Online Teaching with Engaging Tasks

January 2021

Digital Tool: Kahoot

I had learned about Kahoot at least 5 years ago and had some experience using it as a player at various staff meetings. I have to admit, I did not enjoy this tool. The idea of competing is something I do not enjoy unless it is against myself. But . . . I decided to give it a try to try to engage students in a new way to practice their vocabulary words from our shared story. After hearing from various families about how much fun the kids had playing, I decided to use it sporadically.

I also used it as an introduction to a Social Studies lesson about laws and rules and then also as a review of shape names.

I can imagine continuing to use Kahoot back in building for all the reasons I used it before, but also as a getting to know you activity.  Online it did present a challenge for my beginning readers and therefore I had to create videos to say the question and answers rather than just expect them to read it.  That part did take extra time, but back in the classroom I could just read it outloud.

December 2020

Digital Tool: Flipgrid

Flipgrid was a tool that I had been exposed to over the last couple years. I had used it as a way for kids to share their creations during Makerspace and STEM times. We had used it also with a class that we connected with through Global Read Aloud. This tool was super important to during my Online teaching in order to build relationships with and learn about my students. I used it most often as an Engage when students first logged onto their module for the day.

I would use it to ask getting to know you type questions, shout outs (affirmations), share things they were proud of, reflections of their learning, book recommendations, reading responses, share writing and their creations. I am happy with the variety of ways that I thought of to use it in many different areas of academics. I also used it one time to app smash with book creator so kids could share their published writing.

One thing I'd like to do better with Flipgrid is to get kids to listen to their peers' videos and respond. I think if I would consistently say, "listen to 2 friends' videos and respond", that would have been enough to prompt them to do it. Also, if I would have been better at getting on and approving videos more often throughout the day that would have helped because they couldn't see their peers' videos until they were approved.

When I return to in building teaching I would like to continue to use Flipgrid to build relationships within the class, share affirmations, things they are proud of, maybe even as an exit ticket, or an enter ticket into the classroom in the morning. Flipgrid might also be helpful as a formative assessment tool.

November 2020

Digital Tool: Seesaw

Seesaw has probably been THE most important digital tool that I've used as an Online Teacher.  As an on-site teacher I used it mostly to share student work with families and mostly just used the journal feature.  Now however, I can't imagine not using the activity feature ALL of the time.  First, it was how I was able to efficiently keep track of student work and know what assignments were missing from which students.  

Seesaw enabled me to build and continue to grow relationships with my students.  I had read research in August that said that verbal feedback was much more meaningful to students virtually than written.  They could hear the love in their teacher's voice and my beginning readers were able to understand the feedback and grow from it.  This quickly became the only way I left feedback for students (except for a digital sticker once in a while). I especially used this with math and writing work.  I tried to leave feedback for at least 1 piece of work turned in every day.  I think it was helpful that families could hear my feedback also and then be able to help their child to fix whatever mistakes they had or continue to help them grow.

I used Seesaw to keep track of all Self Paced Math work.  I will definitely continue this routine in the building.

Another beneficial routine that I will continue on site teaching is having students share their daily writing and read it out loud also.  This brings accountability, an audience, and the reading/writing connection.

Online teaching also enabled me to bring in more grammar and language lessons that I never seemed to be able to find time for on site.  I will use a video at the beginning of the Seesaw activity and then a practice activity to more efficiently fit these into my curriculum and class time.

One other consideration I still need to reflect on is how I used Seesaw to help me differentiate my weekly story problems.  Usually the kids were given a colored strip to match their needs to glue into their math notebook and then turned their notebooks in at the end of the day.  During Online teaching they were assigned a certain activity and the background color matched the color strip they would have been given.  One benefit was that students then were encouraged and given the ability to use the microphone to explain their thinking.  If communication of their thinking is an emphasis in math class, I think I have got to continue this routine to give ALL kids, EVERY week the opportunity to communicate their math thinking.

October 2020

I was able to attend Capturing Kids Hearts Excelling Virtually LIVE professional development in October with about 20 - 30 Nevada colleagues through Zoom.  The major ideas were:

1. Keep it connected

2. Keep it engaging

3. Keep it simple

I left with SO  many new exciting ideas.  First, make sure that during LIVE sessions students feel SEEN;

smile, eye contact, energy and names.  I was mostly doing these things regularly but now I had

confirmation about how important they were.  Next, in order to help keep online learning connected to the

school I set a goal for myself to post 1 thing each week on twitter with the #nevadacubpride and

#onlinelearners  and talked some of my online teacher colleagues into trying it too.  It is important to me

that our school district and community know that the online students are working hard and learning too! 

I also set the goal for engagement and connection for me to hold a surprise and delight once a week for

the online learners.  So far I’ve done Lunch Bunch, a tangible gift in their materials bag, LIVE directed

drawing, LIVE math game, and this past week invited a guest teacher to join us for a LIVE lesson.

The other thing that we realized was super important for engagement and learning was to be able to use

breakout rooms and some of the other features we saw available on Zoom during that professional

development.  I contacted the tech team immediately and they were willing to buy us what we needed so

that we could use breakout rooms.  

Digital Tool: Google Meet

Google meet is a video-communication service that provides real-time meetings.   They are super helpful

and now open the door for collaboration among students and more engagement.  I’d still like to explore

more features including polls. I plan to explore using google meet break out rooms for individual

conferences during Read to Self times and individual conferences during Writing Workshop time.

I’ve used the breakout rooms for 

1. guided reading small groups for during individual reading times

2. class meeting games when someone is "it" and has to come back to the whole group to guess

something

3. digital BreakoutEDU session so that I could students in small groups and assign them a lock to work

on as a group.

10/5/20 - Kids in class meetings are smiling, talking to each other, using names, I felt the joy; Rock Paper Scissors type game was a hit

September 2020

9/21/20 - Conversation with Carrie about story problem sharing out, able to open jamboard and google

meet at the same time, record using quicktime

9/22/20 - Used Jamboard for the first time today to have Evan and Leo share out their story problems. 

Worked well!  Had to make sure I gave editing privilege

From here I rearranged my weekly schedule for math to give myself a day in between Day 1 of the story problem where students first solve the problem of the week and Day 2 where students share out and then student goals are differentiated. This way I have a day to contact the students that I want to record their strategies and then get them uploaded to Canvas for their classmates to view the next day. This has worked well and students like sharing out.

Digital Tool: Jamboard

A Jamboard is basically a whiteboard you can share with students synchronously or asynchronously and give everyone editing capabilities. I've used Jamboards for:

1. LIVE Guided Writing planning

2. Student's sharing out their problem solving strategies. I did these 1 on 1 for the week's story problem with 2 sharers and recorded their sharing out using QuickTime. Then I uploaded videos to youtube and put them in the Canvas module for the next day for the class to watch before they started their second day of their story problem.

3. LIVE small group math time for number sense work

4. Social Studies sharing out and building prior knowledge

There are so many more uses to Jamboards and I'm sure over time I'll explore them. I can DEFINITELY see using Jamboards in face to face instruction for allowing more students to share out their thinking and ideas. The sticky note feature is nice for organizing data for everyone to see. One issue though that I see is that beginning writers and readers may not have as much access to this tool. It does allow pictures to be uploaded.

I'd like to try Jamboards for social-emotional and academic check ins next.

Jamboard Templates

More Jamboard Templates for distance learning

Jamboard Tutorials

August 2020

When I got the call that I was one of the 4 teachers selected to be an online teacher for the 2020 - 2021 school year I was relieved, anxious, sad, and excited all at the same time for this new teaching journey that I was about to go on.  I promised Chris that I would do the very best job that I could.  I also had no idea the challenges and successes that were to come.  It only made sense since I was beginning this journey that my ICDP goal would be. . . 

During the 2020 -2021 school year I will research and implement how to teach online with the focus on creating engaging tasks so that online learners are motivated to learn and achieve.

We had so many questions to answer and no idea how to begin other than the Canvas course we'd taken with Carrie in spring of 2020 "just in case". We wondered;

1. How much time should students be expected to be online watching videos not including independent time to work?

2. How to be equitable for all our learners?

3. How would we do state testing?

4. What could instruction look like?

5. Attendance policies

6. Specials?

7. Special education services?

8. How to get books in students' hands?

9. How to get students' weekly materials to them?

10. Office hours?

11. Collaboration time with grade level PLC and other online teachers

12. How much time in LIVE small group lessons each week?

13. Digital tools we'll need?

14. How do we build relationships online?

15. How do we implement many of the Capturing Kids Hearts key ideas online?

and on and on and on. Slowly we got some answers, made some up of our own, and continue to change as we go. This is a reflection of my year long journey of teaching online, focusing on engaging students and trying to look forward to how I would use these tools and strategies face to face also. I hope you find some pieces that would help you and also see the joy in "building the plane as you fly."