Google Forms have become one of my go-to strategies for distance learning. I embed instructional videos in Google Forms for asynchronous instruction (for more on that, check out this blog post) and I use them for formative and summative assessments. I also use them to create digital Escape Rooms, which my students love! (Check out this blog post for more on that!) With the help of Google Forms, BOOM Cards, and Whiteboard.fi, I have a fairly good idea of what my students can and can’t do, which helps me plan instruction.
This blog post will walk you through how to assign a Google Form in your Google Classroom. We’ll start with a video tutorial, but read on for screenshots and additional tips. In the video, I am assigning Deiondre’s Homework, a Google Form about decomposing fractions. The resource can be purchased on my TPT store, and includes 3 Google Forms and an embedded instructional video.
I hope the video was helpful. You can find more tech videos for students and teachers on my YouTube Channel.
Now, let’s walk through the process of assigning a Google Form in Google Classroom one more time. This time, I am going to assign a Google Form on Equivalent Fractions. You can also purchase this at Ms. Cotton’s Corner on TPT. The resource includes 3 Google Forms, one of which includes an embedded video.
Step 1 – In the Classworks tab of your Google Classroom, click create and choose assignment. You can also choose Quiz assignment if you prefer.
Step 2 – Create the assignment. Give it a title and description and set the points and due date. Then, Click Add, and choose Google Drive. When you purchase the resource from TPT, they will automatically create a folder called TPT Purchases. It will be there unless you have saved it in another folder.
Step 3 – Choose the Form that you want to assign from your Google Drive. I always Toggle Grade importing to the “On” position. Then, once the students complete the work, all I have to do is import the grades with one click. Easy breezy!
Step 4 – Use the Assign button in the upper right hand corner to finish the assignment. You can assign it immediately or schedule it for the future. I often schedule a week’s worth of assignments on the weekend. It is very easy to reschedule if I find that the kids need more or less time than I planned.
And that’s it! Whether you are flipping the classroom, going paperless or teaching distance learning, Google Forms are an easy and effective way to provide instruction and assessment. Click below to purchase either of the resources featured in this blog post.
This post was originally written to solve a problem – poor attendance and engagement during virtual learning on Zoom. Thankfully, we are now back in physcial school,
Maybe you don’t have this problem, but one challenge that I am facing is attendance during digital learning. For a whole host of reasons (technology snafus, motivation, family situations….) some kids struggle to attend our Zooms. And they tend to be the same kids who struggle academically. In my experience, one thing that motivates this population, and all of my students, is videos. The visual and auditory components are engaging, and if they are between 3-5 minutes, attention doesn’t lag. I’ve started pairing short videos with Google Forms as asynchronous learning so that all students, even those that don’t attend regularly, are receiving instruction. Pairing the video with a Google Form gives students an immediate opportunity to put what they’ve learned to use. When we return to in person instruction, I still think these will be invaluable tools to help remediate and extend students. I can see so many ways to easily differentiate by assigning students the video instruction and Google Forms that move them to the next stage.
In my TPT store, you can find many of the videos I’ve created with Google Forms. I’ve focused on upper elementary math, especially fractions so far. Be sure to check back because I’m always expanding this part of my store, mostly as I try to help my students regain lost ground. I teach fifth grade, so that’s why the content is mostly upper elementary. If this is something that you want to use often, I encourage you to look at this Growing Bundle focused on Fractions and save money!
In this blog post, I want to walk through one of the free resources on my TPT store so that you can get an understanding of how it works and whether this type of resource is a good choice for your classroom. The resource we will be exploring is Mixed Numbers and Fractions Greater than One (Improper Fractions). At the bottom of the blog post are links to many other similar resources that you might find helpful.
This resource includes a Google Form and an embedded video. If you’d like to preview the video, you can find it on my YouTube channel here.
When you download this free resource, TPT will automatically add it to your Google Drive. Make sure that you have signed in with the Google Drive where you want the file to be saved – usually your school account. If you are assigning the Google Form through Google Classroom or another district LMS like Seesaw, this is essential!
To preview the assignment and video, you will want to open the Google Form and view it as a student. The video does not play in the teacher view. To see the student view, click on the eye in the upper right hand corner, which I’ve circled in red in this image.
Once you are in the student view, you will be able to play the video. You can also give the Google Form a try and easily see what your students will experience. One of the things I love about Google Forms is the immediate feedback that students receive! And the teacher does too, so no grading!
Once a student completes the Google Form and submits their answer, they will be able to see their score immediately and also receive feedback about anything they missed. Learning theory tells us that just-in-time feedback is so important for learning, and Google Forms are one of the best tools I know for providing that just-in-time feedback. In this example, you can see that the student identified the fraction greater than one as 4/6, but the Google Form would accept either 7/6 or 1 1/6 as the correct answers.
One limitation on Google Forms is how exact the students have to be. Again, in this example, you can see that I’ve given exact instructions for leaving a space between the whole number and the fraction if students write a mixed number. Google Forms will count it incorrect if there is no space. As the teacher, you are able to modify the score if you need to. For example, if you don’t care about the space, you can easily go back and change the points.
To see the students’ results, and change the points if you want to, you will need to go to the Response View. Begin by clicking Responses, which is the top middle of the screen, circled in red in this image.
In this view you can easily see how your students are doing with this standard. Google breaks the data down into a class summary, which is fantastic for planning next stages for the whole class. Google also gives you question by question data and individual student data. To change points or grade a question, click “Question” in the center of the screen.
As you can see, in this example, 1 student left out the space, so that 1 1/6 looks like 11/6. If you would like to give that student credit, just click the green check mark and then save your changes with the red save button. Google Forms will automatically update the student’s score. If more than one student made that mistake, it will update all the scores with two clicks. Easy breezy!
I don’t have room in this blog post to go through all of the fantastic data that you get from Google Forms. Be sure to play around with it and explore. All this great data frees you from grading so you can do what you do best – plan for amazing instruction!
After you have analyzed your data in Google Forms, you may want it in a spreadsheet so that you can easily enter grades in a gradebook. That’s easy too! Let’s explore a few more options from Google Forms.
In the upper right hand corner, you will find a green icon that allows you to easily export your data as a spreadsheet. When you click the green icon, you will see this message, which allows you to merge the data with an existing spreadsheet or name it and create a new spreadsheet. The default name is the name of the Google Form.
Simply name the spreadsheet and then click create. That’s it!
Some other great features are embedded in the three dots to the right of the spreadsheet icon. When you click them, you get this menu. Again, you can download the responses from here. You can also set a time for the Google Form to stop accepting responses. This is really a great feature if you are using a Google Form as a quiz. Probably the feature I use most often is Delete All Responses. Once I have downloaded the data, I delete the responses so that the Form is clear and ready for the next class.
One final piece of troubleshooting advice. By default, the Form is set to receive responses. However, below the three dots you will see an option to toggle the Form’s ability to Accept Responses. If that is toggled to the off position, your students will not be able to complete the Form. That is probably the question I receive most often, so when you are having trouble, check to make sure your Form can Accept Responses! You will know it is toggled to “On” when it changes color.
I hope this post helps you know whether Google Forms are a good choice for your classroom. For more information on this topic, check these blog posts:
As a fifth-grade teacher, I’m becoming more and more convinced that fractions are the hill students die on. This conviction comes from my experience as a teacher, and also as a student. A little flash to the past….
Over 30 years ago I entered fourth-grade feeling pretty good about math. I could add, subtract, multiply and divide, and I thought math was just fine. Then, I hit fractions. I didn’t have a strong understanding of what fractions were, and from that time on, I felt like a math fraud. I went on to advanced math classes and I made A’s and B’s, but inside, I knew. I was a FAKE! People thought I understood math, but I didn’t. I memorized it.
When I got to college, I pushed my math methods class to the final semester before student teaching, avoiding it until it had to be faced. Our professor introduced us to the idea of using manipulatives to understand mathematical concepts. One day he asked us to multiply fractions by folding paper. Dutifully, I followed the instructions, and then, I dropped my paper and gasped. All of a sudden I understood why fractions got smaller when you multiplied and larger when you divided. It was a pivotal moment for me as a human and as a teacher.
Unfortunately, not much has changed since I sat in a fourth-grade classroom in the 80’s. Students still struggle with the concept of a fraction. This blog post from NCTM suggests that they still struggle with it in Algebra class in middle and high school. Here is one strategy I’m using to help my fifth graders scale that mountain.
Fraction-a-Day helps students build fluency with fractions.
To help you navigate to the different parts of the multi-day exploration, use these links.
I begin math instruction with a Week of Inspirational Math from Jo Boaler, and then I launch into this fraction series. It is a great way to set the stage for the learning we will do and to build protocols like Expert Groups and Centers.
I introduce Fraction-a-Day with a model (included in the resource!). I model 2/3 because it is a familiar fraction to many students, then I ask all of the students to complete the page for 3/4, another familiar fraction. Over the next few days I ask students to complete a page as a warm-up for math, and we go over them together. I give them just 5 minutes to work. While they work, I rotate around the room and recruit student teachers to present different parts on the document camera so that the students have an opportunity to practice speaking about fractions and using correct vocabulary. I collect outstanding examples of each fraction and save them for a later lesson. After 3-4 days of guided practice, the students are ready for more independent practice.
Expert Groups Protocol
That’s when I pop the video in the Google Classroom and we use our Expert Groups protocol. (Click the link to find the video on my You Tube channel – FREE!) The video is just over 10 minutes. For this lesson I choose 5 different fractions that I want the students to focus on. By now they are familiar with the routine. As they watch the video, students complete the fraction they’ve been given independently. After 15 minutes, everyone should be ready to meet in their Preparation Groups.
Students meet in Preparation Groups with students who have practiced the SAME fraction. The purpose of this group is for students to compare their work with each other and make sure that everyone in the group becomes an expert on that fraction. Students generally have good conversations about the different ways they represented the fraction visually and check each other’s division – usually the toughest thing for students at this point.
Once everyone in the group is confident, I regroup the students in Expert Groups. The Expert Groups consist of one student from each Preparation Group. That means, everyone has a different fraction. Now the experts take turns presenting their fraction to the other students in the group. The listeners ask clarifying questions and offer feedback. This handout is included in the resource to guide students through the protocol.
This protocol builds students’ ability to understand and talk about fractions!
As the students finish up their Expert Group presentations, I ask them to put their fractions in order. This gives them another opportunity to practice talking about fractions as they compare the five fractions in their Expert Group. I collect one stellar example of each fraction to use on our class number line.
Number line
By now students have completed 3-4 Fraction-a-Day pages independently and they have completed 5 more within their Expert Groups. At this point if students are feeling very comfortable with the routine and the concepts, I want the activity to become more independent. I choose another 15 fractions to put in a Math Center. For four days, my students rotate through this center (and others, like my Unit Fraction Puzzles and Pirate’s Gold) completing a few Fraction-a-Day pages. I let them know that I am looking for high quality examples for our Number Line. As the week goes on, I collect a few each day until I have 25 – 30 fractions (it’s important to have one for each student).
Then, usually on Friday, I pass out one fraction to each student. I don’t give them one they completed so they have an experience with a new fraction. Our class task is to put all of those fractions in order! This human number line generally stretches around most of the classroom. All of the fractions in this resource are less than one, although there are many fractions that are equivalent to one. Students have to have conversations about size and equivalence in order to do this task, and it is generally 15 minutes of buzzing work and activity! Once we have it organized, I ask each student to announce their fraction, and we make any necessary adjustments. We also have to decide what to do with equivalent fractions. Do they stand side by side or in a column? I ask students to tape their fraction on the wall where they are standing.
Then, I give groups of students a large piece of butcher paper and ask them to create their own number line. Again, they have to wrestle with how to order the fractions and what to do with equivalent fractions. This is also a good time to talk about Anchor Fractions like 1/2, 1/3 and 3/4.
Finally, following the Guided Release model, I ask students to create an individual number line in their journals with their favorite fractions.
Fraction Friday
By now we are usually about three weeks into the school year, and I’ve built some routines and protocols, so we are ready to launch the math from the our district curriculum. It does NOT begin with fractions, but I think they are so important that we continue with this practice every Friday. The warm-up for our math lesson is for everyone to complete the same Fraction-a-Day page. They have 5 minutes, and then we do something fun, like Stand up, Hands up or Snowball to go over it. It only takes 8 minutes or so, but it keeps the fractions fresh in students’ minds. My hope is that none of my students will feel like frauds (as I did for many years) because they will have LOTS of opportunities to build understanding of fractions.
UPDATED – Distance Learning Lesson
So, we are implementing Distance Learning right now, just as I was getting back to fractions for the year. I’ve decided to dust this off and use it in a new way!
Each week I’m uploading 5 Fraction-a-Day pages into my Google Classroom. I ask the students to choose one and complete the work for their favorite fraction of the week. Then, in 2 min. or less, they present their fraction to the class on Flipgrid. My students ADORE Flipgrid, so some of them are doing all of the fractions each week! Since we’ve done all of the fractions less than one, I’m adding in some fractions that are greater than one. Check back soon and I’ll have those on TPT too!
