Choice Boards, Play lists and Hyper docs

 Choice boards, playlists and hyper docs

Exploring Choice boards, playlists and pathways

This is a very interesting new blog post that will introduce you all to three new ways 

of making learning personalized in your classrooms. This is to do with providing 

differentiated learning experiences to the students in the class. How do we do this? 

by giving them voice and choice. This means they have a say in the learning activities, 

they choose which activities they want to do, to achieve a particular learning objective. 

All these tools lead to enhancement of the 4cs communication, collaboration, creativity

 and critical thinking. It also enhances students engagement. These tools also support 

students with multiple intelligences.  These are intentional, data driven and goal drive. 

The purpose is the same , giving students the ownership of the learning and the learning process.

But all three are different from each other. lets explore each of these in detail with examples.

What are Choice boards?

Choice boards provide students voice and choice. There are a number of activities that help

 achieve a learning goal or objective. Students have choice in deciding which learning 

activities they want to do. All planned activities help build a deeper understanding of the content. 

These activities can be created in different ways using different tools. These have to be done 

individually. These can be designed using Google docs. These appear as menus where students

 get to choose the activities. 

Kasey Bell in her blog quotes Carol Ann Tomlinson, "at its core differentiated instruction means

 addressing ways in which students vary as learners". She writes in her blog that these choice

 boards can be created for any subject. This allows for creativity and innovation. Because of 

the availability of the technology these choice boards can be made more interactive and fun. 

These can be in the form of tic -tac-toe or bingo games. They can be used with any age group 

from young learners to adults. Below is an example of a a tic tac toe created by Kasey Bell,

 this is based on a novel. Students choose which activities to do, they choose the tools they 

want to use, thus empowering them as learners. Similarly there is an another tic tac toe board 

for solar systems for grade 5. Students answer the essential questions like "what planets 

 are there in the solar system? how do the planets orbit? and what is the order of the planets

 in the solar system? All students will answer the same questions but by doing different activities 

of their choice. The teacher will mark any one activity that the students will begin with and 

they can choose/select the rest of the activities by forming a tic tac toe. Such choice board 

can be created for almost all subjects. 

What are Play lists?

Play lists consists of activities that need to be done in a order or in sequence. They have

 well defined purpose. Also they are driven by pre assessment data. These can be done 

independently or in groups. It can be related one skill, one unit, or an entire disciplinary unit. 

But they need a lot of working before designing. They can be in a digital format or printed and 

given to students. In this way the teacher has more time to give to students who are struggling

 with tasks in class. 

Jennifer Gonnzelus mentions in her blog about a teacher, Tracy Enas a Rhode Island 

Teacher who states that her class had 26 students and all had varying skills and abilities,

 in order to meet the learning needs of all of them she decided to create a play list. For example

 she share her play list about learning parts of speech. In all play lists the first column is the

 name or title of the topic, in the second column there are instructions about the topic, in the

 third column students note down their notes about the task and in the fourth column they

 write or mention the date on which the task or activity was completed. The playlist can also

 include checkpoints. Students can do formative assessments to check their understanding about 

the topic. Students will be completing tasks at their pace. But the teacher can set some deadlines 

that should be met. 

Teachers of all grades and subjects can create these playlists. These can be created for 

training courses also for teachers. 

How do you make a  playlist?

Step # 1: Think of the learning objective or learning target that you want to work on.

Step # 2: Gather the resources and plan the activities that students would need to complete.

Step # 3: Sequence the activities in a logical way, which shows progression. 

Step # 4: Introduce layered personalized learning strategies for students. These could

 include asking students to make a plan to complete their activities, add adaptive digital content.

Step # 5: Consider the following students choice, format of the activities (printed or digital), 

including checkpoints (formative assessments), adding points to tasks, and making a timeline 

so all students stay on tasks.

What are Hyper Docs?

A hyper doc is a digital document where all content related to a topic is placed in one central hub. 

All resources and activities can be found in one place. It is like a Google Doc. Students are 

provided hyperlinks to all docs, websites, videos in one place. Hyper docs can be personalized

 or individualized. Students can complete tasks in any order. They offer multi modal learning

 opportunities, these include learning through videos, text, images, web links. As a teacher, you 

can change individual elements in the hyper doc for students. 

The hyper doc has elements of the 5E model that is engage, explore, explain, extend and evaluate

 their  learning through various activities. In the beginning insert a video or an image to get

 students attention. Follow this up by a list of resources (videos, images, weblinks) related to the

 topic that you want to explore. In the next section, explore what do you want the students to do,

 teach them using via a mind map or may be an online presentation or google meet class. Then

 create an online assessment which will teach students on how to apply the learned content. Give 

feedback to students on their work. Also provide opportunities for students to share work with

 authentic audience, this could be with peers from another school, or parents or concerned audiences.

 In the end provide exit tickets or an opportunity for reflection.

A hyper doc can also be created for demonstrating to people the various online tools available

 that they can use to showcase their learning or work. For example if you want your students

 to demo their learning about the solar system, you can give them a hyper doc with tools to 

choose that can help them present their work in a more interactive and meaningful way. 

These list of tools could be making a video about a solar system using a screencast o matic 

or a audio in the form of a blog, or make a google site about solar systems, or make a poster 

in canva or write a blog about solar system in blogger. The choice is theirs. 

For example, while creating a hyper doc for grade 3 on solar system, teacher can include all

 weblinks she wants the students to explore on the same google doc, along with links to videos 

or any other content available online digitally. Similarly a biology teacher teaching about cells 

can include all content related to cells in the same google doc. A copy of the doc could be

 shared with all students and can be edited to meet the needs of individual students.