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Discover 23 strategies to check for understanding in the classroom. From kinesthetic to verbal, these strategies cover a range of learning styles.
Good Teaching

23 Ways to Check for Understanding

by Diana Benner
written by Diana Benner

As educators, we strive to ensure our students grasp the material we present. But how can we be sure our students are understanding the material? Checking for understanding throughout class is crucial for both teachers and students. It allows us to identify areas needing reinforcement, adapt our instruction in real time, and empower students to take ownership of their learning. Here are 23 strategies to gauge student understanding and keep your classroom buzzing with interactive learning.

Verbal Strategies

Open-Ended Questions

Instead of asking yes/no questions, ask questions that prompt students to explain concepts in their own words. For example, “Can you elaborate on the main idea?” or “How does this concept connect to what we learned yesterday?”

Think-Pair-Share

After doing a small bit of teaching, give your students a little time to think about a question related to the learning. This gives students time to formulate their thinking and process the information individually. Then, have each student turn to their neighbor and share their thoughts. Students should be encouraged to ask questions and give feedback to each other in the process. This not only fosters collaboration it also helps clarify understanding.

“Who doesn’t understand?”

When a student expresses confusion, ask if others feel the same. This normalizes asking for help and encourages open participation. It also shows students that it’s ok not to understand a concept.

Sentence Starters

Provide sentence starters like “In my own words, the key takeaway is…” or “I found it interesting that…” to guide student explanations.

Fishbowl Discussions

How to Face History and Ourselves has a Fishbowl Discussion procedure that works well for checking for understanding.
Screenshot by Emily Horn | Facing History and Ourselves | Fishbowl Discussion Procedure

Arrange a small group of students in a circle for a fishbowl discussion while the rest observe. This will allow for a more focused assessment of participation and comprehension.

Peer Explanations

After explaining a concept, pair students up and have them explain the concept to each other. This reinforces understanding and identifies areas needing individual attention.

Interactive Strategies

Exit Tickets

Briefly ask students to summarize a key point, answer a question, or reflect on their learning at the end of class. This provides valuable insights into their comprehension.

Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down

Pose a true/false statement or ask a question. Then, have students use thumbs up/down to respond. Follow up with discussions for incorrect responses.

Give Me Five

Establish a scale (1 = not clear, 5 = crystal clear) and ask students to hold up their fingers to indicate their understanding level. This provides quick feedback and allows you to address common concerns.

One-Minute Essays

Give students a minute to write a quick lesson summary or answer a specific question. This assesses their ability to understand the information.

Gallery Walk

Have students create posters or short presentations on key concepts and post them around the class. Students then rotate and write down key takeaways gained from each other’s work.

Kinesthetic Strategies

Four Corners

Divide the room into sections representing different answers or options to a question. Have students go to the corner they agree with or are interested in. Students in each corner can then discuss their position or perspective. This will help reveal an understanding of the topic.

Human Bingo

Canva Bingo Templates are good tools to check for understanding on specific topics or concepts.
Screenshot by Emily Horn | Canva Bingo Templates

Create bingo cards with learning objectives, questions, or tasks written in the squares. Have students rotate around the room and find peers to complete the tasks on the bingo cards. Once a peer has completed a task on the card, they can mark it off. For example, tasks might include finding someone who can name four colors, list the planets in the solar system, etc. This activity not only promotes active listening but is also a great way to check for understanding. Check out this sample ESL Human Bingo lesson by Teach This. In addition, if you are looking for an editable template, Canva has a lot of Bingo Card templates.

Traffic Light Check

Place red, yellow, and green cards around the room. Red can stand for “I’m confused” or “I need more help.” Yellow can stand for “I somewhat understand” or “I’m kind of getting it.” Green can stand for “It’s clear” or “I understood it.” Students can signal their understanding by moving to different cards around the room or placing clothespins on the appropriate card as demonstrated by Emma Willis.

Move and Match

Write key terms or concepts on cards and scatter them around the room. Students move and find the definition or example that matches each term, promoting movement and collaboration.

Role-Play

Assign students scenarios or situations related to the lesson. Then, ask your students to act them out. This will allow them to demonstrate their understanding through application.

Creative Strategies

Muddiest Point

Ask students to write down the part of the lesson they found most confusing (the “muddiest point”). This helps identify areas needing clarification.

Concept Maps

Have students create visual representations of the relationships between concepts and ideas they learned. This will help promote critical thinking and organization.

Draw It

Talk Drawings can be a great way to check understanding in the classroom.
Screenshot by Emily Horn | Talk Drawings Template

Challenge students to draw a concept or process they learned. One way to do this is by incorporating Talking Drawings into your classroom. In addition, there are several online tools and applications that students can use, such as Google Canvas, AutoDraw, Google Drawings, or iPad apps.

Digital Strategies

Online Quizzes and Polls

Utilize online platforms to create quick quizzes or polls to assess comprehension and adjust instruction accordingly. There are many tools you can use, such as Poll Everywhere, Google Classroom, Quizizz, Quizlet, and more.

Word Clouds

Have students use online word clouds to collectively generate keywords or key ideas from the lesson. This will offer a visual representation of understanding. Mentimeter is a great tool for creating word clouds.

Digital Exit Tickets

Use online forms, such as Google Forms, for students to submit exit ticket responses. Getting the data back in a Google Sheet will make it easy to analyze the data.

Short Video Recordings

Allow students to record a short video recording. They can summarize key takeaways from the day’s lesson. Students can use Flip to record their videos.

Integrating various strategies to check for understanding will provide comprehensive knowledge of your students’ grasp of the material and keep the assessment process engaging and dynamic. Which strategies will you use? Have others to add to the list? Leave a comment to share with us!

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first, second, third place stages
Web 2.0 Tool

Easy Polls for Digital Smackdowns

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Recently, I found myself looking for a way to embed quick polls for audience participation. I wanted to do a digital smackdown where the audience would be able to vote on which tool won. I needed something that was quick, easy, and gave me instant results. In this blog entry, I’ll share one of my favorite solutions for polling an audience fast.

A Little Background

One of the most popular sessions I had the opportunity to be a part of this past year was the Remote Learning Smackdown, a collaborative effort between a fellow director and myself.

easy polls

Didn’t TCEA Director Diana Benner (@diben) do a nice job on this smackdown banner and concept?

As you can see in the image above, there were several rounds (only three appear above, but there were more). Each round required a short presentation of the various remote learning tools. Then, participants in the session voted on their favorite item.

Did You Know?

I had no idea if my alternative solution was going to work like I hoped. So I posted a disclaimer. Have you ever done that in one of your professional development sessions? You can see my explanation in the screenshot (shown right). Special thanks to Peggy Reimers for suggesting I feature it in this blog entry.

Below, you can see the Google Forms approach that we first tried. I have to admit that I thought this approach was a bit clumsy. It works, but you are stuck managing a Google Forms and Responses chart right in the middle of your session. That’s one too many details to worry about.

I resolved to find a better solution. I soon had my chance, when I was invited to present and my colleague was unavailable.

An Alternative Solution

After a frantic search about 30 minutes before one of my solo sessions, I decided to switch. If this was a smackdown between Google Forms and an alternative solution, it would be:

  • An easy to embed voting solution
  • Each poll would have a distinctive look
  • Instant results for participants
  • Shows all options on the screen
  • Participants stay on my site

After some quick searches, I stumbled upon Easy Polls. Here’s what it looks like on my Google Sites website:

Introducing Easy Polls

Explore this powerful interface that makes it easy to add questions. You can adjust the look and feel, as well as the options used. See the screenshots below.

What’s more, you can create an account to manage your polls. The site also offers the ability to login with your Google or Facebook account.

As you can see from these polls for the other smackdown rounds in my presentation, each poll has its own look.

One final consideration is that Easy Polls offers results right on the screen:

You also can see results on the big screen via the Easy Polls “My Polls” dashboard:

And you can share polls via a link or an embed code:

Isn’t that amazing? Easy Polls will work on web browsers on your Chromebooks, Windows, or Mac devices. What’s more, it works well on iOS and Android-based devices. And each poll can receive unlimited respondents.

Wait, What About Cost?

One pressing question is, “Are participants required to have an account?” This matters if you have students in K-12 taking the poll. The answer is “No.” But you DO need an account if you want to create polls.

What’s more, because Easy Polls is ad-based, you pay nothing to use it. But it does offer the ability to pay to remove their unobtrusive advertising. Most people never notice the advertising.

Don’t be afraid to give Easy Polls a try in your next digital smackdown!

Feature Image Source

Photo by Florian Schmetz on Unsplash

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smartphones
Digital LiteracyEducational Trends

Tips for Integrating Smartphones into Lesson Plans

by Luke Smith, Guest Author
written by Luke Smith, Guest Author

Let’s face it: Teaching changed significantly in 2020 thanks to COVID-19. And it may be a while before things get back to normal. Now, as teachers, students, and parents make their through the fall semester, a lot of questions remain unanswered.

Whether your school has chosen to reopen its doors, experiment with a hybrid model, or remain fully online, the order of the day will undoubtedly be adaptability. Welcoming your students to the fall semester, no matter if you’re doing it face-to-face or virtually, is going to require some improvisation, at least for the time being. 

If your school has reopened, you’ll need to engage with your students while adhering to social distancing and other health guidelines, and that’s going to make even the most familiar and inviting classroom feel strange, and perhaps uncomfortable, at least for a while.

And if you’re teaching remotely or in a hybrid model, you’re going to have to figure out the best strategies to optimize your students’ learning at a distance.

A Tool in the Palm of Your Hands

But there’s good news because now teachers have more tools than ever to provide their students with the most enriching and inspiring learning experience possible, regardless whether your students are in the room with you or connected to you only in cyberspace. Best of all, it doesn’t require a multimillion-dollar technology investment or a degree in computer science from MIT to make it work.

Perhaps your best tool is right there in the palm of your students’ hands (or hiding in their bags): the ubiquitous smartphone. 

Why the Smartphone?

Life in the new normal of coronavirus has not only changed the ways we work and learn, but also how we interact with one another, even our closest friends and family. That not only takes a significant mental and emotional toll on us all, but it can also be profoundly detrimental to student learning.   

Anyone who’s spent any time in a classroom will understand why. Students aren’t just empty vessels you pour information into. They need engagement and interaction. And Bandura’s Social Learning Theory explains why. Bandura, a psychologist, says learning is a deeply social activity. That is, students learn from and through one another. 

Getting Engagement

Engagement with other students, with the teacher, and with the external world around them enables the acquisition of information. Even more importantly, however, it helps students to absorb the information and transform the material into something useful, something they can apply. Students learn best via collaboration. Often, the more chances for interaction, the better, whether virtual or in person.

For instance, if students are learning about gravity, speed, and velocity by dropping an egg without breaking it, they’ll learn best by watching their peers and seeing what worked and didn’t work. They’ll see a friend’s egg broke when it was wrapped only in tissue, so they’ll try bubble wrap. Then other students watching will see the wrap worked better, but not perfectly, so perhaps they’ll try wrapping the egg in bubble wrap and putting it in a box. And so on, student’s understanding growing with every attempt they observe or engage in. Smartphones give us another tool to engage in this kind of learning.

Social Connections (Even While Social Distancing)

In the age of COVID, though, the social aspects of learning are sometimes in danger of being lost, or at least significantly changed, even when students are together with their teachers in a physical classroom. Smartphones, however, can help to bridge that critical gap, providing the interactivity, engagement, and collaboration that social distancing guidelines might otherwise undercut.

Here are some strategies for using smartphones to restore the sociability of the socially distanced classroom, whether you’re online, in person, or both.

1. Calm, Cool, and Connected

Even if your school has reopened for regular or hybrid courses, chances are you will have at least a few students who will be learning remotely, either because of their own pre-existing conditions or those of someone in the household. So one of the first and best uses of smartphone technologies is to help your students stay connected with you and their peers, even if they don’t have access to broadband at home, by using their smartphone connection. 

2. Schoolhouse Here, There, and Everywhere

Smartphone apps can help your students download written texts and videos, as well as create documents and securely submit assignments via various free and low-cost apps such as LibreOffice. You can even livestream your classroom to your students’ smartphones on a secure server through an app like Zoom, Facebook Live, or Google Meet. That way, no student needs to miss a moment of the action!

3. Get Outside

Another terrific way to engage your students, both in person and online, is to incorporate geocaching into your lesson plans. If you’ve not yet heard of geocaching, you’re about to fall in love, because geocaching is a fantastic way to teach a range of skills from math, geography, and Earth science to reading, critical thinking, and creative problem solving.

Basically, geocaching is a treasure hunt on steroids. And it’s endlessly customizable. If you’re teaching in the classroom, you can geocache in the school’s playground or even in the classroom itself! Additionally, if you’re teaching remotely, geocaching is a fantastic way to get your students, with their families, safely outside, such as in a local park.

4. I Get By With a Little Help … 

As exciting as these tools may be, perhaps the greatest benefit of the smartphone in the classroom, both digital and live, is that the smartphone puts an entire world of information at your students’ fingertips. Not only that, but your students can use their phones not just to acquire information, but also to test their knowledge through tools such as Quizlet. 

You can share content you want your students to explore directly to their smartphones. You can also create assignments that require them to do their own research. You can even lead them in real time through searches to help them answer questions, look up information, and, in the process, learn important lessons about digital information literacy.

Best of all, with tools like Poll Everywhere, you can receive real-time feedback from student questions to polled responses, no matter whether your students are online, on the ground, or both. This allows you to gauge students’ reactions to the presentation and adjust your strategy accordingly.

The Takeaway about Smartphones

Teaching in 2020 is a whole different world than it was just one year ago. Fortunately, teachers have the opportunity to leverage technologies that are likely already in students’ hands to support their learning. With a bit of strategy and a lot of creativity, you can use smartphone technologies to give your students an unsurpassed learning experience, whether they’re learning in the classroom or from home.

Photo via Pixabay.

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Zeetings
Good TeachingWeb 2.0 Tool

Interactive Learning with Zeetings

by Lori Gracey
written by Lori Gracey

As longtime PowerPoint aficionado, I am always on the lookout for ways to make my slideshows more interactive. I’ve used tools like Poll Everywhere and Padlet and others in the past, but didn’t like the way they took me away from my original program and didn’t allow me to pull everything together for review afterwards. But now, there’s Zeetings.

What Is Zeetings?

Zeetings is a web-based platform that enables participants in your meetings, training sessions, workshops, lessons, and events to actively participate from their own device. Participants join in by visiting a simple URL such as zeetings.com/your-name. There’s nothing for them to download or install and it works on all connected devices. Once they’re connected, participants can follow your slides as they’re presented, respond to live polls, post questions and comments, take notes, chat with other participants, and more. All this interactivity gets people engaged with the topic at hand and helps you collect valuable data about what your participants really think. That makes it a powerful tool for both student and adult learners.

Other Features

Zeetings offers powerful analytics so that you can see how others perceived the presentation. And what’s really amazing is that the conversations and the learning can continue after the slideshow has ended. People can continue to vote, discuss, and share long after the event is over. In addition, you can easily embed a Google Doc, a map, a tweet, or any other embeddable content you find on the web directly into your presentations. 

And did I mention the very best feature? It’s absolutely FREE for educators! That’s for up to 500 participants per presentation, unlimited presentations, and full analytics.

Zeetings

Zeetings in the Classroom

Want to make sure that students are following along on their devices with your presentation? Not a problem. Each time you change slides, their device will automatically change, too. Want to give shyer students the opportunity to ask questions? Questions can be posted anonymously so everyone feels comfortable participating and you can moderate questions before they go live. Want to brainstorm and share ideas? The Activity Wall gathers what everyone is thinking in one place and displays it in a format tailored for big screens. Want to show a YouTube video during your presentation? It’s now really easy. With Zeetings, you just paste any link from Youtube and drag and drop the video into the position you want.

This tool is great for blended or flipped classrooms. In addition to delivering live presentations, Zeetings can also be used to share interactive presentations for participants to move through and participate in in their own time. Sharing a presentation with Zeetings gives you a whole lot more functionality than attaching to an email or using a file share service. With Zeetings, you’ll know as soon as your presentation has been opened so you’re no longer left wondering. All the interactivity is available so the recipient can answer polls, send questions and comments your way, and take notes.

It’s also fabulous for doing work that involves the jigsaw method. Students in their expert groups can create interactive presentations for their home groups that not only help to present the information, but also allow them (and you) to see how well it is understood.

So what are you waiting for? Give Zeetings a try today and help your students achieve more!

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digital survey tools
Educational TrendsGood Teaching

Generating Useful Feedback with Digital Survey Tools

by Andrew Roush
written by Andrew Roush

Polls and surveys are useful methods for gathering information about your students, tracking progress, and using that feedback to form lesson plans and assessments. With the latest digital survey tools, you can gather that information more accurately and more quickly. It might even be fun, if you pick the right tool. Happily, there are many to choose from.

As Bryn Mawr College puts it:

Gone are the days of raising hands, putting thumbs up or down, or holding up a number of fingers to get an idea as to what a collective group of people is thinking. With the emergence of new polling tools, hands and fingers have been replaced with smartphones and tablets.

Let’s explore five tech tools to take your polling, surveys, presentations, and assessments to a new level.

Polling and Survey Tools

Plickers: Combining cards and technology, Plickers is an app and set of cards students can hold up to respond to prompts while the teacher scans the cards, like a QR code, generating real-time responses. Students can keep their personal devices stowed, since the app scans their card. Imagine it as a cross between a paper placard and the traditional “clicker.” Or better yet, check out this inventive system in the video below from ed tech YouTuber Tech in 2.

AnswerGarden: Calling itself a “minimalistic feedback tool,” AnswerGarden allows users to simply create a question, share it, and views the results as a word cloud. The simplicity and free-form answers make it an easy-to-use, highly flexible survey tool. It even got a shout-out from the New Learning Times, a publication of the EdLab at Columbia University’s Teachers College.

Crowdsignal: More than just surveys, Crowdsignal includes the ability to create custom-designed polls, ratings, and quizzes, too. Paid plans offer even more features (education and nonprofit organizations can get 10% off plan pricing), but free accounts also provide a powerful way to interact and garner feedback from students, in and out of the classroom.

Micropoll: Another straightforward, customizable, and free tool, Micropoll makes it easy to create shared polls, as well as watch response trends over time, share and syndicate your polls, and even track responses geographically.

Mentimeter: Designed to help create top-notch presentations, Mentimeter is a BYOD solution that allows your audience (or students) to give real-time feedback from their devices. There’s a free version, and Mentimeter even showcases a variety of different quiz, poll, and word cloud templates.

Poll Maker: No signing up, no pricing plans, and an easy and intuitive interface make Poll Maker an obvious choice. Easily customize themes, preview your questions, and share for real-time feedback, or long-term response gathering.

Engaged Learning and Informed Assessments

Polls aren’t the only way to create formative assessments, but they are a method worth considering, especially if real-time, in-class feedback is important to you and your students. After all, generating feedback and creating quality assessments shouldn’t rely on just one tool.

When it comes to polls and surveys, there are more options than we’ve outlined above, so it’s certain that there’s a tool for you. Got one we missed? Let us know in the comments!

Want to learn more? Check out our previous posts about survey tools here.

Photo by Adeolu Eletu

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androidify
AndroidChromebooks

Androidify Learning

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

“Ninety-two percent of students say that it is easier to use their mobile device to improve their access to information,” says Daniel Adeboye, citing university research. “Not every classroom can get a laptop every day, so [devices like smartphones], even if you have to pair up, become something useful for teachers,” says Ken Halla, a classroom teacher. In this blog entry, let’s explore a few, effective ways to “androidify” learning in your classroom.

Research Insights

Do BYOD devices enhance learning or distract learners? Let’s take a look at one meta-analysis of 110 studies, The effects of integrating mobile devices with teaching and learning on students’ learning performance: A meta-analysis and research synthesis.

androidify

Use the Android app PicsArt Photo Studio to create infographics like this one

Mobile devices…

  • Support various teaching styles, including lecture-style teaching, convenient information gathering, information sharing, cooperative learning, exploratory learning outside the classroom, and game-based learning.
  • Facilitate the development of communication, problem-solving, creativity, and other high-level skills among students.
  • Feature individualized interfaces, real-time access to information, context sensitivity, instant communication, and feedback.

In-Classroom Strategies

While the debate rages on the effectiveness of smartphones in the classroom, many educators and students have already taken the plunge. Consider the slide show, Thirty-three ways to use mobile phones in the classroom (PDF) as a starting point.

Effective Mobile Device Use

Daniel Adeboye makes the point that use of technology in classrooms often enhances efficiency, rather than improves learning effectiveness. He suggests several approaches, among them these three:

  • Audio recording
  • Live polling tools
  • Video creation

Some would also add tools that facilitate staying in touch with students, such as Remind.com for “real-time messaging for your school, group, or just a single person.” However, while educators like Ken Halla have compiled excellent lists of educational apps for BYOD, in this blog entry I’d like to make some of my own recommendations.

1- Audio Recording

As a veteran audiophile, my go-to set of recording tools includes the following:

  • Voxer.com: While many educators use Voxer to participate in audio-only communities and audio chats, only a few take advantage of it as a recording tool. You can record interviews with others using “My Notes.” Add an iRig Mic to enhance audio quality. You can save the audio as an MP3 file to the cloud. If you prefer to tweet the audio as a link, that option is available. Maximum record time is fifteen minutes.
  • HiQ MP3 Recorder: A drop-dead simple audio recorder, HiQ MP3 Recorder (free version) can save to MP3 audio format. You can get the audio off the device quickly, saving to Dropbox, Google Drive, or taking advantage of an app’s built-in WiFi Drive. WiFi Drive allows you to connect via a web browser on a computer (or another mobile device). Once connected, you save a copy of the audio file. This is a real time saver. Unlike Voxer, an account is not required to use HiQ MP3 Recorder. Maximum record time is 10 minutes in the free version.

Audio recordings can be used to monitor and/or assess students’ grasp of a subject or target language.

2- Live Polling Tools

Mobile devices facilitate “instant-feedback functions.” These functions “solve the difficulty of efficiently executing…formative assessment in a class with many students,” say the authors of the meta-analysis cited earlier. Many choices are available.

  • Poll Everywhere: Available for several years, this is often the go-to choice for conducting polls.
  • VoxVote: This app provides five events for free and allows for unlimited audience voting.

Some other tools include iClicker, Sli.do, and Quick Tap Survey. Add interactivity with tools like Kahoot! and Quizizz.

3- Video Creation

“By 2017, video is predicted to be two-thirds of the world’s mobile data traffic,” point out the authors of this article. Anyone can create a video with a smartphone. However, editing the video to good effect can be challenging on the small device. Just as iOS users enjoy a few tools like iMovie (free), Videocraft ($2.99),  Pinnacle Studio ($12.99), or Filmic Pro ($14.99), so do Android users.

Note: Remember that you need to be logged in with a personal Google account, not a G Suite EDU, to access links to apps in the Google Play store. Otherwise you will get an error.

Before jumping into a list of Android video creation and editing tools, it wouldn’t hurt to review the article, Six tips for successful mobile video assignments. Video creation and editing expectations need to be lower than desktop editing. Most “free” tools include watermarks that can only be removed with a monthly or annual subscription. If you need to record your Android screen, use XRecorder. The tools below focus on video editing.

  • YouCut – Video Editor & Video Maker, No Watermark: An easy to use video editor that will have you combining pictures, videos, and music (free titles available).
  • Filmora Video Editor: From their website, app creators describe it as “A pretty powerful video editor application, which will not stamp a watermark or place a time limit on your clip.” With FilmoraGo, you can make video with music and effects and then share to social media.
  • VideoShow Video Editor: This editor with in-app purchases offers simple editing, subtitles, and over a thousand music clips. A companion app, GIFGuru, makes animated GIFs possible. VideoShow allows conversion of the video to MP3 audio. Creating a video for class assignments shouldn’t be too difficult.
  • Action Director Video Editor: Action Director offers a variety of options, including editing video, adding music, and more.

Android Authority has a few more choices listed. Try these three first. Kinemaster, ALIVE MovieMaker, and PowerDirector were objectionable for various reasons. Provided video editing is not a class assignment, students can use the Seesaw app to capture student video summaries. The real challenge for video on Android is video rendering time. Not all Android devices are created equal.

Green Screen Tip

On iOS, the DoINK Green Screen app reigns supreme. Green screen can also be done on Android. For video editing, try the paid version of Media Studio. For a one-time charge ($14.95), additional features can be purchased. These features include the green screen effect and audio recording/editing tools. For photos, use PhotoLayers (features in-app ads).

Androidify Learning in Your Classroom

As you work to “androidify” your classroom, remember to have fun. One complaint I often hear about BYOD involves teachers’ lack of familiarity with the right apps. They often do not know how to match apps to an instructional purpose. Consider these apps as a starting point.

Update: This blog entry was updated on 04/01/2020 with new information.

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Google Classroom
Google Tips and Tricks

Check Yes or No: Add Polls to Google Classroom

by Diana Benner
written by Diana Benner

When I taught high school Spanish, I used exit tickets all the time. An exit ticket can be a great way to set up the next day’s learning. Before students left my class, they would answer a quick poll about the day’s lesson and what they had taken away from it.

In the past, these exit tickets could be cumbersome and difficult to check, even when I took advantage of technologies like Google Forms. Google Classroom makes that process of multiple choice form creation a lot easier, and, if you haven’t heard the news, you can now create polls in Google Classroom. Teachers can choose to create a multiple choice or short answer poll to distribute to the class. They will be notified and can quickly see the answers to the poll.

For example, consider this example from Google’s blog, illustrating the new feature:

“Cindy Nordstrom, a teacher at Oak Ridge Elementary School in Minnesota, uses polling to make sure students understand the main points of a lesson. She explains, “We were studying poetry and talking about novels in verse. Since this was the first time that most students had encountered the format, I wanted to see if they knew what novels in verse were. I created this poll as an exit slip for the class. I could click on students’ answers and see their names associated with their response. This helped me get an at-a-glance view of who understood the concept and who didn’t.” Source: Google for Education

Getting an at-a-glance view is powerful for teachers, especially secondary teachers working with 120+ students, because it provides a quick, easy measure of student learning.

If you are interested in exploring Google Classroom further, consider attending the TCEA 2016 Chromebook Academy this July where you can spend hands-on time with Classroom, as well as other Google tools and resources. You can find more information about the academy here.

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