jvarga
Forum Replies Created
-
AuthorPosts
-
jvarga
ParticipantTHis is not necessarily a Choice Board, but rather a Learning Contract in which students pick assignments and topics of interest. Students pick assignments that total to 50 points (you could go as high as 100). I work with students, negotiating for gifted students to pick the challenging projects, and my ELL and lower-ability IEP students to go with activities that involve more visual learning. I have done this activity for several years, having great success, including with digital/ online formats.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1j2XusVdvv1YWWIgdPLpdg8Qv9kYOy4nke4LxINb7K88/preview
ParticipantI have found practicing with students how to communicate with a teacher, in this case, emailing or messaging through Canvas, will help students advocate for their learning needs. That said, they have to actually communicate with the teacher and self-advocate.
ParticipantThe biggest challenge I will have is students with IEPs and ELLs advocating for themselves, asking questions, and utilizing their accommodations. This is something I think many teachers struggle with in person, and I can see this as a big hurdle in an on-line environment.
ParticipantI teach a Basic US course. In my class, I am seeing more language learners. This year, I had students use their phones for translators, as well as relied on small group work to have a student help translate where applicable. I had success with this model, but I understand the need to use more translation tools, such as a Google translate, to make documents and handouts more accessible to my language learning students.
ParticipantTake images of the art and share links to view into a discussion on Canvas. Have students click the links to view the art, and then make follow-up critiques for replies.
ParticipantAn activity that I do for every unit is a Jeopardy review. My Jeopardy games are pretty unlike most. Everyone is highly involved, it gets loud, sometimes there are obstacles (tie-breakers) and challenges kids most complete to answer questions, and kids work as teams to compete. I am curious how to bring jeopardy into a virtual classroom to keep it competitive, fun, and keep everyone involved.
ParticipantI teach US and World History, grades 9-11. I will frequently do a current event a few times a week to have students research and present an issue or event around the world. This gets students to take some control and present issues that matter to them in a forum/ safe learning environment.
A second group interaction, and one that seems silly, is our Friday dad jokes. I tell the students at the beginning of the year, that if they can take away anything non-content related from my course, it is how to present a proper dad joke/ pun. Every Friday, kids research dad jokes and puns and share them with our class. I will use a dad joke app and share 5-6 jokes per week. Great way to end the week with a great laugh or in the least a cringe for students too cool laugh.
ParticipantMy favorite method to foster communication is to have a random talking point that is not related to what we are learning. Let the student’s personality and opinion shine. For example, on Thursdays for bell work, we do a random question. In quarter 4, we did a bracket for “universally liked person”, with each week, completing a new section of the bracket. I give the kids a chance to discuss who should be voted on and why. To add, I had the kids create a list of people they believed were universally liked, and we voted on Google Forms. I took the top 8 to make my bracket with an east and west column. Kids enjoyed this, with some weeks spent several minutes discussing why one person should move on. This helped me learn a lot about the kids, and their interests, as well as stay up-to-date on pop-culture.
ParticipantParticipantThe hyperdoc linked below is not for an individual lesson but for a complete unit. The hyperdoc or “newsletter” as I call them in my class features a brief description of the unit we will learn, all slides/ notes for the unit, a tentative schedule, and all of the assignments and projects. In addition, I have attached images with links to important (or sometimes funny) videos related to the unit.
The UNit Newsletter/hyperdoc attached is one for my 3rd unit in World History over the Enlightenment and Revolutions. We start with a brief discussion over what is the Enlightenment, followed by research for a “Simon Says” activity on enlightened thinkers and scientists. To make this virtual, students could complete the chart, and then record themselves on flipgrid doing the Simon Says action. Next, students learn about the American Revolution to understand its connection to the French Revolution. I typically show a video, for online could include the use of Edpuzzle. Next, students participate in a mock trial of the French Revolution. To make this virtual, the trial could be held on Google Meets, with students researching their roles the days before the trial. To end, students are quizzed on Canvas to receive feedback and assess their learning.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Oh8QmBDaBpTp38NQWqivKgdixzQTd5n9Nbo-IAvuPtM/edit?usp=sharing
ParticipantI am not currently teaching an online course. I do have a virtual course during the summer, and I set that up as a self-paced course. Each week/ unit features an intro discussion, notes students take on their own, a digital notebook using Google Slides students will complete, one additional mini-project, and an assessment. I also include links to review/ pre-assessment games like a Blooket or Gimkit. I also offer hours to meet, ask questions, and collaborate.
This model has worked very well for the majority of students, several involved in summer sports, work, etc. If I taught a course during the school year, I would use the rotation station model: Meet as a group to go over the week, use a discussion board/ platform to spark interest, flipped the classroom for videos/ notes (slides, ed puzzle), and have collaboration time for a project. Having a time when students may communicate with me would help clear confusion and provide instant feedback.
ParticipantI have used several of these tools over the years. Padlet for discussions and student-led research for content/ topics; blooket/ gimkit to review and gamify the class, formative and forms to assess. The one I would be interested in experimenting with would be whiteboard.ai. My only concern would be the matrutity of some students. We can monitor all we want, but it only takes one to put a comment or image we do not catch right away to ruin the activity for everyone else.
Below is an example of a gimkit game we have played to review WWI. The kids loved it and requested to play it again.
ParticipantCanvas is the LMS used in my course. Below is a link to my Canvas homepage. I use buttons to help navigate to each Unit, bellwork templates, class rules, exit-tickets, etc. The goal is to make the class easy to navigate and accessible to all students.
ParticipantThe biggest challenge I have had with online teaching is balancing a proper pacing for students. The courses I have taught in the past have fostered a wide range of abilities from students who could be in an AP course, to students who are there for the 2nd (sometimes 3rd) go around. I often have students who are way ahead, while there are a few who barely get by or fall behind schedule. A solution I have worked on is creating a pacing schedule for students, and chunking material to make the workload manageable. I also try to create extra learning opportunities with extra credit ed-puzzles or with AI, new AI video questions for those requesting extra opportunities to learn.
ParticipantThere are two major organizational tools I use to help with both teaching and workflow. The first, and this one is pretty simple, but creating folders for individual units in Google Drive has made organizing material easy and streamlined. Every time I make an update or add a resource/ activity to a unit, I make sure a digital copy is saved and uploaded/ moved to the subfolder it belongs to. This has made planning very efficient. The second tip I use to organize material is the creation of digital Unit Newsletters. I can place all notes slides, and links to assignments into one easy-to-read newsletter. This not only helps me keep material organized, but it also helps students locate content for a given unit. The newsletter takes a bit of time to put together, but once created, they are easy to update, I have a schedule for the entire unit that I can update year to year. This has made organization and planning very efficient over the years.
-
AuthorPosts