I'm sure at this point, a year into the pandemic, you have watched a lot of "how-to" videos and learned many many different platforms. I just thought I'd take a minute to share with you how I use the platforms Nearpod, and Great Minds In-Sync(Eureka Math) in my virtual classroom. So this more of how I specifially use the platforms throughout my virtual instruction, and less of a how to get started type of a thing!
Nearpod
Nearpod is a digitial platfrom that allows you to make any of your lessons interactive. You can use any lessons you have already created (ppt, google slides, word, even YouTube vids!) and make them interactive. You can also create lessons through Nearpod. It really increases student engagement, especially through the use of Collaborate boards, or the Draw It board feature (like a digital whiteboard).
I create Collaborate boards across the curriculum. I make them for Socio-Emotional Learning (morning circle discussions). I make them for most componenets of a Eureka Math lesson: Application Problem, Student Debrief, and Exit Tickets. I also create them for ELA to use with our Wonders curriculum for the "Making Connections" questions that are throughout the anthology stories. I also create them with the vocab skills in mind, such as: similes, metaphors, greek roots etc.
Additionally I often create a collaborate board for a digital version of the Kagan strategy, Jot Thoughts. This is a strategy traditionally done in the classroom where kids work in table groups with sticky notes. So instead, this is done with digital sticky notes on the collaborate board. Watch the video below to see a more detailed explanation of this strategy as well as examples of the above mentioned ways I use Nearpod.
Great Minds In-Sync (Eureka Math)
Great Minds is the parent company to Eureka Math. They have created a full digital, interactive version of the Eureka Math Curriculum called "In-Sync." This platform has been a life-saver as they have high quality engaging lesson videos. These encompass the full concept development component of a Eureka math lesson. Also, all student pages: Sprints, problem sets, succeed pages, etc are included as writeable PDFs, which make it really easy to use with google classroom. Watch my video below where I talk more about how I specifically use the different features within the In-Sync site.
If you have ever considered using either of these platforms: Nearpod or In-Sync, but weren't really sure how exactly to implement in your virtual classroom, I hope this helped! Both of these platforms have been a life-saver for online learning and have really helped me boost engagment with my virtual lessons.
Many of us who teach the McGraw Hill Wonders curriculum have probably all been in the same boat throughout this online learning journey. How do I keep the students accountable for their own learning? How do I know they are actually thinking about the questions I ask? How do I get them to disuss and share with a partner? These are all the things we do in the classroom to keep the kids engaged and accountable for their learning. The struggle became very difficult when we went to online learning. When you pose a question and ask the kids to type their answer into the chat, it often becomes the same 10 kids right? Even if you're using equity sticks or a random selector tool for names, it's difficult when they have not been able to discuss the ideas with their peers first. Putting kids on the spot like that isn't the best teaching method, but at the same time we want to make sure we are reaching all kids. So what is the solution?
There are just a few things I have done with Wonders to try to bring back in that collaboration piece and student accountability. It's nothing magical that I do, but it has helped to get the kids talking and working more efficiently. They know I am going to call on them randomly after I have given them time to discuss in beakout rooms with peers, so most of them are engaged and working as they know my expectations.
Wonders Platform
The Your Turn Book pages, CRC pages, and digital stories are all available on the Wonders digital platform. You can assign the YourTurn Book Page digitally. Then what I do, is I will share my screen and show them how to type on them and save/submit. For instance, on Day 1 of Wonders instruction for the week, after I teach the vocab lesson, I will assign the vocab practice page. I will then put the kids in breakout rooms with a partner to work together in creating their vocab sentences, while I'm popping in and out to assist and prod them along. When we come back whole group then I use the Kagan random selector tool to have the kids share out what they wrote for each vocab sentence. This is a much better way to go becaause I'm supporting my lower kiddos, EL kiddos, sped kids etc as they have now had the time to work together and talk together, with a partner to create their sentences.
Another option is to retype, or cut and paste, the Your Turn Book questions into a google doc and then assign it on google classroom. I do this often with the reading comprehensions passage questions. This way you can keep track of the assignment in google classroom. In the video here, you can see the kids working to discuss and answer the comp passage questions in the Your Turn Book. Here I assigned the page digitally.
Its also nice to assign the story you're reading so that struggling readers can play the story when they need to reread it to answer questions.
Anthology Discussion questions
Throughout the Teacher's Manual where you have the discussion questions throughout the story, this is where it becomes a struggle. In the classroom, you'd stop, pose the question, have students discuss in table groups then randomly call on students to anwer (also incorporating various kagan strategies for discussion during this time). So in the virtual setting, I type the question into the chat and read it aloud several times. I tell them they all must respond their thoughts into the chat-they can send to everyone or to me privately. This way they're not put on the spot answering outloud without having time to talk to a partner, but it also keeps them accountable for participating. Once we are finished reading the story. I then type up those questions from the TM into a google doc and put the students in breakout rooms with a partner to again discuss and answer the questions. Then once back together whole group I would use the random selector to have them share out, because they've now had the opportunity to think and discuss and type with a partner. Then they can turn in the assignment for credit. Doing this really helps me see which students are with me and paying attention.
Nearpod
I also use the collaborate board in Nearpod to facilitate discussion of the "Making Connections" questions that you see generally at the mid and end of the stories in Wonders. The Making Connections questions at the end of the paired text ties in all 3 stories from the week and brings focus to the essential question. Doing this one on Nearpod can help prepare them for doing a RACES writing on the essential question. It can serve as a prewrite/brainstorm type of discussion.
I hope this gives you a few ideas of how you can incorporate the Wonders workbooks and discussion questions into your virtual lessons, while ensuring that all students are participating and accountable.
I personally feel like the ONE worst aspect of online learning is that the kids are missing the social interaction and collaborative learning structures they so desperately need. As we know, students learn the best when they are working collaboratively in highly structured groups. This has been especially hard for me as a teacher, because I live and breath Kagan cooperative learning structures in my classroom on a daily basis and have truly seen the growth in my students both academically and socially over the years that I have implemented Kagan into my classroom.
So today I'm going to talk about Breakout Rooms on Zoom! It doesn't fully replace in person collaboration of course, but it's a really good option to support our kiddos talk time, during this period of online learning. Let's get started!
How to Train Your Students on Breakout Rooms
Well just like with live in-classroom instruction, you can't just throw kids into groups and expect them to work together successfully. You want start with some fun, non-academic teaam building activites that they can do in their groups to get to know each other. This is important for helping them build relationships with one another so that they will feel comfortable talking and sharing with each other. I would suggest starting small and having them work with pairs for a while before moving into largers groups. Also modeling how to discuss with a partner and providing them with response frames/stems will help them verbalize their thoughts into words.
Next, you want to set clear expections so they know what is expected of them. I display this slide every day before our first breakout room of the day (they need lots of reminders.. lol)
Most importantly, once you send them to their Breakout Rooms, you want to pop in and out of as many rooms as possible and help reinforce those breakout room expectations. Once they know you'll always be popping in to check on them, they are much more likely to do what they are supposed to do! This is also a great way for you to observe your students and evaluate their strenths and weaknesses.
Tips and Tricks!
So now how do you go about setting up these Breakout Rooms??
So once youre logged into your Zoom meeting with your class, you want to click the breakout room button on the bottom of your Zoom toolbar (be sure you have enabled this option in your Zoom settings). Now, you can select to create the groups automatically or manually. If you want them in pairs and you have 28 students, you will select to create 14 groups. If you want them in groups of 4 you would select to make 7 groups.
As it sounds, "automatically" means it will randomly group the students together, whereas "manually" allows you to group them as you'd like. I would suggest selecting manually and creating your groups intentinally and specificially. However, there is often a time and place for the automatic option as well. Once my kids are all logged onto Zoom in the morning, while they are working on iReady, discussing the morning circle topic, or another independent task, I quickly create those breakout rooms manually and then they are set for the day! As kids join or leave the meeting, you can choose to swap or move kids to other rooms, rearranging as you see fit!
Under the "Options" dropdown, when you select the time for the Breakout Room, I would aim to keep it around 5-8 minutes or so, just having them discuss one or just a couple of questions. As mentioned before, always making sure you are popping in and out of the Breakout Rooms to support, and reinforce your rules. You can also adjust the amount of time you want them to have once the timer is up. I usually set mine for 15 seconds so that we don't have to wait for kiddos to be dumped back into the main room. I do however "broadcast" a message warning them how much time they have left.
You can end the breakout rooms at any time as well, you just click the red button that says "close all rooms." You do not have to wait until the timer is up. Likewise when the timer is up for the Breakout Rooms, a notification will pop up asking you if you want to end them or keep them open. So they don't have to automatically end just becasue the time is up. You have control over that. Aditionally, if there are kids who you dont want to put in a breakout room, you just simply don't assign them to a room and they will then remain in the main room with you.
I hold the kids accountable by letting them know I'll use the random selector to have them share out after they've had the time to discuss the question in their breakout rooms. Also, usually whatever they are working on with their partner/group in the breakout room is something they are also typing and submitting to me in some form or another. This ensures that I can monitor they are all working and participating.
If the students have a question while in their Breakout Room, they have the option to click "ask for help." This picture to the left shows you what it looks from from the students view of the Breakout Room.
You will then get a notification that looks like this image below here.
So these are the basics to help you get started setting up Zoom Breakout Rooms with your students. I truly feel that students need this interaction with one another for so many different reasons. They really need the social interaction with each other. Our English Learners as well as ALL learners need to get their "talk time" in throughout the day. Research has also proven that kids learn better when they are working collaboratively with their peers. The Breakout Rooms option in Zoom really does provide us with that missing piece of social interaction and collaboration that these kids are so vitally missing with online instruction! I hope this helps!
I am sure you have heard about Nearpod and seen it on the district website of online learning resources, alongside many others. I know that there are sooo many resources our district has graciously purchased or shared with us to support us in our online learning. So I am going to spend some time just talking about ONE aspect of Nearpod here today.
First off, what is Nearpod? Nearpod helps educators make any lesson interactive whether in the classroom or virtual. The concept is simple. A teacher can create interactive presentations that can contain Quiz's, Polls, Videos, Collaborate Boards, and more.
In this blog, I am only going to be talking about how to use the Nearpod Collaborate Board as a collaborative learning tool. I think the biggest part of online learning that's killng me (and the kids) is that they're missing the student interaction and collaborative learning structures that we use so routinely in the classroom. If you've been through Kagan training and implemented those collaborative learning structures in you classroom before, you know the power behind them and how positively they effect student learning, growth, and confidence.
"Collaborate! is a Nearpod feature that allows you to set up an interactive board for brainstorming, sharing text and images. You add the boards, students simply add their ideas. You can moderate these boards from your Teacher Dashboard, reordering them and sharing them." CLICK HERE to learn more about his feature.
Ways I use the Nearpod Collaborate Board in my 5th Grade Classroom:
1) ELA Wonders Curriculum: I use this feature in many ways throughout the Wonders curriculum. I use it with the Day 1 introduce the concept question that is in the Reading Writing Workshop book. I also use it at the end of the week with the essential question to help them brainstorm ideas before they start their RACES writing. I also use it with the Making Connections questions that are throughout the student stories in their text books (you can see this below).
2) Community Circle Discussion Questions:I also setup Nearpod with our community circle question. We start our day with a community circle question each morning, and most days we do it on Nearpod. I read their posts aloud as they post them. I then ask if anyone wants to share their thoughts outloud. This way, every child is held accountable to responding, but for those super shy introverrted kiddos they're not forced to share out loud if they feel uncomfortable
3)Eureka Math Student Debrief: Often times I pick one of the student debrief questions and have them do it on the Nearpod collaborative board as you can see here. This is from the 5th Grade Eureka Math Module 1 Lesson 14 student debrief. It's really amazing to see all the connections they're making in math. If I didn't provide them this opportunity to share with each other, they'd be missing out on this really powerful component of a Eureka Math lesson.
So if you've been searching for a way to bring that collaboration piece back into your virtual online classroom, I hope this helps!!
What in the world are Google Chrome Extensions? These extensions are software you can install within your Chrome browser that allows you to run other services in the browser. It sounds super complicated and you might think, “ why would I need these extensions?” Well my friends, I am here to share some extensions I use especially during distance learning.
First things first, adding Google Chrome extensions is so easy and FREE! If you don’t use chrome I highly recommend downloading it to use as your web browser. Personally I use my Mac at home but I go back and forth using Safari and Chrome to achieve specific tasks. You can add extensions with just 2 quick clicks! Here are my favorite Chrome Extensions for Distance Learning!
Screencastify - Right after the PD from Jeff Quick on Screencastify, I downloaded the extension and it has been super easy to use instead of having to record myself in Zoom, waiting for it to download, edit in iMovie before I can upload it on to Drive. This program easily record your screen, yourself, or both! Not only does it save directly into your Google Drive, I also love how you can directly add it to your Google Classroom!
Bitmoji-This is my FAVORITE Chrome extension. Long gone are the days of emailing your Bitmoji from your phone to your email on your laptop and having to maneuver the Bitmoji with the set background around. Within this extension, your Bitmoji will have a translucent background, which means, you can place it anywhere you want and it would have that pestering white or black background blocking your content. I love using Bitmojis. Here are some of my favorite ways to use this extension:
I put Bitmojis on my daily message slides I share on Class Dojo and Google Classroom. My students LOVE this!
I insert Bitmojis on student’s work. It acts like a digital sticker. You can search for Bitmojis with the extension and then just copy and paste them or click and drag right into the Google slides, powerpoint or even the student’s work in Google classroom. It becomes a digital sticker when I use it on students' work.
3) Emoji Keyboard– Use this extension to add emojis to your announcements, slides, or Google Classroom! So easy and your students will love it! I use it for changing Google Classroom topic names! Anything to give our students some giggles and excitement to push through this last month fo distance learning.
4) Custom CurserMake your curser something fun for your online class meetings or screen recordings! We have to get that motivation going any way possible.
5) Google Keep- Organize your notes and to-dos by category! You can even color code and add your own labels. You can access it from your computer, phone, or even your apple watch! Game Changer!
I hope these extensions will help motivate your students to continue with distance learning and also help you with some productivity and some silliness!
Building background knowledge is something we often skip over or forget about due to pacing and time constraints. Often we want to just dive right into that days learning. However, in an effort to both provide engagement on the new topic being learned, while also providing support for your English learners, it really is an important, yet simple step that we should take.
If you're looking for a cooperative learning structure to help you support building background knowledge when introducing a new topic, there are several Kagan structures you can use. I am going to talk about just a couple of them here. Like with all Kagan cooperative learning structures, these support learners at all academic levels, while also providing engagement, which research shows is key to student learning and success.
Three Step Interview This structure is super easy and fun to use during Day 1 of the ELA Wonders curriculum when you introduce the new Essential Question for that week. In our Wonders curriculum, on Day 1 of each week it has us "Introduce the concept." This is where you could easily take the essential question/concept and turn it into a question the students can relate to, and then implement this Three-Step Interview process.
For instance, in Wonders 5th Grade Unit 3 Week 4 the Essential Question is, "What benefits come from people working as a group?" You might then pose the question to the students, "Tell about a time where you succeeded at something when working together in a group." You would pose the question, and either give students time to think, or have them quickly write their thoughts down. Then proceed with the Three-Step interview process. To summarize, Partner A would ask partner B the question and then visa versa. They would then pair up with the other A/B pair at their table and go around the table sharing not their own thoughts, but rather their partners thoughts. A very quick and easy way to get students engaged, talking, and sharing in groups!
Jot Thoughts
Jot Thoughts is another fun Kagan structure than can be implemented in the beginning stages of building background knowledge of a topic or concept. Jot thoughts is a fun and engaging way to have students brainstorm ideas about a topic. For instance, in Wonders on Day 1 where you would introduce the topic, you always see the word web with a word (based on the essential question) in the middle. It asks students to brainstorm words they know about that topic. So in place of this, I will often use this Jot thoughts structure. If we take the above mentioned essential question, the word provided in the word web for that week is "teamwork." So I will set a couple of decks of sticky notes on each table group and then ask them write down as many words, phrases, or ideas that come to mind when they think of "teamwork." They are supposed to announce the word they're writing as they write it to prevent duplicate words. You can then extend this Jot Thoughts activity into many other things. For instance, once time is up, I will often times have the students work in their teams to categorize their words and develop names for the categories. I then might ask them to do a free write about teamwork using as many of the word they can, etc. It's fun, engaging, and gets students ready to learn more about the new concept that week. Its also another opportunity to provide students with collaborative talk time, which supports ALL learners at ALL levels.
Additionally, this structure could also be used as a culminating activity at the end of the learning, to summarize what was learned about the topic!
This structure empowers the students to be both the teacher and the learner. When implemented correctly (see image above) this structure is very effective in putting the learning into the hands of the students. Watching them listen to and learn from one another, while catching and fixing their own mistakes is a very rewarding experience to watch as a teacher.
Furthermore, this simple structure helps strengthen students' reasoning skills. When this structure is implemented regularly, students get to practice explaining what and how they did something. This in turn, supports practicing their reasoning skills and in a verbal context, which a great support for all learners but especially our EL's.
I use this strategy with Eureka Math almost every day during the Application Problem or even some of the concept development problems. I've also had students utilize this strategy for certain problems in the problem set. I also tell the students that when it's their turn to be the "coach" or the "teacher" that they need to pretend they are explaining this concept to a younger student who hasn't yet learned how to do this. This helps them gain a better understanding of making sure they explain every detail. I circulate and listen, and will support as needed.
In ELA, I use this process a lot when we do RACES writing. I will have students Rally Coach their C (cite text evidence) and E (explain) components. The E (Explain) part of RACES is particularly difficult for students. This is where they "explain" how their text evidence supports the answer they previously stated. Having them partner up and use Rally Coach helps give them support with the explaining piece. Their partner is required to listen and give feedback after the "coach" is done explaining what they came up with. I have found that implementing this Rally Coach structure during writing, has really strengthened peer editing. My students really do listen to one another and help their peers to strengthen their work! I monitor and provide assistance when I deem necessary.
