Maximize your ClassroomScreen

 You planned your lesson for students to work in groups. To do this, you need to sort students, set a timer, and keep students apprised of how their behavior is meeting with expectations.

ClassroomScreen can help you efficiently prepare for this work. 

It's easy to get started. You don't even have to create an account, though you can create a free account and login with Google to save your favorite name list (for easy grouping) and widget preferences.

Show the widgets you use most on any display screen. The app provides useful tools like timers, drawing tools, the random-name picker, and a favorite, the noise-level monitor. You can also embed media, like the videos for your favorite brain breaks. 

Access this anywhere. If your class goes to the library or a lab, this screen can pulled up quickly from any screen with an internet connection. 

There are so many uses for this tool!

If you haven't looked at this before, it's worth giving the free version a try. Let TLI know what you think of the tool, or if we can add any materials to our Educational Technology website to clarify how best to use it.

Start With What You're Proud Of

Who doesn't love attention for what they are doing well? When we build from our strengths, we build on a strong foundation.

This came up as teachers on the district catalyst team recently discussed student-led writing conferences. If you are a teacher who has students write (and hopefully revise), this technique is worth a look.

Some of the Benefits:

1. Saves time
2. More effective feedback
3. More effective instruction

Instead of writing a bunch of comments that students may or may not read on their writing, the teacher has the STUDENTS identify what they want to focus on. This takes a few minutes of reflection for students, but saves the teacher HOURS of close reading student work. Plus, research shows that students often need support acting on written comments or they ignore them (often because they aren't timely or sufficiently helpful). 

The conferencing technique calls for teachers, instead of writing all over the student work, to devote five minutes to each student in class. During that 5 minute conference, the teacher and student review the parts of the assignment that the student identifies as wanting feedback on. Feedback works best when we also collect it from students (see Hattie, J (2009). Visible Learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. New York: Routledge). The student sets the goal based on the learning target(s), making it all the more meaningful to them, and then has time to act on that feedback.

For more on how this works, you might consult Edutopia's 5 minute conferences resource and the sample comments/questions from Literacy Today.

But the addition that made this MOST effective in practice was not just asking students what they wanted to discuss for improvement, but to start by asking students to share what they were most proud of.

This had several benefits.

1. It alerted the teacher to sensitive topics. If a student was really proud about a paragraph they wrote that the teacher would have covered in real or digital red ink, then the teacher might approach feedback differently. It's hard to focus on the good when your pride and joy just got trashed.

2. It gives a snapshot of the student's level of understanding. If students are accurately identifying the good in their work, that can be valuable even for students who already don't have a lot to work on. Likewise, if a student identifies something good that isn't really great, the teacher then has a door open to addressing the misconception.

3. It gives a starting point for students who THINK they have nothing to work on. One question that was asked is what to do if students come to the conference and think everything is great. (Or they want to avoid the conference, so they claim it is great.) Asking someone what they are proud of is a non-threatening question that opens the door to adding more...rather than saying a student needs to "fix this" or throw things out. Many students will be open to feedback when the discussion starts with what is good.

And this makes sense, when we link this to what we know about behavior-specific praise being more powerful than corrective feedback in terms of changing behaviors. Who doesn't want to keep doing what earns them accolades?

If you want to know more about how student-led conferencing can work for you or for assignments other than writing, contact TLI, and we'd be happy to provide you with resources or help you co-plan this activity for your students.

Put a Hex on Them!

A recent GMS lesson reminded us of how powerful, flexible, and relatively low-prep hexagonal thinking is as a tool/strategy for teaching and learning.

What is Hexagonal Thinking?

Maybe you caught the Cult of Pedagogy post on Hexagonal Thinking last year and thought, that looks cool, but I'm not in a place to cut out a bunch of paper hexagons right now. Or maybe you haven't had time to read through the variations and ideas, and now that you have seen people using this tool, you are wondering how to make it work for you. (If you want to see how hexagonal thinking works in detail, this post is so good!)

Why would I use Hexagonal Thinking?

If you haven't tried it, there are so many research-based reasons to think about using hexagonal thinking as an activity for review, formative assessment, or even summative assessment in your classroom.

1. It uses manipulatives (physical or digital)
2. It encourages academic conversation and collaboration
3. It elicits higher order thinking
4. It calls for identifying similarities and differences
5. It is highly visual and encourages students to "build" a graphic organizer
6. It supports long-term learning

Examples and Templates

The Cult of Pedagogy post links to many resources for physical and digital templates and examples. There are tutorials for creating digital versions of hexagonal thinking, but if you really want to save time, try starting with this Google Slides template/history example. If you are looking for more in your content area or grade level, you might check out some more examples:

• Social studies examples
• Science example (in Edutopia article explaining the technique)
• Health example
• World Language example
• ELA example (this is a template that uses IMAGES in the hexagons, which might be extra great for elementary students or struggling readers)

There are so many ways to use and adapt this activity. Let us know how hexagonal thinking goes with your students!

Put It on My Tab

Quick Tip: You've probably noticed that your Google docs (and other tools) have started suggesting the next few words to write. This "predictive text," like the suggestions on your phone, is a great time saver, but not everyone knows how to active it.

Here's how it works:

When you see the predictive text pop up (usually in a gray color), hit the "Tab" key. The text will fill in! If you don't want all of that text, you can backspace or just continue typing and the suggestion will go away.

If you want to turn it OFF (or turn it back on) in Google Docs, go to Tools in the menu bar, then select Preferences, and find Show Smart Compose Suggestions and unclick the check box! That’s all!

To see how this works, check out the video below, which also shows how you (or students) can use Speech-to-Text.

Side Tip: Predictive Text in the Google Search Bar

You might also note that suggestions pop up in the omnibar (the place where you put the URL). This is great for pulling up recent documents, etc. without going to your Google drive! 

However, if you want to turn this off, follow the directions from this Google Expert:

Please refer to this if you want to turn off predictive text.

1. Go to the Chrome menu on the browser toolbar.
2. Click Settings.
3. Click Show advanced settings (on the bottom)
4. In the Privacy section, deselect the "Use a prediction service to help complete searches and URLs typed in the address bar" checkbox

Have other features you want to turn on/off? Use the comments below or email TLI!

Create a Progress Report from Google Classroom

Google Classroom is amazing for so many reasons, but if you want to give parents (or SST) a progress report of Google Classroom assignments, which may include tasks that aren't reflected in the gradebook because you are looking at completion, you need a workaround.

This blog post shows you how to download a sheet from your Google Classroom gradebook.

Now, to make a simple single student progress report, you can do the following:

1. Create a new filter view.
2. Select only the student/data you want.
3. Print! (Print to PDF to attach to an email)

Our video tutorial shows how, plus how you might use this to share notes about student progress.

Let TLI know if we can help, and happy conferencing!

(PS: If you are curious about other tools that work with Google Classroom, check out this demo from Schoolytics. It isn't currently an approved tool at GPS, but if you want to see more about what it can do, contact TLI.)