Fundamental Skill Sheet

Choice Making

What Is It?

Choice making is the process through which a teacher provides a structured choice to a student in order to facilitate compliance with an instructional or behavioral request.

What Do We Know About This Skill/Practice?

Choice making has been proven effective through many years of research and practical application. Research indicates:

Choice making is a strategy that offers students increased control over their own learning or behavior by allowing them to select from two or more naturally occurring options in the classroom.
Choice making can be used to prevent behavior problems as well as to increase specific behaviors.
Teachers who embed choices are likely to see improvements in student motivation, on-task behavior, and task completion.
Choice making can be used to proactively reduce problem behavior, especially among students likely to engage in inappropriate behavior as a means of avoiding or escaping from non-preferred tasks.
Students with a wide range of disabilities (e.g., autism, intellectual disability, emotional or behavioral disorder), who often have only limited opportunities to take control of their own learning, can benefit from choice making.

Procedures

Decide when to use choice making: In situations in which a student does not comply consistently with an instructional or behavioral request, consider allowing her to make a choice.
Decide how to use choice making: There are two common ways to provide students with choices:
1. Within activity. Offer students a choice of how to complete a task or comply with a request. This includes choosing materials (e.g., write in a journal or type on a computer), environments (e.g., sit on the carpet or at a desk), or the order of the tasks.
2. Between activities. Allow students to choose between two or three options (e.g., work on math or writing).
Provide opportunities for choice making: To avoid overloading the student, limit the number of available choices. Two or three is optimal.
Praise the student: Praise the student after she makes a choice and again after she complies with the original instructional or behavioral request.

Tips for Implementation

To increase student compliance, offer choices for non-preferred or challenging tasks.
Provide explicit, systematic instruction to teach, model, and practice the choice-making procedure.
Give the student opportunities to practice making choices, offering prompts and guidance as necessary.

Things to Keep in Mind

If choice making is to be effective, the student must first have the skills necessary to engage in the instructional or behavioral task.
All choices must match the student’s age and developmental level.
Just as students process information in different ways, so too should teachers offer choices through various means:
- Picture cue: The teacher uses pictures to illustrate the choices and asks the student to select one.
- Written: The teacher lists the choices on the board, on top of an assignment, or in a student’s notebook.
- Verbal: The teacher states the choices orally.
Students might occasionally take a long time to make their choice. Avoid this by limiting the amount of time they have to do so.
Choice making can be implemented with an individual student or with a group.

Implementation Examples

The table below illustrates how teachers can provide within-activity and between-activity choices.

Within-Activity Choices

Students choose the order in which they complete a set of activities. Within-activity choices may include any of the following examples below.

Material Choice: Let students choose how to complete an assignment.

After completing your science lab, you may write your lab report in your journal, write your report on the computer, or dictate your findings into a recorder.

Environmental Choice: Let students choose the environment in which they will complete an assignment.

During journal time, you may choose to complete your work at your desk, on a carpet square, or at the reading table.

Order of Tasks: Let students choose the order in which they will complete their assignments.

During language arts, you must complete all of the tasks on the board, but you can choose to do them in any order.

Create vocabulary cards
Read Chapter 3
Complete the spelling assignment

Between-Activity Choices

Students choose between activities. For between-activity choices, provide a student with two to three activities from which to choose.

During math practice, you may choose either to practice your multiplication flash cards with a partner or to play a multiplication game on the computer.

Elementary Video Example

In the video below, Mrs. D. offers Navaeh choices for the alliteration assignment. Note how in the example Mrs. D. correctly implements the procedures for choice making, but in the non-example, she does so unsuccessfully.

(time: 3:11)

Transcript

Transcript: Choice Making (Elementary Example and Non-example)

Narrator: Choice making, elementary school example and non-example. Nevaeh often doodles during independent assignments in language arts, a subject she doesn’t enjoy. In response, Mrs. D. decides to use choice making with her. Note how Mrs. D. offers Nevaeh two within-activity choices to complete the alliteration assignment: write a sentence or draw a picture.

Mrs. D.: Today, we are going to talk about a type of language we call alliteration. Raise your hand if you think you know what alliteration is. Alliteration.

I would love for you all to give an example on your papers. And so if you would please write down your own examples. I saw all of you all some hands. Please write down your own example of an alliteration.

Nevaeh, if you would like, you can either write it out or you can draw it out. Which one would you like to do?

Nevaeh: Write.

Mrs. D.: Write it out. That is an awesome idea. Thank you so much.

Narrator: To review, Mrs. D correctly implemented choice making. She offered two choices and praised the student immediately after she made a choice. Although Nevaeh initially did not comply with the writing request, when offered the opportunity to control her own learning, she actually chose the same assignment as the rest of the students.

Elementary School Non-Example

Narrator: In this non-example, Mrs. D. does not implement choice making correctly. Pay close attention to how she offers more options than is recommended and then discourages the student’s choice.

Mrs. D.: Today, we are going to talk about a type of language we call alliteration. Raise your hand if you think you know what alliteration is. Alliteration.

Hi, Ms. Nevaeh.

Nevaeh: Hi!

Mrs. D.: You can either write it out, you can draw it out, you can use a computer, or you can talk it out. Which one would you like to do?

Nevaeh: Computer.

Mrs. D.: Hhhmmm. You are just such a great drawer. How about you draw it out?

Nevaeh: Alright.

Mrs. D.: Alright. Thank you.

Narrator: To review, Mrs. D. incorrectly implemented choice making because she offered too many choices, questioned the student’s choice rather than praising the student after making her choice, and basically chose the student’s option for her.

High School Video Example

Foundational Research & References

Cole, C. L., Davenport, T. A., Bambara, L. M., & Ager, C. L. (1997). Effects of choice and task preference on the work performance of students with behavior problems. Behavioral Disorders, 22, 65–74.

Cosden, M., Gannon, C., & Haring, T. G. (1995). Teacher-control versus student-control over choice of task and reinforcement for students with severe behavior problems. Journal of Behavioral Education, 5, 11–27.

Dunlap, G., dePerczel, M., Clarke, S., Wilson, D., Wright, S., White, R., & Gomez, A. (1994). Choice making to promote adaptive behavior for students with emotional and behavioral challenges. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 27, 505–518.

Dyer, K., Dunlap, G., & Winterling, V. (1990). Effects of choice making on the serious problem behaviors of students with severe handicaps. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 23, 515–524.

Guess, D., Benson, H. S., & Siegel-Causey, E. (1985). Concepts and issues related to choice-making and autonomy among persons with severe disabilities. Journal of the Association for Persons with Severe Handicaps, 10, 79–86.

Jolivette, K., Wehby, J. H., Canale, J., & Massey, N. G. (2001). Effects of choice making opportunities on the behavior of students with emotional and behavioral disorders. Behavioral Disorders, 26, 131–145.

Kern, L., Vorddran, C. M., Hilt, A., Ringdahl, J. E., Adelman, B. E., & Dunlap, G. (1998). Choice as an intervention to improve behavior: A review of the literature. Journal of Behavioral Education, 8, 151–169.

Moes, D. R. (1998). Integrating choice-making opportunities within teacher-assigned academic tasks to facilitate the performance of children with autism. Journal of the Association for Persons with Severe Handicaps, 10, 183–193.

Ramsey, M. L., Jolivette, K., Patterson, D. P., & Kennedy, C. (2010). Using choice to increase time on-task, task-completion, and accuracy for students with emotional/behavior disorders in a residential facility. Education and Treatment of Children, 33, 1–21.

Reutebuch, C. K., El Zein, F., & Roberts, G. J. (2015). A systematic review of the effects of choice on academic outcomes for students with autism spectrum disorder. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 20, 1–16.

Rispoli, M., Lang, R., Neely, L., Camargo, S., Hutchins, N., Davenport, K., & Goodwyn. (2013). A comparison of within- and across-activity choices for reducing challenging behavior in children with autism spectrum disorders. Journal of Behavioral Education, 22, 66–83. doi:10.1007/s10864-012-9164-y

Romaniuk, C., Miltenberger, R., Conyers, C., Jenner, N., Jurgens, M., & Ringenberg, C. (2002). The influence of activity choice on problem behaviors maintained by escape versus attention. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 35, 349–362.

About the Author

Caitlyn Majeika is a former special education resource teacher for students in elementary and middle school. Currently, Caitlyn is a PhD student in the Special Education Department of Peabody College, Vanderbilt University. Her research focuses on using principles of data-based decision making to enhance the implementation of behavior interventions for students who display challenging behavior in the classroom.