Now that School is out and the 20/21 year is in the books ( big sigh from all the teachers...), I wanted to share my experience with Google Classroom. This year I started doing Google Classroom since the very beginning, anticipating that we might go online sometime during the year. During the first months of in-classroom learning, my students were able to familiarize with the system and every time we had to move to at-home learning, the transition was seamless. I had no questions from students or parents about where to find the information, how to upload a video, how to submit assignments or how to do an online test. It was a lot of work to create all this platform but of course it was worth the effort! For every unit in every course, I created a slideshow and a handout in Google Docs to go with it. For every section in every unit, I created different worksheets, self-assessments, assignments, and Quizzes using Google Forms. I would create the answer key and that made it easy for them ( and for me) to receive immediate feedback of their progress. This kind of formative assessment was really helpful for them to identify areas of improvement and to get continued practice; it also allowed me to be able to review and give feedback remotely, to avoid printing excessively and to minimize the circulation of papers from them to me and me to them, therefore minimizing contact and germs transmission. There is also a feature in Google Classroom ( GC) where they can make a private comment so if they had a question about why something was wrong, they could message me, and I was able to give feedback even from my phone. For written assignments and projects, I created rubrics using the rubric tool. It was a bit of a process to set them up but once they're done, you can save them and re-use them in future assignments with a few tweaks. I love Rubrics because they allow me to give meaningful and specific, actionable feedback on the work they are creating before their final submission. This is especially important for our IB students, since they are always looking for academic excellence. For our oral assignments I used Flipgrid. It's very simple to use and you can link it to your Google Classroom ( depending on your district restrictions) and I made the videos totally private so only I could watch them. Teenagers are shy to share in front of the class but they do really well at creating videos from home and they ended up getting very creative. I have a group for each classroom with the different assignments, these can be easily revised and reused in the future. Our GC also allowed communication with the class and parents to be very smooth. I have to say, I didn't have any emails from parents this semester asking how their children were doing. In GC teachers, students and parents can check task completion easily. If I noticed that a student was missing too many assignments, I could easily send them a report, and this encouraged them to complete it and be successful. I would cc their parents so that they were in the loop. For next Semester, I have all my classes ready. You just copy the classroom you'd like ( Figure 7) and it will transfer all the materials minus the students and the grades. By default, everything is on "draft" mode , you'll just need to activate it whenever you're ready. I find this is the BEST feature of Google Classroom and it's a time saver. The bulk of the work is done, now next year, I just need to edit if I wish to or add/delete material, but the bulk of the work is done and I feel real good that before the end of June, my work is done for the summer. Isn't that something? I can't reccommend Google Classroom enough. On a pandemic year like this, it has been my saving grace, students loved it, found it easy to use and handy and it facilitated transition form in-class to online to be seamless. I'm planning on continuing to use it as long as it's available to us regardless of the teaching scenario we encounter. If you are on the fence and have questons please message me, I'll be happy to help!
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This year the CBE created an Office 365 environment for all the teachers and students. Different applications started to be available during the year: OneDrive, Sway and OneNote amongst others. As a Surface user, I already knew and used OneNote for personal purposes and soon I started to play around with it and discovered a myriad of possibilities for my lessons. I started to use it and soon it became an essential in my class, especially since I do not have a textbook for Mathematics or Spanish. From all the technological tools that I have used in my career, this one has been the most transforming. These are the main 3 reasons why I love it:
OneNote Class Notebook facilitates instruction, communication, class work, editing students' work, communication with families and lessons recycling for future years. For my students, it has been a key part of their success. They got so used to it that if I wrote something on the board they would ask me to put it also on OneNote. They love to come to the board and write their answers. It must have helped them because this year, their results on the PATs ( Provincial Tests) were 5% higher. In the next post I will share some tricks to set up classroom accounts. If you have other suggestions on how to use OneNote in the classroom please join the OneNote group on "Yammer". "New year, new beginning". I am determined to start fresh this year. Every September is an opportunity for creation, I love this time where my imagination flies and I have no barriers. This will be my second year with the "team teaching" dynamic and also with a blended 3/4 classroom, so I mostly know what I'm facing in terms of organization . I am very excited with the idea of creating a "desk less" classroom this year. Last year, the three groups used to meet in my class , but the desks were always in the way. I arranged them in all the possibly human positions ( diamond, groups, lines, u shape...) but nothing seemed to work, and I was always upset with the way my class looked. The ocean breeze always brings me crazy ideas that my husband fear...and this time I thought...why not get rid of most of the desks and created a more holistic, relaxed and purposeful environment? there I go researching on the web and I found neat pictures of desk less classrooms. I would like to know from someone that experienced this , I guess there will be drawbacks...My class is a twin class and is also opened to the learning commons, with extra space and tables for the students to work.I think we can make it and it makes sense since the dynamic is already very fluid and there is a lot of movement in my class. I need urgently to create more reading and quiet areas but the challenge is that I have the fire exit in my class and it takes a lot of space. These are some nice pictures of desk less classrooms. What do you think? Input is welcome This is my ad on kijiji: http://calgary.kijiji.ca/c-buy-and-sell-furniture-multi-item-Looking-for-free-furniture-for-my-classroom-W0QQAdIdZ514734243
So far I got : -An art bench that was a mid century doctor bench( Iwill post the pictures) -A black individual armchair( perfect for storytelling) -6 pallets that are going to be turned onto a seating area ( I have to look for big cushions or maybe some parents make some for us) All for the incredible amount of ....5 dollars. People are very generous! This is what I am planning to do with the pallets |
AuthorSpanish/Mathematics Teacher. Technology in Education enthusiast. Long life learner. Categories
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June 2021
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