mametzger
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mametzger
ParticipantThis is a great response and incredibly true. I generally have kids ask about coming to where they work when it is a restaurant and have had several conversations with kids at their place of work and the next day at school.
ParticipantI have always found that asking kids questions is the best way to build relationships, trying to find common ground allows students to see you more as a regular person and not just a teacher. When we do beginning of the year activities about getting to know the students I always complete the activities as well and start the discussion by answering the questions about myself first. I usually ask for students to see how many picked the same types of answers as myself, then go on to what other students chose and ask them to elaborate on why.
Participanthttps://app.screencastify.com/v3/watch/xd7YRkx6MFir3VsvFl0K
This is a link to part of a screencastify video I had answering some questions students had about a concept that they were struggling with. I would say Economics is a harder class to take purely online, some concepts are more complex and don’t always translate over video very well. In the future I will have more short example videos ready to go for students to use on specific topics like this one. I will also have checks for understanding placed throughout the videos I create just so I have a better feel for where students began to struggle, if it was with beginning concepts or the more difficult ones towards the end of the lesson.
Because students don’t have much background knowledge in economics its hard to gage how long to make videos at the beginning of the class, there are so many basic concepts to cover that students haven’t had much experience with. This is probably the biggest challenge to teaching a class like Economics online.ParticipantI have wondered about gimkit, my elementary kids love playing it. I have always worried about it being more of an elementary tool than a high school one, or am I overblowing this concern?
ParticipantMany of these tools are accessible through students phones, which helps a lot. Kids often have uncharged chromebooks in class and can still participate in a kahoot, quizizz, or blooket through they phones.
ParticipantBlooket has been a very engaging way to get students more into study sessions. The gamification of it keeps students more active and engaged, with quizizz and kahoot many students give up quickly if they don’t do well but Blooket’s games give students a way to still win if they struggle at the start.
The biggest challenge of Blooket is that you can’t get access to much good information about the students answers unless you pay for a subscription, it keeps getting more expensive to be a teacher. Creating a blooket takes a decent amount of time as well, but once you have it you keep it forever so that helps a lot.https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rKA3t0nU-TfWPMOVJUZxdbXwxGLeOpcggX1i5k5bZCk/edit?usp=sharing
Participanthttps://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1CWAwSZ6Ayr-AhRk8LwVv8qIEcl_DPx8nqB7NNpvzcOs/edit?usp=sharing
Since we use Canvas as our LMS students homepage has links to all this information
The front page of Canvas is a daily calendar with links to assignments that were started on that day, the canvas calendar for students has all due dates for assignments
The Announcements link takes students to all class announcements
Student Expectation holds contact information for me as the teacher
Also communicates expectations about work, grades, etc
The Modules tab also has information for students set up by unit/topic they can contain links to videos that can further explain topics but I normally also post those on the front page under the dates of the materials covered
The home page has links to google docs, quizlet activities, etc.ParticipantI find keeping students on task and following along with the pace of class the most difficult part of teaching online. Because students don’t have a set time to attend virtual sessions you have 45 students beginning lessons at 45 different times and naturally many students put things off to the last moments and struggle to get things completed on time.
Screencastify now lets you know how many students have watched your videos, allowing you to see when individuals watched a video, how many times they came back to the video, and when that most recent view was. This is a great way to track progress and now allows me to reach out to students who are behind on pacing.ParticipantSince we use canvas in class students always have the calendar to keep track of when assignments are due, the problem I find with that since some of our work takes more than one class period to complete the calendar doesn’t let students know when we started an assignment. Because of this students become overwhelmed when they see multiple assignments due on Friday but have disregarded previous days in the week with there were no assignments due. To help with this I have started using pages in Canvas to make a calendar of what we started in class each day. This allows students to open up canvas and immediately see what we did that day in class and not just see when an assignment is due.
ParticipantHow will you prioritize relationship building?
I don’t start the school year with a syllabus and learning goals, we do an all about me activity and I try to incorporate some of the things students mention about themselves as the school year progresses. I also ask students questions about their answers. A final thing I do is answer all the same questions the students answered so they get to know me as well.
I try to greet students at the door daily and comment about activities they are involved in, ask questions about their lives, and things like this.How will you establish a positive learning community?
I try to emphasize to students that learning is the goal and that learning sometimes comes at different paces. I let students know I am here to give them opportunities to learn so they can always come to me and ask questions.
How will you bring your curriculum to life for your students?
Economics can be really dry so I include as many real work examples as possible for students, I try to use news stories from recent events to discuss how the economics of the situation does or could impact their lives.
How do your assessment and grading practices align with your vision for learner engagement?
Many of my assessments are taken more than once by students, sometimes students make poor choices about studying but if the goal is to have them learn the material giving them a failing grade does little to encourage them to learn. I also accept late work for full credit, the punishment for not doing the work today is having to do the work tomorrow.ParticipantI do think some students struggle with giving specific feedback, especially if they don’t have much background knowledge in the area either. This would be where it would be most important for a teacher to be moving around and listening to the feedback being given.
ParticipantI think you are spot on with students being more willing to listen to peers than teachers when it comes to feedback. If their friends are helping they are generally more motivated to learn with them or from them.
ParticipantGiving peer feedback forces students to become more involved in the learning process, you can’t give feedback on something you don’t know anything about. Students generally want to be right about something so if they know they have to give feedback in the future they will generally be more engaged in the learning process. Providing feedback also forces students to think more about their own work, it allows them to better asses themselves.
Students generally respond to feedback from their peers more positively than feedback from teachers. I can see how it would motivate them more to make changes and try to make the fist draft better since they know peers will be looking at their work. Students are generally better at keeping some language about feedback simple as well, sometimes we as teachers over complicate things for students.ParticipantI recently started using Blooket for review instead of quizizz or kahoot. My students seem to like it better since it has a game and strategy element to most of the games and answering questions correctly gives you points, powerups, etc. You can also set a timer for the game so kids can see questions more than once to give them more practice, kids who are slower at reading and answering questions can still win the game, and kids have been less likely to disengage with the review when the get a few questions wrong like the have been with other review games.
You can also change games so it doesn’t feel like the same game each time you play it.
Blooket has a paid version that gives you more details on student progress, I don’t have the paid version but it looks like you get some really good feedback on how students answered collectively each question so you know where the struggle points for students are and you can better guide instruction in these areas. It seems like this would be great for collecting background knowledge that students have before you start a lesson.ParticipantAt the beginning of each semester I hand out an all about me sheet asking questions about things like favorite sports teams, favorite candy, etc. The questions cover a wide range of topics that give everyone an opportunity to give information about themselves. After all the kids have answered their sheets I answer the same questions out loud to the class and this starts a conversation with students about what things we have in common, students seem to enjoy having similar interests with teachers. Throughout the semester I try to reference back to these things in class when possible.
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