Give Every Student a Voice in Your Socratic Circle by Leveraging Digital Tools

Socratic Circles are a great way to engage students around a provocative question - students are engaged with the topic, encouraged to think about complex topics with a critical eye, and inspired to explore big ideas. 

However, it can be a challenge to give all students a voice in a Socratic Circle that is 30+ students big...there are time, space, and personality constraints that sometimes mean the conversation is dominated by just a few voices.

By leveraging digital tools, you can mitigate these constraints and give all of your students a voice - thus giving all students the opportunity to explore their own thinking as well as their classmate's. 

Using Goobric to Support Student Self and Peer Assessment

Many APS Teachers have been using Doctopus and Goobric to digitally grade student assignments. Now Doctopus/Goobric support student self and peer assessment! Students will need the "Goobric for Students" Chrome extension for these features to work

It will only work on newly issued assignments or assignments that have had rubrics newly re-attached.  

Allows students to see rubric alert and button in Google Docs editor

Rubric-based assessment is designed to guide student learning and revision, and rubrics work best as an instructional tool when students are aware of their criteria while they are working, engaging with them regularly as a form of self-assessment and peer-assessment.

That is why Goobric for Students provides a pop-up reminder and a button in the Google Docs editor designed to encourage students to review the teacher's scoring rubric as they are creating or revising an assignment.

Tutorials:

Self-Assessment and Peer Assessment with Doctopus and Goobric Presentation by Lance Nishimura

"Scaffold-Blasting" - Differentiate on the Fly in Google Classroom

Being able to differentiate assignments in Google Classroom is an oft-requested feature. We know that differentiation done well is one path to creating an equitable learning environment for all of our students.

Currently, there are work-arounds such as attaching multiple versions of a google doc and directing students on which assignment to choose or using a google sheet add-on such as Doctopus to manage the differentiation. But like most work-arounds, those choices come with an added layer of complexity for the teacher and/or the student.

How about a solution that's quick, easy, and most importantly, instantly responsive to the student's needs in the moment?

Erich Ball, Social Studies teacher at Aurora Hills Middle School, came up with a method he has termed "Scaffold-Blasting."

Google for Education on Air

Did you know that Google puts on a live conference that you can join or later access on your own time?  This year's Education on Air conference was hosted in May over the course of two days.  Take a look at what you can access at your fingertips today, tomorrow or whenever...