Monthly Archives: March 2020

Digital Tools for Distance Learning – Google Forms

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Today I want to start a new series about tools that work well for digital learning. There are tons of blog posts out there that will give you tips and tricks for using digital tools. I’m definitely a novice there. What I’d like to add to the conversation is how the tools can be used to deliver effective and engaging instruction.

First, I have been teaching online in addition to teaching in a brick and mortar classroom for the past two years. And in that time, I’ve definitely learned a lot about engaging kids long distance. For more tips and advice about how to get started with distance learning, check out my post, Eight Things I’ve Learned about Virtual Teaching in the Past Two Years.

Today I want to dive into Google Forms. This is a free tool to anyone who has a gmail account, which is also free. Google has put a lot of effort into creating tools that allow people to communicate and work together virtually. Forms was originally meant as a survey tool. But savvy educators realized it could be used for teaching. It is very easy to create multiple choice, short answer, long answer, and other types of questions.

So, clearly Google forms is a great tool for a quiz. Under the Settings, you can set up three different types of Forms – Presentation, General and Quiz.

I almost always set things up as a Quiz. One of my favorite benefits of Quizzes is auto-grading. As soon as the students submit their answers, they receive their score. Additionally, you can provide general feedback for them. I usually set it up so that the feedback is targeted towards common errors. For example, I’ve just created a resource for my students to practice Order of Operations (FREE on TPT!). One typical mistake they make is not expressing ordered pairs as a pair, or reversing the order of the pair. So, I targeted the feedback towards those errors. This image shows what a student would see after they submit their work. Their answer is highlighted in red because it is incorrect. The correct answers are shown and the feedback points out a likely cause of the error.

What I love about this is that it puts the responsibility firmly where it belongs – with the student. Certainly, they might just skip the feedback – I know some students will be tempted to do that. But most won’t. Most students are genuinely interested in learning, and this gives them the power to take charge of that learning, to notice what they know and what they don’t, and to figure out how to do better next time. And it happens immediately, when the students’ interest in their progress is the strongest. Even at my best, (and I’m not great at grading papers in a timely manner!) I can’t give feedback to every student that quickly.

Another thing I love about Google Forms is how easy it is to embed a video. For distance learning, that is a key strategy for engaging kids and also for teaching. It allows me to be with them in their living room for a moment. Sometimes the videos I embed are created by me, and sometimes I find them on the internet. Check back in a few days for my next post about how I create short videos to teach my students.

Last week I gave my students a Pizza Fractions lesson on equivalent fractions. I started the lesson with this scenario:

After students had a chance to do some thinking and enter a short answer, I provided this video with the teaching point. (Click here to watch the video on You Tube.)

Because the video is embedded into the Google Form, the students DO NOT go to You Tube. I really love that. You and I both know once they go to You Tube, we’ll never get them back. The video is a short, mini-lesson on equivalent fractions that I made using an app called Explain Everything.

Besides quizzes and teaching, Google Forms is great for Escape Rooms – something my kids are really loving right now! With not a lot of effort, you can set up a scenario, embed questions, and even videos and photos, and students are off on a learning adventure! I’ve just finished an Escape Room on Order of Operations for my kids for this week. Here is the scenario:

I think my students will be highly motivated to work through some Order of Operations problems as they try to get into the Escape Pod!

The final way I use Google Forms is for reflection. I am constantly working to help students reflect on their own behavior and learning. Google forms has this great feature called a Checkbox Grid. You can use that to help students tap into their own thinking. I’ve used it in several ways – for self-reflection on Habits of Mind during a project, to help students form an opinion about a topic and to give them help reflecting on their own behavior in class. Here is part of the tool I use to have students reflect on their Growth/Fixed Mindset (FREE on TPT!).

After students complete the self-reflection tool, I receive their responses, and then I have an individual conference with each one. This gives them a chance to reflect first, and also gives me a chance to think about the shape of the conference before we have it.

In this time when many of us are exploring distance learning, Google Forms can be a great way to create quizzes, to embed learning, and to help students self-reflect. There is a lot of power in this tool, and it’s intuitive and simple to use. Leave a comment about how you’ve used this tool or a question about something you’d like to know. Let’s get the dialogue started!

Click here to find these, and other Google apps products on TPT.

Some of my Google Forms that you can find on TPT!
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8 Things I’ve learned about virtual teaching in the past two years

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In addition to being a brick and mortar teacher, I also create and teach classes online. It’s a great side gig for lots of reasons – I get to make additional income by doing what I love, I get to share my interests that fall outside of the standard curriculum, I get to teach in my slippers….

Now, my school is closed for the next few weeks, and I’m having to put that skill to use for all of my students. Many teacher friends are reaching out to me to ask for some advice, so here are the tips I’ve been sharing with them.

  1. Think about the big picture. – Just as we do every day, it’s important to teach kids in a consistent, holistic way. If your inbox is like mine, every company I’ve ever come in contact with is offering me free resources right now. I’m grateful, but if it’s overwhelming to me, it will overwhelm my kids. Think of the big picture, and then choose wisely, just as you do in your classroom every day.
  2. Use the power of the technology to engage students. – It can be difficult to keep students engaged electronically. I’ve found that their attention span is about half of what it is in my classroom. They don’t have anyone to turn and talk with, there is no teacher using proximity…. So, think in short bursts. I put together hour-long PowerPoints and keep the kids’ attention by embedding videos, songs, questions, color, new fonts, pictures…. When you can’t give them the evil eye, interesting technology can be almost as effective! For more about that, check out this blog post on using Google Forms.
  3. Try something new. – It is always a great idea to model learning for our students. In the past week I have been experimenting with an app called Explain Everything. This app is a digital whiteboard that captures whatever is on my screen, and also captures voice over. By careful layering, I am beginning to create short videos to teach my students. They know that I am learning this, and that encourages them to try new things too.
  4. Meet them where they are at. – After I created my first video using Explain Everything, I posted it to You Tube. Even before I had sent my students the link, they found it! They are all over the digital world, and they are very excited when we enter their territory. Check out my first video about equivalent fractions.
  5. Don’t forget the Social-emotional aspect of learning. – In these times, people need each other more than ever. Two days ago I posted an optional Reading Response assignment in my Google Classroom. Using Flipgrid, the students were supposed to give a brief summary of a book they are reading independently. In two days, my students have already spent 10 hours recording videos, watching each other’s videos and responding. They are hungry to connect with each other right now, and technology like Flipgrid and Google Hangouts can meet the need. If you don’t have a Flipgrid account, they are free and easy to open.
  6. Support your parents. – Even during normal times, as a virtual teacher I rely on parents to support the students. Parents are very stressed out right now and hoping that you, the expert, can solve at least one of their problems for them. Be available, and let them know the best ways to contact you. If you send work for students to do at home, send the answer keys so that parents know what you are looking for and can steer their child in the right direction. (If the Answer Key is part of the pdf, use free services like I Love PDF to split the resource that you have downloaded or created so that the Answer Key is separate.) Understand that parents generally don’t feel qualified to teach their children, and it is daunting for them!
  7. Find your village. – One of the most difficult things about this is teaching in isolation. I learned early in my virtual teaching career that teaching from home is much more lonely than teaching in a brick and mortar school. Schedule digital hangouts with your friends, text and call, and most importantly, share! Celebrate your successes! Bemoan your failures. And pick each other up and try again. Together, we can do this! To help with this, I will be uploading at least two free resources for distance learning every week for the next 6 weeks. Check my freebies page and follow my blog so you are notified about each new upload. The freebies for distance learning will include things like this “I Can Write Colors” practice page for K-1 students and resources for upper elementary students like this non-fiction article, “Chocolate – the sweet history of the world’s favorite flavor.”
  8. Take care of yourself. – You know how there is always one more project to plan, one more set of papers to grade, one more cool set of task cards to laminate…. Well, online teaching is no different. Once you jump in, your creative juices will start flowing, you’ll head down a rabbit track, and 3 hours will go by! Set healthy limits, and get up to move around periodically. Exercise, and spend time in the sun. You will be more creative and energetic about tackling this if you do it wisely.

This is a whole new paradigm for many of us, and for our students and parents. But if there is one thing I know, it is this. We can do this! We have done hard things in the past and we got this!

Keep calm and teach on!

UPDATE

I’ve just added some new freebies to my TPT page. Check out this Google Forms on 5th Grade Order of Operations.

Decimals and Dollars is a free Google forms lesson with an embedded video so instruction and practice are combined!

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Wander Words

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As you know, teaching vocabulary is near and and dear to my heart. And I love to do it in a playful way whenever possible. I’m always trying to figure out a fun way to engage my students in word play, and Wander Words is the newest craze in my classroom.

Wander Words is pretty simple. The word “wanders” around, and students have to decode it. The word can start anywhere, and can travel horizontally or vertically in any direction. Each word comes with a sentence to give context. For example:

Everyone knows that Ms. Cotton’s favorite cookie is a _________.

Students would connect the letters to spell Snickerdoodle.

I’ve been using these cards in my classroom to help students step up their writing by using more scholarly transitions, and they are having a blast!

This is a really fun activity that exposes students to lots of Tier 2 words. I’ve created sets of task cards, with and without QR codes, that give students practice with lots of great scholarly words. My March 2020 freebie is a great set of these cards to practice scholarly transitions for writing. Be sure to download them today!

You can get other Wander Words Task Cards in my TPT store. Click to go straight there!

Cookies and Catapults – a STEM Valentine’s Day adventure

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As I wrote about last month, I’m really working hard to improve STEM in my classroom. I’ve created posters to teach the engineering design principles that students need to learn (download for free in my TPT store!), and we are working to incorporate them every chance I get. Valentine’s Day seemed like a perfect opportunity.

Before we go too far, I have to admit that the cookies had nothing to do with the STEM activity. It has been my tradition for 25 years to bake heart cookies for my students on Valentine’s Day, and I really liked the alliteration of cookies and catapults. So, full disclosure, this blog post will focus on catapults!

First, I decided to teach my students how to build catapults rather than have them explore and design themselves. There is a benefit to having them experiment and figure things out, and that’s exactly what we did in the First Americans Shelter Design Challenge. For this activity I wanted my students to focus on controlling variables and collecting data over multiple trials. For that reason, I used the catapult plans I found at DevonCollier.com. Each group needed 9 large popsicle sticks, several rubber bands, and a handful of candy hearts and a handful of Hershey’s kisses. I got the supplies ready that morning and after lunch, the building began!

The question we decided to answer was “Which would fly farther, a Hershey’s Kiss or a candy heart?” The students worked in partners to build the catapults, then we grabbed our measuring tapes and went outside to collect data. Each pair was responsible for collecting data for three trials for each type of candy. They collected their data on a data collection sheet, and then we went back inside to put our data together and find an average. You can download the Valentine’s Day Catapult data sheet for free below the pictures! They had to do some great math because they converted centimeters to meters, and then added and divided to find the average.

valentines-day-catapultsDownload

The students put their data together on a class data collection sheet, and then they had an answer to their question! Most importantly, they had a blast while practicing some key math and science content in a real-world experience. And they ate candy! What’s not to love?

Thank you to Sonya DeHart for designing the border I used on the Data Collection Sheet and to A Primary Kind of Life for creating the font on the Data Collection Sheet. Check out these talented teachers!

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