Choice Cards

When working with students with Autism, Non-verbal, Multiple Learning Disabilities, and Emotionally Disturbed, choices are an important strategy teachers can use to help curb a behavior, be used as a motivator or for inclusion in a lesson. Choice boards help students to pick from a variety of materials or rewards, and they see it visually on their choice card.

In my classroom, we use choice cards as token boards for highly preferred rewards/activities once the student complies with the work that needs to be done. But I have also seen choice cards used for manding for specific objects in ABA classrooms, and also as first/then cards. The first/then cards are nice because the teacher chooses the "First" activity, usually the must-do activity and then the student will choose the "Then" activity, which is usually the highly preferred activity or reward for completing the work.

Both "boards" can be created using PECTS and BoardMaker, which is a program that has lots of Choice Card templates for teachers to use. What is nice about the BoardMaker program is that there are lots of pictures/word combinations that the teacher can search for the best picture that relates to the student and his/her environment. Also BoardMaker can make customized boards using pictures that you and your students can create or take from the internet.