Why you should number everything in Google Classroom

I attended TCEA in Austin this year, and I’m still trying to unpack all of the learning that took place! Luckily I was able to hear Alice Keeler speak TWICE! If you’ve never read Alice Keeler on her blog or Twitter, start NOW! After attending two of her sessions, I feel a renewed enthusiasm for learning! Her posts are technological gold. The most earth-shattering thing I learned from her is also one of the simplest: number all assignments and assets in Google Classroom.

Numbering your assignments in Google Classroom leads to better communication with students and is a step toward a more student-centered classroom.

1. Better communication with students
1. It’s much easier to tell a student to get started on assignment #075 rather than the assignment that says to reflect on our Minecraft experience from yesterday. Use CTRL F to quickly search for an assignment number in Chrome.
2. Absences
1. By putting all of your class materials on Google Classroom and numbering them, students returning from an absence can easily see them in Calendar view. And the assignments are live links!
2. To access Calendar View in GCR, go to ABOUT, and select Calendar “View in Classroom”.

3. When students look up their assignments in our online gradebook, seeing the number, helps students quickly and easily identify which assignment is which.

2. More student-centered classroom
1. As students enter the classroom, their assignments are already displayed on the board. I can greet at the door while the students begin their first assignment of the day.

Using Google Forms to track behavior

Since everything is better in a Google app, I decided to track behavior this year in a Google Form. Mine looks like this:

Here’s why I’m loving it:

• It’s really quick and easy to log. When a student misbehaves, I can fill this form out in less than two minutes.
• It’s cathartic: instead of dwelling on the incident, once I’ve logged it, I can move forward, but I have a record to access when I need it.
• But it gets even better, the simple analytics that Google provides in the Responses helps me to reflect on my practices.
• When is misbehavior happening?

• What kind of misbehaviors are occurring?

*Sidenote: this data is skewed because some of my choices on my form disappeared for no apparent reason and had to be re-added…

• What am I doing to respond to misbehaviors and is my response making a positive difference?

• It’s also been helpful in team meetings to be able to bring up students I have concerns about because I have all the information in one organized place. Go to the Sheets in Responses and reorder alphabetically: now if a student has multiple entries, they are grouped together.

And of course I have this form saved in an easily accessible place on my bookmark bar: It’s the form represented by “B” for behavior. :

@gttribe #gsuite #GAFE

20% Time vs. Genius Hour

My TAG students are embarking on their independent study project again this year. Last year was my first year in a long time to do an ISP. Last year I called it Genius Hour and modeled it after Google’s version that they use with their employees (although it appears that 20% Time for Google employees may be a thing of the past) and what other educators have shared on the internet. However, every time I wrote “Genius Hour” on the agenda board, I felt a twinge of internal conflict: what message did this send to my non-TAG students? The students in my TAG class have been identified as talented and gifted in the area of Language Arts, but that doesn’t mean that I think my other students are incapable of having genius ideas.

So this year when the project began, I switched the nomenclature from “Genius Hour” to “20% Time”: same project, different attitude. My TAG students are researching a variety of self-selected topics ranging from robotics to pollution to animals to historical figures to diseases.

I’m also experimenting with a new grading system for the project. Each step is graded on a three-point scale.

3 = Excellent

2 = Good; lacks detail; incomplete sentences; may be resubmitted

1 = Not ready for assessment; MUST resubmit

I explain to my students that when they score less than 3, they can and should revise and resubmit! Everyone is eligible to score a 3 on every step! They love it: I’ve never had so many students want to revise work on their own. It’s a lot of work on the teacher side, but I think it’s well worth it to promote the growth mindset.

#ChoiceWords #TAG #Agenda #GrowthMindset #20%Time #GrishamELA