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English Language Arts Reading (ELAR)LibrariesPlanning and Preparation

Recharge Your Poetry Unit with a Fliphunt

by Amy Marquez
written by Amy Marquez

Looking for a fun and interactive way to teach or review poetry? A FlipHunt just might be the answer. As a former ELA teacher and current librarian, I have a soft spot in my heart for poetry. What better way to get your students excited about poetry than with an engaging gamified contest? I had been searching for how I could help all students engage positively with poetry. I wanted to find a way that allowed for more student agency and personalized learning experiences. That was when I came across #fliphunt on Twitter. Kathi Kersznowski had a great resource that got me thinking about how I could recharge my poetry unit.

Planning a FlipHunt

A FlipHunt is a scavenger hunt using Microsoft Flip to record responses. This would be a great activity for in-person and virtual school settings. I’ll walk you through the planning process for my first FlipHunt.

I started by thinking about my goals. What did I want my students to walk away with a better understanding of? Then, I wanted to ensure my students had choices and opportunities to be creative. I also thought about the structure. Did I want students to work independently or in pairs/groups?

Then I generated my plan:

  • Goals– my students will…
    • Find poetry enjoyable and relatable
    • Practice constructing poetry
    • Make connections
    • Analyze theme
    • Creatively respond to poems
  • Student choice– my lesson will…
    • Include a variety of tasks students can choose from
    • Allow students to select poems of interest to analyze
    • Allow students to choose the order to complete activities
  • Structure– my lesson will…
    • Gamify the activity with point values
    • Allow independent or small-group participation
    • Engage students through choice
    • Include a link to my Flipgrid project where students can respond to the tasks by class period

Results of the Activity

Unveiling my first FlipHunt with students was a great opportunity to collaborate with ELA teachers and bring in their students. It was exciting to see students having fun working on the FlipHunt and getting them excited about poetry.  Students loved getting to choose the poems they would respond to. From a management standpoint, having all their Flipgrid responses organized in my teacher dashboard on Flipgrid also made it easy to track student participation. Check out one of our #BookSpinePoetry submissions below.

Book Spine Poetry Submitted through Flipgrid

Poetry Fliphunt Template

Download this Template

Want to try it out yourself? Take this template and customize it to meet your needs. And if you’re interested in learning more, check out this related blog post from TCEA.

More Poetry Blogs

Four Ways AI Can Help Teach Poetry

Celebrating National Poetry Month

Creating Dynamic Digital Poetry Books

Three Tools for Your Poetry Slam

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Technology Applications

Empower Student Voice With Two Digital Discussion Tools

by Hunter McConnell
written by Hunter McConnell

Student discussion can be a powerful tool, but many students struggle with academic language. This can be helped by providing them with tools such as sentence starters, sentence stems, examples of simple sentences with the correct academic language, and many other strategies. As a previous teacher, I had many students who didn’t like to talk out loud, but if I got them by themselves or provided them with a digital alternative, they were more likely to open up a discussion with other students and me. There are two technology tools that can help your students have academic discussions, and these digital tools in coordination with academic language resources can help students use their voice in your classroom.

Flipgrid

Flipgrid is a simple, free video discussion platform that makes learning fun, fulfilling, and empowering. It only takes a few minutes to start sparking meaningful discussions that will inspire your learners to share their voice and use their creativity. Check out an example here using the code Tceafg2021. Students can import a video, record their voice, or even write on a virtual whiteboard. As a teacher, you can connect Flipgrid to your Google Classroom, create student groups, and create specific topics or prompts for discussion. You can share your topics via email, Microsoft Teams, Google Classroom, or using a QR code.

Take a look at the following Flipgrid Resources:

Additionally, here is a downloadable guide, and you can watch this short video to get an overview of the capabilities of Flipgrid and how quick and easy it is to use:

Padlet

Padlet is a digital tool that can help teachers and students in class and beyond by, at its most basic, offering a single place for a notice board. This digital notice board can feature images, links, videos, and documents, all collated on a “wall” that can be made public or private. Not only can teachers post on the wall, but students can, too. So, they can respond to prompts, questions, and their classmates. Here’s an example of how Padlet can be used in an interactive way to promote discussion. With Padlet, students can upload files, insert a photo from their camera or from an image search, insert links, record videos/voice, and screen record. 

Padlet

Take a look at the following Padlet Resources

Here is a quick introduction to Padlet:

I hope you enjoy both of these tools and the resources provided for you. Remember to start small when trying new tools or strategies, and if it doesn’t succeed the first time, try again!

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Good Teaching

2,000+ Lesson Plan Templates and Ideas for K12

by Lori Gracey
written by Lori Gracey

One of the things I enjoy doing most in my job is hunting for treasures that educators can use. These need to be ready-made, easy-to-use, fun lesson ideas and templates for all grade levels that cover the core content that must be mastered, as well as other subject areas. Recently, I found one of the best treasures I’ve ever seen that checks all of those boxes and so I am eager to share it with you.

Drum Roll, Please!

The Pennsbury School District in Pennsylvania has created the motherlode of lesson plans and templates for busy educators. Hosted in an online, searchable database, there are more than 2,600 resources available for grades K-12 in a variety of subject areas. And each one features an already-created template or website or interactive to begin using immediately.

What kind of resources and templates are available, you ask? Well, here’s just a short list:

  • Experiments with Google
  • Flipgrid
  • Google Docs
  • Google Drawings
  • Google Earth
  • Google Forms
  • Google Jamboards
  • Google Sheets
  • Google Slides
  • Interactive websites
  • PDFs
  • Pear Deck
  • YouTube videos
  • Websites

Searching and Finding the Exact Lesson Plan Template You Need

While the resources are top quality and absolutely amazing, what is most useful are the powerful search features of the site. You can search by Content Area (across all subject areas), Category (such as formative assessment or rubric templates), Resource Type, and Target Grade Level. And, if that’s not enough for you, there is even a strong keyword search function.

Lesson Plan Template Examples

Once you have found your resource, you’ll be amazed at the quality of what is provided. I randomly selected Second Grade Math Jamboard Collection. This one resource has 17 different Jamboards in it that support the number of the day activity. Each board is also followed by second board just like it that has been completed as an example for the teacher.

lesson plan template

And here’s a Suffragette’s Breakout EDU activity for grades 6-12 that is fun and beautiful. As another example, check out this 37-slide Google Slides book study template on A Wrinkle in Time. It offers activities for every chapter!

lesson plan template

Finally, here’s an example of a Black History Month project for grades 4-8 done in Google Docs with relevant links.

Summer is a great time to find new resources to help your students engage with content in the fall. Be sure to take a long look at what this school district has put together (and is constantly updating!) that will be fantastic for your learners.

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child reading on couch
Educational ResearchEnglish Language Arts Reading (ELAR)

Lotta Lara: Improve Oracy and Reading Fluency

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

“We’re doing something called Lotta Lara,” remarked an elementary teacher.

I stared at her in puzzlement. “I don’t know what that is.”

“Well, I know what it is, but doing it is something else altogether.” Lotta Lara is a model for literacy targeting oracy and reading fluency. Recent research finds that oral reading fluency is the key to reading comprehension. In this blog entry, we’ll explore the model and how technology can amplify its benefits for students.

Lotta Lara, a Literacy Squared innovation, focuses on developing students’ oral language skills. It does this through explicitly planning oracy instruction while also increasing reading fluency and comprehension through repeated reading. One book or text is used three times in one week. Students read the text a total of nine times. While students read to increase their reading fluency and comprehension, equal emphasis is placed in oracy on the use of connected discourse and the rehearsal of pre-planned language structures (source: Literacy Squared Handout).

Introducing Lotta Lara

The National Reading Panel found the following:

If children read out loud with speed, accuracy, and proper expression, they are more likely to comprehend and remember the material than if they read with difficulty and in an efficient way.

As a language arts teacher facilitating reading instruction, I often relied on Sustained Silent Reading (SSR) in my classroom. The idea behind that is that students read and develop fluency and vocabulary with texts they self-select. However, the National Reading Panel reported that SSR programs were not an effective means of teaching reading. Since then though, a significant number of research studies have re-examined sustained silent reading programs, evaluating their effectiveness with students from primary grades to graduate school. Most of these studies show that SSR is successful in promoting and improving student literacy (source: Steve Gardiner, Building Student Literacy Through Sustained Silent Reading, ASCD).

Oral Reading Fluency Benefits

Encouraging oral reading fluency seldom took place in my classroom. That was a dangerous omission since oral reading benefits students when they enjoy explicit guidance and feedback. The classroom teacher provides this feedback when students are reading passages out loud.

Oral reading works only when these three factors are in play:

  • Children’s oral reading is the focus.
  • Ample opportunities for practice exist that allow children to read and re-read words aloud in the connected text.
  • Ongoing feedback is provided as the child reads.

reveals that fluency gains can be achieved over a six-week period. Teachers and students must engage in echo, choral, and/or partner reading with quality stories. Let’s revisit the definitions of each approach:

  • Echo reading: The teacher reads a sentence aloud, then the group rereads it aloud.
  • Choral reading: The teacher leads the entire group reading aloud in unison.
  • Partner reading: Pairs of readers take turns as they read text aloud.

How can we combine this with available technologies? We’ve covered repeated reading repetition with technology, but what about students reading alone? Below, find some adaptations for students reading alone or at home.

Repeated reading is an academic practice that aims to increase oral reading fluency. … During repeated reading, a student sits in a quiet location with the teacher. The student then reads a passage (50 to 200 words) aloud at least three times. The teacher determines reading fluency by calculating words correct per minute that the student has read (source: What Works Clearinghouse).

Digital Texts for Echo Reading

Students without ready access to a teacher may find it hard to engage in echo reading. However, they can rely on available digital texts. One way to accomplish this includes using age-appropriate, high-interest texts that have been read aloud online. You can ask students to use a screencasting tool to record themselves reading a text on screen after it has been read aloud. For example, a text like Too Much Glue may work, as could these other titles:

If you’d like to try an app specific to echo reading, Readability is one available tool. Another app available for free is Google’s Rivet.

For Choral and Partner Reading

These approaches can be recorded easily with several tools. A teacher equipped with Zigazoo Classroom (free) could create challenges for students who could record themselves reading a text.

Another approach could involve using Flipgrid, where can students read together or apart. Mary, a teacher, shares how she relied on Flipgrid for partner reading responses:

I recently tried using Flipgrid for partner responses to reading. If you are looking for a motivator to up your engagement for reading responses, this is a great option. . . Despite a few minor technical difficulties (which are always to be expected when trying something new), students were able to record their video responses. At the end of the recording, students were prompted to take a selfie.

You can see a lesson plan for partner reading through paired texts online:

In this example we will focus on the paired texts in the February issue of Storyworks Jr. We read each of the paired texts as a whole class, then had students do a close read independently. We asked the students to focus on the big question of the texts: How do toilets save lives? (source: StoryWorks)

Reading Fluency

Improving reading fluency can be tough since it requires one-on-one or small group work with students. Taking advantage of online tools can ease the burden during remote learning when engaging in echo, choral, or partner reading, all proven approaches to support students’ oracy and fluency development.

Feature Image Source

Photo by Seven Shooter on Unsplash

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SEL
Social-Emotional Learning

Five Quick Ways to Integrate Social-Emotional Learning

by Laura Boyd, Guest Author
written by Laura Boyd, Guest Author

Integrating social-emotional learning (SEL) on a daily basis is important to all students. By taking time each day to integrate SEL, you will help develop your students’ well being and promote a positive classroom community. 

Here are five ways to integrate SEL into your lesson planning whether you teach in person, hybrid, or virtual learning.

social-emotional learning
A Pear Deck stress check template
  1. Google Forms
    Create a Google Form that serves as a daily or weekly check in. You can integrate emojis that correspond with various feelings from which students can select their current emotion. Students can then bookmark the form on their device and visit this as often as they choose. Many students may feel more comfortable submitting an answer online than saying how they feel out loud. Through the data gathered, you can better serve your students.
  2. Pear Deck SEL Templates
    Download these free templates onto your Google Slides (add-on). Students answer various prompts such as how they are feeling, stress level check, moment of silence, stretch break, and many others. These questions allow you to collect more data and your students will know you care about their entire well being. Through the students’ responses, you can get feedback on the entire class and how each individual student is feeling.
  3. Mentimeter
    Create questions where students can answer how they are feeling through a multiple choice bar graph, word cloud, or free response. This website is free and allows you to collect participant responses in real time. You have the option to display the entire results on the smartboard or via Zoom.
  4. Make a Meme
    This website provides an opportunity to create memes based upon student feelings. These are also great for lesson hooks that spark student interest and inquiry.
  5. Flipgrid
    Create grids where students can check in with you daily or weekly. Through Flipgrid, students have a voice and they feel connected to their classroom community. You can also create gratitude grids, show-and-tell, birthday celebrations, and introduce family/pet grids. These all help build community and give students a voice, whether they are at home or in the classroom. 

More Social-Emotional Learning Resources

For other ways to incorporate the critical components of social-emotional learning in your classroom, check out these resources:

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Valentine
Uncategorized

Sharing Virtual Valentine’s Cards

by Lori Gracey
written by Lori Gracey

If your students are still learning remotely, it may be a little bit harder for them to celebrate Valentine’s Day as a class. But luckily, we have lots of digital tools available now to make it easier and fun. Here are some ideas from teachers:

Erin Flanagan has a great blog post on digital Valentine ideas. She offers tips for using Google Slides, Wakelet, Padlet, and Flipgrid. Others recommended using Jamboard for this holiday with one page for each student.

Squeaky Altman will have her students go “old school” first. “Instead of sending a card to each person, just make one overall card. Have students use crayons, markers, etc. and make one [Valentine] for the entire class. Then share it in class or via Flipgrid.”

Another teacher recommended the Virtual Valentines Project. “The Virtual Valentines Project is an easy, free project designed to teach students geographical awareness and cultural understanding while connecting classrooms all around the world for Valentine’s Day.” The free project is open to students in grades K-12 and offers two different options for global connections.

valentine

If your students are using Zoom, have them create a Valentine’s Day background. They can use some of Canva’s customizable templates and add their own creativity. (Please note that Canva is free to use, but does require an account.)

Older students might prefer creating a poem or other piece of writing than a card. If so, here are some good Valentine writing prompts:

  • Why do you think we get off school for certain holidays, like Thanksgiving, but not others, like Valentine’s Day? Should Valentine’s Day be a school holiday?
  • Write a twist on the classic poem “Roses are red, violets are blue…”
  • So many Valentine’s Day cards feature puns and wordplay. What’s the funniest Valentine’s Day pun you can think of?
  • Write a Valentine to someone who deserves a little extra love and thanks this year. 
  • Is Valentine’s Day only for romantic love, or is it also a celebration of friendship and family love? Defend your position.
  • Before computers and email, people sent more hand-written cards and letters. Is the fact that we use emails and text more often now a loss or a gain? Why or why not?

Valentine-themed templates for Google Slides and PowerPoint abound. Here are just a few I found:

How will you help your students celebrate the day of love this year?

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Google
Google Tips and Tricks

Updates to Google Workspace

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Powerful new updates for Google Workspace are now available. In this blog entry, you will find out about a few of those that impact how you interact with Workspace tools.

Google Classroom Rosters and Flipgrid

Before we jump into Google Workspace’s updates, let’s take a moment to celebrate. Flipgrid has a new feature to add class rosters directly from Classroom. That’s right; you can now add Google Classroom rosters to Flipgrid discussions. This facilitates student access and saves time for busy teachers. Click the image below to watch Flipgrid’s video introduction.

Another Flipgrid update is the ability for students to be able to record video AND audio. Flipgrid keeps making astounding additions to their product. Not only do you have closed captioning possible in Flipgrid videos, but now there’s more. You can take advantage of microphone-only mode, which makes audio recordings easy.

Two other neat features include Flipgrid shorts camera updates and nametag cover images. One feature I find exciting is how you can create a mixtape of student videos recorded in Flipgrid. Imagine how easy it is to create a summary of exciting learning happening in your learning space.

As amazing as Flipgrid’s new integration is for Google Classroom teachers, there’s more.

Did You Know?

Explore Google Classroom in more detail via TCEA’s online, self-paced course. The purpose of this course is to assist educators in becoming more comfortable with Google Classroom. Participants who successfully complete this course will receive a TCEA Google Classroom digital badge and completion certificate.

Google Workspace Updates

There have been a host of updates for Google Meet recently, as well as other nifty editing features. Let’s take these updates one at a time.

Google Meet

If you blinked, you may have missed Google Meet video call link’s appearance in a classic space. That space? Google Hangouts.

According to Google, face-to-face video calls have these limits:

  • 10 people for Gmail and Google Workspace Basics
  • 25 people for Business and Education

Google Meet settings are now changing, gaining a “sticky” feel. That is, if you turn off certain features in your settings, Meet will remember those and they will appear in future meetings. Of course, those sticky settings will only appear for meetings that use the same meeting code. Sticky settings are associated with specific meeting codes, not people. That means you can set custom settings for each meeting you are in.

Editing Office Files in Google Workspace

Are you a Microsoft Office fanatic, but are stuck in a Google world?  Then Google Workspace has taken a few steps to make your life easier.  Those new features include the following:

  • Edit MS Office files with Google tools on open
  • Multi-page orientation now possible in Google Docs
  • Macro converter for MS Excel to Google Sheets

Let’s dig into these new features.

Feature #1: Default Editing of MS Office

Editing Microsoft Office files is now set by default in Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides. This new feature may save you a double-click. In the past, you had to double-click to take a quick peek at the document. Now, you can click and open, going straight to edit mode.

google workspace

Image Source: Google

Feature #2: Multi-Page Orientation

If you haven’t tried to put a portrait and landscape series of pages in Google Docs, you’ve missed out. Now you can insert section breaks that change page orientation. For example, maybe your first 10 pages are portrait, but for pages 11 through 15, you want to switch to landscape. What do you do? Rely on Google’s new multiple page orientations option.

google workspace

Image Source: Google

Feature #3: Macro Converter

Oh, I can hear the Microsoft Excel advocates now. They aren’t ready to make the switch from Microsoft Excel to Google Sheets. “The macros never make it from an Excel workbook into Google Sheets,” they cry. Well, those days are coming to an end.

You now have a macro converter for Microsoft Excel. The macro converter does its thing with Excel files as it converts macros to Google Sheets format. Microsoft’s Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) code gets turned into Apps Script code. The Apps Script code works in Google Sheets.

Stay tuned for more updates from Google Workspace.

Feature Image Source

Photo by Mitchell Luo on Unsplash

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Source: screenshot of Whiteboard.chat
Good Teaching

Virtual Learning Strategy #1: Classroom Discussion

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

How would you combine one high-effect size instructional strategy with a digital tool? If it’s a question you’ve asked yourself before, you’re not alone. Several thousand of the educators who have completed the TCEA Remote Learning Educator course have asked themselves the same question. Let’s take a moment to see what teachers had to say about one of the strategies studied: classroom discussion.

Before we do that, let’s revisit high-effect size instructional strategies.

Revisiting Strategies That Work

“We have no right to teach in a way that leads to students gaining less than d=0.40 within a year,” says John Hattie. He asked the question, “What works best in education?” Then he answered it in his ground-breaking study on visible learning. In his study, he found a way of synthesizing various influences that are connected to learning outcomes. The most effective strategies have high effect sizes. Hattie found that the average effect size of all the interventions he studied was 0.40.

This is even more true now during virtual learning. “Now,  it is all about finding the effective ones for remote learning,” says Aimee Maganda. Knowing how an evidence-backed strategy works with a digital tool saves time and effort. As one educator put it:

First of all, I would like to say that this has been a fascinating new concept for me. I am very familiar with instructional strategies and digital tools. This was the first time I actually evaluated how effective a strategy is. That is, how effective it is  in conjunction with a digital tool.

Now, I plan to refer to the chart and take a look at some of the more effective teaching methods. It will also be interesting to see how much bang for your buck you can get with some of the strategies.

For example, I found it very interesting that a flipped classroom scored a 0.58. It takes so much time to plan versus a classroom discussion that scored a 0.82. Classroom discussion doesn’t take as much physical planning as a flipped classroom.

This could help me maximize my planning time and maximize the impact of my instruction.

There are many strategies teachers referenced. I suggested a few in my chart. What was fun to see were the actual examples teachers offered. A top ten list emerged.

Honorable Mentions

Before we explore the top ten list, here are some of the honorable mentions:

  • Deliberate Practice (0.79) with Gimkit.com 
  • Feedback (0.64) with a learning management system (LMS) such as Canvas or Teams
  • Metacognition Strategies (0.58) with Flipgrid
  • Problem-Solving Teaching (0.68) with Minecraft
  • Spaced vs. Massed Practice (0.65)
  • Success Criteria (0.88) with Google Classroom
  • The Modality Effect (0.55) with Wakelet
  • Vocabulary Program (0.63) with Padlet

Remember, you can explore each of the strategies. To do so, go to the Visible Learning Meta X database. Ready to see the top ten list of strategies? Well, you will have to wait for future blog entries to see the complete list. Let’s start with the number one strategy teachers mentioned.

classroom discussion

Strategy #1: Classroom Discussion

“I use classroom discussion to capture what a student has learned for that lesson.  I can see what they knew or didn’t know,” says one teacher. The most popular strategy, classroom discussion, lends itself to teachers’ imaginations. They are able to combine a wide variety of digital tools with classroom discussion.

Classroom discussions make it possible for students to connect with one another. Use this strategy to activate prior knowledge and explore new topics. Students are able to learn from others and show learning. What’s neat about classroom discussion is that it engages students and gives all students the chance to take part.

Did You Know?

On September 26th, from 1:00 to 2:00 PM (EST), attend a Whiteboard.chat webinar to answer questions and showcase features you need to know about. Sign up via Facebook and register for this learning opportunity. This is a free webinar on how to better use the digital whiteboard for remote teaching effectively.

Some Tips on Making Classroom Discussion Work

Consider these tips on making this strategy work best for your students:

  • Before students respond to questions online, have them discuss with a partner. Use a digital whiteboard where students can discuss. Whiteboard.fi and Jamboard allow collaboration.
  • Ask for student interpretations of questions, then clarify their thinking or redirect.
  • Use students’ individual responses as models. Your use of them can deepen further discussion for the whole class.
  • Be strategic about which student voices you amplify.

Let’s consider how some educators are focusing in on classroom discussion.

Examples of Digital Tools

Some of the notable examples included using these technologies:

  • Breakout Rooms: Depending on your platform of choice, teachers use breakout rooms. The use of breakout rooms to organize classroom discussions was popular. Platforms that support breakout rooms include Canvas, Seesaw, Teams, and Zoom. Each does so with varying degrees of success, of course.
  • Flipgrid: “The students can post a video of themselves answering the discussion question. They can watch/reply to other students’ answers,” says one educator. Students could have a question of the day posted on Tuesday and Thursday. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, they respond to the question. Students also view responses from their peers. Flipgrid enjoys popular support, even among second grade teachers. “The kids love to make videos and I can quickly assess if they are understanding the objective.”
  • Google Jamboard: “Students can read what others are saying. Then they can contribute their own thoughts. They can sort elements into a graphic organizer, help each other spell or count … it’s like a digital center’s group!” Combine Jamboard with Zoom to capture student responses in real time. “It’s been fantastic, my students are always excited to ‘jam with each other’,” says an educator.
  • NearPod: “I have used Nearpod for classroom discussions,” said another teacher. Others have learned to use NearPod to support hybrid learning situations. “With Nearpod, I can assign the same lesson as a live lesson and a student-paced lesson with the click of a button. It ensures I continue reinforcing previous concepts, or even creating new ones! Learn how to do this here.“

New digital tools create more opportunities for interaction. Some of those new tools include Whiteboard.fi, Whiteboard.chat, and Curioasis .

Final Thoughts

Classroom discussion may be one of the most misunderstood high-effect size strategies. For many, creating engaging classroom discussions for students is a critical component of many lessons. While that is a priority, you also have another goal: to use classroom discussions as a source of data. Then you can use that data to adapt your instruction to better meet the needs of students.

In future blog entries, we’ll explore some of the other popular strategies. These are all strategies TCEA Remote Learning Educator course participants report using daily.

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remote learning
Good Teaching

Remote Learning: Keep It Simple

by Ernest Gonzales, Guest Author
written by Ernest Gonzales, Guest Author

Here we are, starting school virtually for the first time in human history. This situation is unprecedented and full of uncertainty, but one thing is certain; a lot of learning will be happening — teacher learning. As school districts adapt to life during COVID, systems and tools are rapidly being introduced to assist with the challenges of remote learning. 

Teachers will need to quickly learn how to use this new technology to ensure student engagement and success. Getting to know these new tech tools in such a short span of time poses many challenges for our diverse population of teachers as they work to meet the needs of students and their multiple learning styles. If we approach this problem with the idea of keeping things simple, then we can better manage the new learning and help our students and families be successful as well.  So what exactly does keeping it simple mean?

Focus on the Essential Tools for Remote Learning

As an educator, acquaint yourself with the primary tools you will be using for teaching and communication. Educators need a solid application for live-streaming synchronous learning, and right now, we’re using Zoom to meet this need. For those students who are not able to participate during live lessons, Flipgrid offers an intuitive, user-friendly app that provides a way to record video communication and more.

Go Beyond the Foundations

In addition to these fundamental apps, teachers need a learning management system to create a digital version of their real world classroom. For many educators, Google Classroom is a popular tool. While Google Classroom is relatively easy to learn and start using, it lacks many of the more powerful features of a full-fledged LMS. With this in mind, we can see how a good tool for live video, an easy-to-use application for recorded video, and a solid LMS are essential and provide a strong foundation for online learning.

Prioritize Adaptability

When considering additional apps to add to your essential tech toolbox, invest your learning in tools that can be adapted for a variety of uses. One often overlooked but extremely flexible tool is Google Slides. Teachers often see it only as a presentation tool, but Slides can be used in a variety of creative ways, from publishing collaborative classroom magazines to creating interactive models.

Get Creative

Look through Get Creative with Google Slides to get more ideas on building Google Slides into your classroom. Think about altering any traditionally-formatted presentations you plan to use in your digital teaching to provide space for students to take notes and reflect on their learning as part of their learning process. Making this modification to any Google Slides presentations you use will enable students to hear you through Zoom, see your slides on their own copies of the presentation, and engage with the content, all in one place.

Flipgrid is another highly adaptable tool.  Consider using it to bring guest speakers into your class, to provide opportunities for global collaboration, or even to gamify your lessons with Fliphunts. For more ideas to spark your creativity, explore Five Ideas for Re-Imagining Flipgrid.

Keep the Practices That Work

All of us now face the reality of teaching our students using technology, but this is nothing new: TEA adopted Technology TEKS for grades K-12 in 2011 to prepare our students for college and beyond. When thinking about how to teach and integrate technology, start with tried and true teaching strategies and practices. Chunk concepts and scaffold the learning by teaching one or two concepts at a time and practicing these essential concepts with your students until they demonstrate understanding.

Think Like a Coach

Think about teaching your students to use technology in an educational setting in terms of coaching. A good coach would not ask novice athletes to perform complex plays their first time on the field and expect success. Instead, the coach would provide the athletes with opportunities and time to first master the fundamentals.

As teachers, we need to do the same for our students and ourselves. Since learning new technologies is similar to learning a new language, think about utilizing strategies for English learners to help students become acquainted with the language and practice of online learning. Learners, both young and adult, will not be fluent in speaking technology initially, but with daily practice, we can build these skills.

Teachers are incredible people with meaningful jobs that create positive effects in our community. As teachers, we chose this profession because we have a passion for education, for our community, and for promoting the love of learning. Educators face a variety of daily challenges, and no one would deny that remote online learning is a challenge. But if we keep it simple and take it in measured steps, we can make it not only manageable, but also transformative. 

Best of luck to everyone this school year.

Ernest Gonzales is the Ed Tech & Design Coordinator for SAISD. You can follow him on twitter @ergoEDU.

Photo: Jimee, Jackie, Tom & Asha / CC BY-SA

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Special Needs

TCEA Responds: Remote Teaching for Speech Therapists

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Dear TCEA Responds:

Speech teachers are struggling to use remote learning to meet student needs. They have several priorities, including keeping their caseload confidential, as well as sending and receiving assignments. Each student requires individualized plans. Our district wants us using G Suite EDU tools, but Classroom isn’t working for us.

Is there any advice, app, or program that you can think of that would help with this situation? We have asked several districts, but everyone does their own thing. I would appreciate any direction you can provide.

Thanks, Teresa

Dear Teresa:

Thank you for sharing this question. While I’ll take a stab at responding, I hope TCEA Technotes blog readers will as well.

Clarifying the Challenges

In reading your email, I see you’re facing several challenges. Allow me to summarize them as I understand them:

Challenge #1: Confidentiality

You need remote teaching resources that protect confidentiality of student-teacher interactions. Solutions like Google Classroom fail the test. Speech therapists/teachers have needs for confidentiality that exceed Google Classroom. Is that right?

Wondering how to approach Special Education in remote learning and remote teaching ? Sign up for TCEA’s Special Needs Educator online course.

Challenge #2: Individual Interactions

You need to be able to manage a large number of students per speech therapist where every interaction is confidential. How do you put 80 students in one digital class without sacrificing confidentiality? Or communicate with each student in a separate virtual space?

Challenge #3: Participation

Participation is low when speech therapists rely on teachers’ websites. To me, it sounds like you want your own space. The only issue is, participation may or may not suffer.

Let’s take a look at two possible solutions.

Rounding Up a Few Solutions

Finding the right answer to a multi-headed problem can be tough. As you guessed, there is no one perfect solution that combines all those components. Here are two possible solutions you may want to consider.

Option #1: Seesaw for Schools

You could use a solution like Seesaw. Wait, I know what you’re thinking…”Seesaw? That’s for little kids, right?” Actually, it’s not only for young children; Seesaw works well with older students, too. Districts use it for professional development for adult learners. In fact, I use it with adults at many of my workshops without any problems.

Let’s review a few relevant points:

  • Seesaw offers excellent audio/video recording support across devices.
  • Seesaw keeps teacher-student interactions to one on one. Using it enables you to set up individualized groups so that each group could focus on specific students. What’s more, Seesaw makes interactions confidential by default.
  • Seesaw works on all sorts of devices. This includes iPads, iPhones, and Android phones and tablets. It also works with Amazon Fire, Chromebooks, and Windows/Mac computers.
  • Seesaw is free for educators. Many of the features you need exist in the free version (Seesaw Basic). If you wanted more, you could always get Seesaw for Schools. To assist you with the options, check the chart below.

tcea responds

Need to learn Seesaw? TCEA offers a $29 Seesaw Educator online, self-paced course. You get to learn from brilliant course developer Brittany Beaird. You also receive 12 hours of CPE credit, a digital badge, and a certificate. And, if you’re not already a TCEA member, you get a complimentary one year membership ($49 value). Learn more online at Seesaw Educator.

Seesaw is one of my favorite digital tools. It ranks up there as one of the best solutions to teaching and learning available.

Option #2: OneNote and Flipgrid

You mentioned you were using G Suite EDU. If you have access to Microsoft 365, that presents another option. You could set yourself and your speech teachers up to use OneNote and Flipgrid.

OneNote Class Notebooks can be password protected and assigned to individual students. You can embed Flipgrid Topics for each student, securing them with a password.

Those are two possible options. I didn’t mention G Suite EDU since it appears that solution is one you’ve considered already. I would go with Seesaw as the best option.

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