Peer Feedback: Making It Meaningful

WEBSITE ↬ Peer Feedback: Making It Meaningful

AUDIENCE ↬ teachers

CONTENT ↬ all

GRADE LEVELS ↬ aimed at grades 3 & up; modification might work for younger students

Feedback is important for both the creator and those giving the feedback. I've realized in recent years, honest & real peer feedback can go much further than teacher feedback. I am incorporating more peer feedback in various ways in my own classroom this year and really appreciate Catlin's choice board. I believe most students struggle to frame the feedback in an appropriate way - they don't want to be mean or they simply don't know how to take their thoughts and frame it in a way to make it valuable to their peer. Catlin's choice board can really help with both.

HOW CAN TEACHERS USE THIS RESOURCE?

I can see teachers using this across all content areas and for a variety of activities. I recently had my students complete a project and they had to provide feedback for each other. Comparing this choice board to the feedback form I had, this one wins, hands down! Since it's shared via a Google Doc, you can easily tweak it to best fit you and your students.

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5 project ideas for the end of the school year

WEBSITE ↬ 5 project ideas for the end of the school year

Podcast ↬ podcast link

AUDIENCE ↬ teachers

CONTENT ↬ ELA & history

GRADE LEVELS ↬ grades 2 & up

John Sowash, of the Chromebook Classroom, shared these 5 project ideas recently and I think they are great! If you listen to his podcast episode about it, he shares several awesome tips and ways to utilize these projects in your classroom.

I'd also propose not isolating these to the end of the year ... book mark this and come back to it at various points of the year. The Mt Rushmore activity might be my favorite. It can work for any content and depending on your requirements, it can be a project used for students to demonstrate learning in a deep way.

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Day 2: Locked Quizzes & more!

Locked Quizzes & more! [LINK]

Google has been teasing us about the ability to "lock" a Google Form for the past several months. Many teacher friends have been asking for this and it's finally here. (Kind of - read further into the tips section ... )

Let's go through some pedagogy - YES! It'd be ideal to create all of your assessments to be questions that your students can't "Google" ... however, in reality, there are times where a teacher wants/needs to have the ability to focus students on doing the test in front of them. This new tool will allow teachers to do just that.

As a bonus in the same article, Google announces they are improving their Gradebook in Google Classroom. Looking at the GIF (I'm a #hardG kinda gal), I'm super excited at the new layout! Seeing multiple assignments in columns all the way across the page will help teachers see with a glance at large amounts of work. Yea!

A few tips:

• currently, you need to sign up for the beta testing for both the locked quizzes and the new gradebook - please double check with your GSuite Admin to ensure they are on the same page

• it will only work on chromebooks managed by your domain (meaning your school has to be able to manage what does/doesn't go on)

• this is NOT going to stop cheating! Cheating happened long before computers ... 

• the gradebook feature gives Google Classroom the look of a more traditional gradebook, but don't let that fool you ... it is NO traditional gradebook! Grading categories, your entire class at a glance, a complete picture of single student, and more. 

Bottom line on this one - you'll have to sign up and give each of these a go to really test them out. But both are wins to me!

Please click HERE for the collection of all 15 resources.

An Intro to Google Forms

HELP DOC → An Intro to Google Forms

Forms is your answer to the collection of data of all shapes and sizes. Forms will neatly organize and display data for easy analyzation.