October 2019

October 3- Booksnap Mini Lesson

This is a great way for students to demonstrate fluency or comprehension skills. What a great way for students to practice what you teach them in strategy groups and mini lessons!! Click HERE for a step by step "How to Booksnap" mini-lesson.

• Google Forms give you plentiful feedback. This data can be broken down the individual student, individual question or class. (Resources for you: Making Forms for Math Teachers Tutorial Video and cheat sheet on making Forms)
  • Benefits-
  • You can have the Form GRADE for you!
  • You can use this year after year and just clear the data.
  • Showcases group and individual data on each problem and student to help guide your instruction.
  • The Chrome add on EquatI0 lets you put mathematical symbols and problems in the Form easily!
  • You can lock the Form so that students can’t leave the tab to Google search an answer.

• Thinkcentral online tests correspond with the math text (With the new tools, tests can be customized to take out or add questions to make it fit the needs of your students better). Directions on how to assign tests to your class can be found here.
  • Benefits-
  • It aligns with the math text.
  • It scores for you.
  • Showcases group and individual data on each problem and student to help guide your instruction.

• Seesaw is a great way to see and hear student thinking. It won’t self grade like Forms will, but it will give you a look into student math thinking and knowledge they demonstrate with the drawing tool. If you assign a rubric score by attaching a skill to the assignment, then you can work with the data from those scores.
  • Benefits-
  • Exit tickets at the end of a math lesson are a great way to check understanding.
  • The mic tool lets you hear their math talk.
  • You can assess the assignment right away with Skills.
  • Parents are invited to see the math understanding beyond seeing a grade in Powerschool.

Steph Geurts sent out a video about the text prediction and reading tools earlier. Click here to see that again. Aside from those 2, here are my favorites:

Highlighter

You can highlight individual words and select the color highlighter you want for that word. Once the words are highlighted, click the vocabulary list button on the toolbar to open a new Google Doc with a vocabulary table in it. Your words, their definitions and an image will be listed in the table.

• If you choose to highlight phrases instead of individual words, you can compile them in a new Google Doc. Keeping your ideas color-coded offers up organization for research projects. Once your key ideas are highlighted, you can click the collection button to create a new Google Doc in which your highlights will be compiled (by color or order).

Simplify

• When students are searching the web for articles or informative websites, they can use the Simplify tool. Once clicked, the distractions of the webpage will disappear and only the textual content of the article will be left.
• Clicking the - sign in the top of the page will let you decrease the content to ease the reading level.
• Clicking the "white on black" dropdown will allow you to do a color text overlay to decrease the burden on eyes and help those who need it.

Want to know more? Check out this resource made by Jamie Averbeck to help you dive deeper into the tools.