Supporting Primary Students

Primary students CAN use Nearpod for engagement! Here are some ways to make the experience more accessible for your students:

Creating Nearpod Lessons for Primary Students

• • Start small! Check out the lessons available for K-2 students in the Nearpod Library. Also, when designing your own lessons, try to introduce one new Nearpod activity at a time allowing students to gain confidence in how each activity works. 

  • Here is a link to all the activities available for Nearpod. The best ones to use for primary students are:

    • Draw It or Convert to Draw

    • Collaborate Board

    • Poll 

    • Matching Pairs

    • Time to Climb

    • Drag and Drop

  • Other tips: 

    • Record audio for directions. 

    • Use images or emojis for multiple choice questions or polls.

    • Top Tips for Elementary Teachers (Nearpod Blog)

    • Utilizing Nearpod in the pre-K classroom (Nearpod Blog)

Helping Students Join a Nearpod Lesson

• • It is recommended that you launch Nearpod with your students for the first time in small groups. Here is a Nearpod Orientation lesson designed by Nearpod that helps students learn about various activities. 

  • The easiest ways to share a Nearpod lesson with primary students is to generate a QR code for the lesson OR share the lesson link in Seesaw/Google Classroom.

  • There are two ways a student can login to a Nearpod lesson:

    1. Nearpod Default—students enter their name when joining a lesson. Students need to know how to type their name. Set guidelines for what students can type (ie. first name, last initial, no emojis, etc.). 

    2. Student Names to Autofill—go into lesson settings and require “enable student names to autofill.” This will require students to be logged in to their EUSD Google Account. You will need to support your students in doing this the first time. We recommend that students have a card that contains their login information. The advantage to this option is that once logged in, Nearpod will autofill their name with their Google name. Here are directions to set that up. The more students do this, the easier it will become. Once a student is logged in through Google, they will not have to go through this process again unless they log all the way out of their Google account.

Virtual Instruction:

Help Students Login to Nearpod via Zoom (PDF)

For additional specific help using apps and tools, create a Web Help Desk ticket.