Feedback

1. 1. Comment Bank – Use the comment bank in Classroom’s grading tool to make commenting on student work and providing feedback more efficient. Frequently used comments can be saved for future use.
2. Emphasize Words in Comments – Use shortcuts to emphasize words when inserting comments. To bold a word, put an asterisk before and after the word (*bold*). To italicize a word, put an underscore before and after the word (_italics_). To strikethrough, a word put a hyphen before and after the word (-strikethrough-). These shortcuts can be used in any Google tool that allows the user to insert comments.
3. See the Process – Students don’t have to submit their assignments for you to see their work. When you chose “make a copy for each student” for assignments, each student’s work can be seen in the grading tool, even if it’s not submitted. Teachers can make comments and suggestions along the way.
4. Feedback Before Student Submits – Provide feedback to students while their assignment is still a work in progress instead of waiting until submission. This will help the student better understand assignment expectations.
5. Suggestion Mode – Use suggestion mode in Google Docs to make edits become suggestions in a comment.
6. Feedback on Presentations and/or Presenters – Keep students engaged during presentations by having them utilize a Google Doc or Form to provide feedback on the presentation.
7. Tag Collaborators in Comments – Tag specific collaborators in comments by using the @. Once the @ is keyed in, a list of collaborators pops up to choose who you want to tag. More than one collaborator can be tagged in a comment.
8. Individualized Communication – Classroom can be used to communicate with individuals through email, private comments, and comments on assignments.
9. Ways to Provide Feedback – Provide feedback to students through the grading tool, comment bank, or private comments.
10. Delete Comments – Teachers can delete inappropriate comments.
11. Peer Feedback – Allow students to critique and provide feedback on one another’s assignments.
12. Mute Commenting – Teachers can mute student comments entirely if needed. Comments can be controlled through the settings menu or through the short answer question dialogue box.

Adapted from Matthew Lynch

This blog post contains links to outside sources. It is always good practice to make a copy for yourself that you can revise.

Innovative & Interactive Response to Text

I’m sure that like me you might get frustrated by some of the obvious drawbacks PDF’s have. And, so many of our docs these days are in PDF format.

So, you may find this to be a relief.

“It’s so important in this digital age when so many students consume text online that they learn how to transfer their pen and paper annotation strategies to the online space. Kami is another fantastic tool for supporting active reading online.”

This is a quote from a fellow educator, Catlin Tucker. It was excerpted from this blog entry ==> Make PDFs Interactive with Kami

I started to have my learners engage with a PDF text and then suddenly in the back of my mind I remembered Catlin’s post from last spring.

Here is a recent example from my class illustrating our use of this tool. In order to protect my learner’s identity, the comments he posted have been redacted, only his highlights have been shared.

Setting Sail

Assignment Directions and Rubric

Read and Annotate

Learning Goal: Stop, think and react using a variety of strategies to understand

In response to: “Fighting the battle of copy/paste cheating”

http://ditchthattextbook.com/2018/04/04/fighting-the-battle-of-copy-paste-cheating/

I don’t like the conclusion you reached because I know in my gut that it be true. However, I find it is also a time problem. I have 4 hours each week to plan, provide feedback, communicate, and create for Reading, Writing, Math, Science, Social Studies, Listening, Speaking, Vocabulary Work, Grammar, Mechanics, Technology, and Art Standards. Planning includes analyzing myriad assessments, personalizing, providing remediation, planning for whole class, small group, partner and individual instruction. Communication involves all stakeholders; students, parents, and fellow staff. It also includes writing progress reports and report cards. Creation includes designing units, lessons, and assessments since we often either do not have a guaranteed, viable curriculum or what we have has to be modified. Now throw in a recess incident, a discipline problem, a depressed student, an IEP, etc. and some of that 4 hours is gone. In my desire to be succinct I may have left out a few other requirements.

Obviously, the great load of teaching is played out behind the scenes while the bulk of our time is on the carpet in front of our learners. Hence, many use “activities”, TPT, Pinterest, etc.

And I love teaching. Yet, we find we are constantly striving for a sustainable practice. Sustainable for ourselves, our families, our students, our colleagues, our schools and our communities, all of whom we serve.

Solutions?

STEM Smash ELA

• Determine a theme of a story, from details in the text, including how characters in a story  respond to challenges
• Explain how a series of  scenes fit together to provide the overall structure of a particular story
• Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, descriptive details, and clear event sequences.

We have been studying the Arc of the Story aka Plot Diagram during part of our ELA learning. To help reinforce and cement the learning we have incorporated the use of Ozobots to trace the path of the story and react to certain parts such as the climax or rising action.

Here’s some video from our class as they work on this project; including their first day of exploring the coding of their Ozobots in conjunction with their story-maps.

STEM Smash ELA