Managing Your Classroom

Personalize Your Meeting Room ID#

I think it's hard for families (and YOU!) to keep track of 10 different meeting IDs. Honestly, I can't think of any good reason you actually NEED to have a big collection of them. I really recommend using the same ONE all the time and keeping it simple.
In Zoom's settings, you can personalize your meeting ID to any 10 digit number. Guess what- your school phone # is also 10 digits! So I ALWAYS just use my personal meeting room ID and if anyone needs to know what it is, it's my phone #. I know it off the top of my head and never need to look it up or hope I'm telling people to go to the right place.
You can also personalize your passcode. Something memorable or simple? That's what I do.
I put a link to my meeting room in each day's Seesaw activities, in our week-at-a-glance, and I also made a QR code for it and printed it on all our schedules and things I send home so the kids have a BUNCH of different ways to easily get to our meetings.
Btw, if they zoom in with a link (hyperlink, qr code, etc) they shouldn't need the password. Just click the link.

Spotlight People's Videos

You can spotlight your own video or any of the kids! I like to use this for anytime I want one person's camera to be the big, main focus for EVERYONE: show and tell, when I'm reading a book or showing something important, when a kid does something cool like writes a good story I want everyone to see, etc.
To spotlight a video, just click on the three little dots in the corner of the video you want to spotlight and you'll see that as an option. When you want to take the spotlight away, just click the dots again and "remove spotlight."
Zoom makes it look like you can spotlight multiple kids at once, but that doesn't seem to show up well on the iPads from everything I can tell. One at a time is the way to go.

Use Cue Cards

These are especially useful the first few weeks of distance learning and you can find them HERE. They were lifesavers when everyone was a Zoom rookie.
Say: "Look for the button that looks like this!" (as you hold up the card)
Give them safe opportunities to experiment and try out all the buttons so they see how things change when they press them.
We played games the first few weeks to learn mute/unmute, video on/off, gallery view vs speaker view, etc.

Log in On Multiple Devices

This is my personal preference because I like to try to see what my students see. I'm logged in on my computer, but then I also log in on my iPad (to get the student view). I usually log in on my phone as well and then use my phone as a doc cam. TIP: Mute and turn the volume down as far as possible on your iPad and phone.

Memorize The "MUTE ALL" Shortcut

If you're on a Mac, this is "Command + Control + M"
I like to allow kids to unmute themselves and teach them to use that power respectfully and responsibly. Sometimes they have VERY useful things to say, like, "Mrs. Howard, we can't see that" or "You're on mute." GOOD TO KNOW! :)
You CAN change the settings to NOT allow them to unmute themselves if that's more your style or something you need. In fact, if you hit "mute all" it will ask you if you want them to be able to unmute again or not.

If things ever get loud or silly (like a few of us in my class took a little practice to know we only need to say things ONCE vs over and over) and you need to get their attention and refocus the group, you can just "mute all" and just like that - it's silent! MAGICAL.
I'm sure all of us teaching virtually will miss this command once we get back to in-person teaching. Hahaha. :)

Use Digital Timers

Check out these editable Google Slides like the one pictured above. You simply insert videos of timers from YouTube (suggested options & instructions are included!).
Then whenever it's time for a break, just share your screen and have this displayed.
I teach kids to mute and turn off their videos during breaks.
I feel like this would even be good to display a timer during longer breaks, like if kids need to get back on after lunch/recess. They could just leave their iPad plugged in and keep an eye on how much time they have left in their break. When time is up, they'll hear the bell ring and know it's time to turn their video back on.

Display Your Visual Schedule

I mentioned this on the "setting up your space" page as well, but it's really helpful for kids to be able to see where they're at in their daily schedule. It will (probably) save you from having to answer a bunch of "Are we going to ___?" or "When will we ____?" questions. Hey- it might even help YOU keep on track and remember exactly what you want to do next! :) Want printable cards like the ones show above? You can find them HERE.
Want a DIGITAL version with 122 beautiful card options you can print or display digitally as shown below? Find those HERE! :)

Want to have a waiting room?

In Zoom settings you can decide if you want students to pop right into the meeting or if you want them to be sent to a waiting room (just a screen that says something like "You're in the waiting room. The meeting host will let you in soon." They can't see each other in the waiting room.)
I'm a waiting room fan. If I'm doing a 1:1 meeting and someone joins early, I don't want them to barge right in to another student's meeting. I like to give them the chance to get set up early and then I admit them when it's time.
During my whole group meetings I like to open up my meeting about 20 minutes early and let kids join the waiting room.
One of my sisters with kids says it's SO NICE when teachers open the meeting /waiting room early because if they try to join before it's open, they have to go through the whole "join meeting" process over and over until the meeting opens. They'd much rather just get set up and wait in the waiting room.

Digital Data Notebooks are AMAZING for Assessment

This might take some courage to jump into, but omg- once you do, you'll never look back. Promise.
Check out the video above for all the interesting details and grab my data notebooks HERE!
Basically here's the scoop: You get a PDF of common assessments (I have tons included & you can easily add your own, too), open it in an iPad app like GoodNotes or Noteability and suddenly you'll have an AMAZING tool to use to assess students, track progress, and share at conferences!
You can write on it, add pages or photos to it... whatever you want! You just need to make ONE master PDF and then either of the above apps has a button for you to quickly just "duplicate" your notebook and make one for each student in less than a minute!
Using them virtually: To actually asses students over distance, I share my iPad screen during our 1:1 meetings and we go through the skills they're working on. I highlight their progress with my finger or apple pencil. Everything is all in one nice, neat place.
True story: I used to not show kids their assessments and just say, "Great job!" no matter how they did, but WOW- there is so much more power in letting them SEE and BE AWARE of what they know, what they’re working on, how far they’ve come, and what their goals are for the school year! Data notebooks give them ownership over their learning and empowers students to do their best.
I've done these for years now (although this is my first year going all digital!) and kids literally BEG to tell me what they know. They love seeing their progress... and so do I!
Sharing: Want to share with families or other teachers at conferences, meetings, or just to show progress?: It's literally one tap to share one page or the entire notebook via email, Seesaw, Google Drive, etc. Easy.
Can you tell how much I LOVE THESE?! ;)

Lots of Lists

If you have a bunch of paper checklists or class lists, I find myself using these ALL. THE. TIME.
I have lists for things like who:

has shared their reading,
has shared their writing,
has been called on to make show & tell comments,
had a turn to lead/play certain games or activities, etc.

You get the idea. It's too much to keep track of in my head and I want to keep it as fair as possible.
So ...keep your lists close by!
My monitor is stacked on a mini shelf with slots where I store all the lists.
I'm guessing there's a more organized way to do this, but that's what works for me so far. :)

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