February Strategy Sharing: Application

With a focus on Application, Strategy Session #4, was a great opportunity to hear about some of the cool projects that students are engaged in across the curriculum, allowing them to demonstrate what they have learned. A few examples:

• The 3A Cohort got to hear about the process Doug Hundley's students engage in when designing a set for an upcoming production

• Chinese teachers Haiyang Jian and JZ Jiang both shared about movie projects they’ve done that have been popular with students. You can see the real-world model that Haiyang used here: it's a commercial that aired on CCTV that highlights seven values connected to the Chinese New Year celebration.  JZ posted her project handout in the Schoology discussion, including the scoring guide.

• James Linzel brought examples of his Innovation students' Electric Car Designs. The 3B cohort had lots of questions about the process and how he used the makerspace for this project.

In addition to the many examples of assessment tasks that require students to transfer their learning in meaningful ways, there were also some strategies shared that could be used across a variety of content areas.

Tom Musk shared a graphic organizer that he had originally gotten from Science and then modified. The idea is to get students thinking about historical events (such as the Scientific Revolution) as Systems, identifying inputs, outputs, etc. I could see potential to use a version of this schema in a variety of content areas. Tom's example is posted on Schoology in the Application discussion.

Simon Williams had some great ideas for facilitating peer feedback that he uses in his theater classes. In "Center of the Universe", a student (or students) stands at the center - like the sun - and the other students position themselves around that student as planets, with their proximity indicating how warm or cool they felt about the student's performance. Verbal feedback and discussion about why students had the reaction that they did results in the performers thinking about what they might change. A twist he had on the "Spectrum" strategy is "Grape to Raisin", where students indicate on a continuum how juicy a performance was. The continuum can be drawn on the whiteboard and students can point with their eyes closed, so they are not influenced by their peers in their rating.

Thanks to everyone who shared! Also, check out the bulletin board in the mailroom for templates that you can use with some of the Active Learning Strategies. Digital copies of Anticipation Guides, Word-Phrase-Sentence, Three 3s in a Row and more are available from your instructional coach! You can also find them on Schoology in the "One Stop Strategy Shop" Templates folder.

Tech Tip Tuesday: Two Time Savers for Assessment

Today's tips can help you use Google Apps to save time in two different assessment scenarios:

1. short, formative quizzes 
2. written assignments submitted using Google Docs.

Formative Quizzes
If you are giving an assessment that can be administered using Google forms (multiple choice, T/F, simple fill in the blank), I recommend using Flubaroo, a free tool that not only automatically scores student responses, but also:

• Computes average assignment score
• Computes average score per question, and flags low-scoring questions
• Shows you a grade distribution graph
• Gives you the option to email each student their score, and an answer key
• Lets you send individualized feedback to each student

This is a great way to get quick and dirty data on what students know in relation to specific learning targets in a timely manner. The Flubaroo user guide has clear, step by step instructions for how to set this up, and I am happy to provide support, as well.

Written Assessments
When providing students with feedback on written assignments, you may find yourself writing the same types of comments repeatedly. While this is good information for you, in that it identifies a skill that many students still need to work on, it can be exhausting to write or type the same thing over and over. If your students submit their work using Google Docs, you can create shortcuts, which allow you to type in a simple abbreviation that will then automatically convert to the full length comment. For specific instructions on how to set this up, check out this post from SmartBlog on Education.

Tech Tip Tuesday: Kahoot

On a learning walk last week, Caroline, Ahmed and I visited Jean Nightingale's Geometry class and got to see Kahoot! in action. As described on the website, "Kahoot is a learning game created on the Kahoot! platform, which consists of multiple choice questions - as a quiz, discussion or survey - in any topic, language or ability. It’s projected at the front of the classroom, & played by the whole class together in real-time (answering on their own personal device)." As we saw in Jean's class, the students were engaged and enjoying the game, and Jean was able to instantly assess where students are in their learning and then address misconceptions on the spot.

I was going to use this post to plug the upcoming TTT session on Kahoot!, but sadly, it has been postponed. So instead, here are some resources to help you get started with this awesome tool on your own. As always, if you need additional support, your instructional coach is here for  you!

You might want to start with the Getting Started with Kahoot tutorial from their website. Or, if you prefer to watch a video tutorial, you could check this one out.

Once you've got the basics down, you might be interested in learning about how to use "ghost mode" in this post from Free Technology for Teachers. This feature essentially gives students the opportunity to play a Kahoot review game against themselves in order to measure their own progress and growth.

For a peek behind the scenes, this episode from the TeachThought podcast features the co-founder of Kahoot! discussing their mission driven approach to learning and how Kahoot! is more than just an assessment tool.