Art choice boards are great for teaching a lesson and informal testing whether or not a student understood what you just taught them. It also can be used to reinforce instruction. Art choice boards help you to differentiate, as well as enrichment or for remediation. Having a choice board that has over 4 options for students to showcase their knowledge is optimal. You can have an art choice board that is topic-specific or that is standard specific or that is just random activity options of concepts you have already taught but need a good sub plan for the day you are gone.
Examples of Art Choice Boards
Art History for Elementary grades choice board
https://theartofeducation.edu/2013/01/14/how-to-use-choice-boards-in-the-elementary-art-room/
Why is this good?: This is a good example of an Art Choice Board because it has over 4 options, multiple intelligence based activities. The best part of this Choice Board is that there is more than one option in each square. Giving students more than one option based on their intelligence. This teacher also coordinated her images from the board to containers that have supplies so that students can easily identify the materials needed for the chosen activity. Everything that a student could need is easily seen and accessible, making for a GREAT independent Art Choice Board.
| Rainbow Fish Art Choice Board Choose 1 option from below after the Read Aloud. | |
| Assemble Rainbow Fish from paper platehttps://alittlepinchofperfect.com/paper-plate-fish-craft-inspired-rainbow-fish/ | Paper Weave Rainbow Fish https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKkj1E4uafQ&ab_channel=PaperGEM |
| Draw Rainbow Fishhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhJbcx4X-sY&ab_channel=LaurenStacey | Create Rainbow Fish from water bottlehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HmRuI2JaXI&ab_channel=JennyK |
This is a simple and straightforward example of a 2nd-4th grade Art Choice Board. This Choice Board goes along with the read aloud of Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister. You could always add more choices that will really showcase the multiple intelligences of students. Another great aspect of this choice board is you do not have to reinvent the wheel, you are just linking to the already made wheel of other creatives.
Organizing your art materials for choice boards.
The best organization for Art Choice Board Materials is using specified containers for art activities. Coordinating the choice to the corresponding container with a picture or color coordinating. The containers could also be a rotating part of your classroom that maybe changes each quarter basing the activities on standards/topics hit. You can also use QR codes on material boxes that have the choices and instructions handy.
There are 8 types of intelligences and every student is equipped with them all, in some way. These intelligences may change or grow as a student does but the goal for a teacher is to allow for many ways for information to be presented and assessed. Allowing for the student to choose the best way in which suits them to show their understanding for material.
FAQs
How many choices should I have?
On any good choice board there should be more than 4 options. The best choice boards are the ones that have 2 to 3 choices per each intelligence.
Is it ok to cover the choices?
You can cover the choices and show them as you go. However, that also somewhat defeats the idea of “student choice” if you are still choosing what the student is to do. This could work if each box had multiple options but that is also a hefty choice board.
Should the choices on my choice board get harder? Or stay all the same level of difficulty?
Usually a choice board offers many choices that are about the same level of difficulty. Some choices may seem harder to some students than others but they should all take about the same amount of time and work to complete.