After the last few years I think many of us realize how important it is to hear from our students, both about their learning as well as their lives in general. All of our students have an opinion, and given the right opportunities within the classroom, they are likely to share their thoughts with us and with others. This week I will be providing some tips and tricks as to how we can individually communicate with our students in a digital space.
Once benefit of communication through a digital space is that it does not draw attention to any specific student. With many of the suggestions I will be sharing, student peers will not be aware of any additional communication that may be happening. This can be especially beneficial for students who may be shy or weary of what others may think. It is also an amazing opportunity to bring in differentiation as well as build a strong relationship with your students that would not be possible in the time constraints of a given day.
Prior to implementing these strategies, you will want to ensure you have directly taught students your expectations centered around each strategy. It will be important for students to know and understand in what situations these strategies can be used, what type of discussion is appropriate and expected in each of these strategies, as well as how long they should expect to wait prior to hearing an individual response from you. I would also recommend that you do not implement all of these strategies as once. I would suggest starting with one strategy and allowing your students to become comfortable. Once they are effective with the first, you can than begin to introduce another different strategy. As always, start small and build on a steady foundation. This will help to prevent you from taking time later in the year to reteach expectations.
Private Comments
One of the best ways I have found to individually communicate with students is through the use of private comments. These comments can be comments you have left directly inside of student work, or they can be comments you have left inside of Google Classroom. Based on the feedback you are looking to provide for students, you will want to consider the pros and cons of each location of your private comment.
Private Comments Inside Student Work - Extremely helpful when pinpointing an area in which a student must revise their work. With individual private comments inside of student work you are able to highlight parts of the assignment that you would would like students to revisit. This can help clarify any confusion that may occur with feedback that is left inside of Google Classroom. While these comments are helpful in pinpointing specific areas of concern, it is important to remember that students will not receive a notification when a comment is left inside of an assignment like they would with a private comment inside of Google Classroom. One workaround to ensure students are seeing feedback you left is to put @(studnetemailaddress) before any comment you leave. This will prompt an email to be sent to a student notifying them of your feedback. I would limit the notification to one per assignment. This will ensure that your students are not becoming overwhelmed with a lot of information and emails. Once in the assignment, students will be able to see the other feedback that you have left. Another pitfall of this type of communication is that it can be time consuming for teachers. While in Google Classroom, you can quickly toggle between assignments and leave feedback, this feedback will require you to individually open student assignments and look through each submission separately.
Private Comments in Google Classroom - Private comments in Google Classroom can be a great way to leave overarching feedback for a student based on a given assignment. Because you are not pinpointing specific areas in an assignment this can be a great way to leave a holistic review of student work. This could be great for assignments such as homework, bell ringers, exit tickets, etc. Another idea is to share a link to a video within the private comment that will provide reteaching on a specific skill the student may currently be struggling with. The video could be a screencastify of the student work, or possibly a quick youtube tutorial that will provide extra support for that student. Another great feature of this type of comment is it tends not to be as time consuming. Using the toggle feature within Google Classroom you are able to quickly switch between student assignments. You also have access to your own private comment bank that will help to save time. I recommend creating generic comments at the beginning of the year. Then as you begin reviewing student work you can quickly choose from the comment bank, make small changes to better fit the student work you are assessing. This is a great time saver while still making the feedback you provide individualized to that given assignment.
Backchannel Chat
As I spend more and more time outside of the classroom I miss those connections I built with my students more and more. Teaching in a small school that was K - 12 allowed me the opportunity to watch my students grow, and see all they accomplished. It was wonderful to see how year after year they grew, and we were able to stay in touch and communicate when I saw them in the halls or at other events. When I left the classroom, a few students and I decided to stay in touch using a Backchannel Chat.
For those of you who are unfamiliar backchannel chat is a tool that is designed to support students and teachers in discussion. This tool is great for increasing participation and for assessing student knowledge. While there are different programs out there that will allow you to provide a backchannel chat for your students, I want to share with you the idea of using a Google Doc, which is exactly what I did when I left the classroom.
For those students of mine who wanted to stay in touch we set up a Google Doc that was shared between me and an individual student. Each of us had editing rights to the doc. When a student wanted to communicate with me they would simply type into the doc. About once a week I would go in to each doc and respond to the student. This was very much set up like email, or a digital communication journal. It gave students a safe place that they felt they could reach out to me and know that I would be there to listen. The great part about using a Google Doc is that it will track all revision history as well. You have a clear record of everything that has been discussed between you and student which can be helpful to share at parent-teacher conferences, IEP meetings, etc.
EMail
While I know not all students have access to email, I still wanted to offer this as a suggestion for communication. I think this tool can be especially helpful with our older learners as we are teaching them real-life skills they will need long after graduation. This provides an authentic way to teach the necessary skills of communication through text in a safe platform. Just as you would with any tool that you are introducing you will want to ensure that you take time to teach students not only how to send an email, but also the format of their emails. To help get you started I have created a template that can be shared with students to help them structure their emails so that they are easy to read, and their message is clear. Through emails, you also have an amazing opportunity to be a model for students as to what an email should look and sound like. Through your authentic communication your students are not only building a rapport with you, they are also looking at a model of the way they should be communicating with others through written text.