Using Flubaroo to Give Students Meaningful Feedback

Flubaroo is a google add-on tool for google sheets that will automatically grade submissions based on the criteria that are set by the teacher. It's an extremely popular add-on. In its first iteration, it was a tool that worked best just with multiple choice or single word text/number questions. Recently it has undergone improvements that make it much more student-centered and teacher-friendly.

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. 

ReDesign Aurora

Check out this post from APS Director of Teaching & Learning, Laurie Marcellin:


ReDesign Aurora

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

Save Time With Writing Feedback Using JoeZoo Express

Literacy skills are necessary components of any content area. They are often becoming a focus for students of all ages and all classes in schools. Research has shown that students with strong reading and writing skills are able close achievement gaps and have accelerated learning experiences. One of the essential components to becoming a successful reader/writer is good feedback. When students receive timely, actionable feedback on their writing, they are able to improve dramatically. 

Providing feedback for student writing can be overwhelming and time consuming, however, technology is quickly making it possible to provide students with almost instant feedback when it comes to the foundational skills necessary to become a great writer. JoeZoo Express is a great new tool that can save teachers large amounts of time in providing feedback to students and quickly get them moving forward. Take a look at this video to see an example of how it works.

Annotation, too, might change: My reflections on a recent annotation flash mob

This reflection is "cross-posted" here but it originated on my personal blog. Cross-posting is publishing a blog post in multiple places to reach a broader audience. -Joe Dillon

It wasn't until I became a teacher that I began to annotate texts with real purpose. The pressure of being prepared for class after class of energetic 12 year olds drove me to read professional literature and young adult literature with a new focus and purpose. At the same time I was learning about how annotation helped me develop my professional practice, I also learned how annotation could support my students in making meaning in the texts they encountered in my class. In teaching I learned the authentic value of talking back to a text with annotations.

My copy of Peter Johnston's Choice Words. I must've been thinking about lit circles this day.

Still, though we shared our annotations in discussion, the act of annotating was an independent act that we did alone, while we read silently. Even in guided reading settings, we'd annotate segments of text individually before talking through those texts one segment at a time. The Internet, with its interactive opportunities and Web 2.0 applications, suggest a more social approach, and present an opportunity for teachers and students alike to consider the possibilities for annotating together. In pairs, in interest-powered groups and yes, oh yes, in crowds.

My copy of The Literature Workshop, by Sheridan Blau

With those as yet undiscovered possibilities in mind, some colleagues and I convened online for an experimental "annotation flash mob." Using the tool hypothes.is, we marked up the text "Skills and Strategies | Annotating to Engage, Analyze, Connect and Create," by Jeremy Dean and Katherine Schulten.

Of the small mob that convened online, some talked in a Google Hangout (about 7 of us) and shared their screens to show us how they worked. Others (about 7 more), joined from points around the globe to mark up the text but didn't join the webinar. They dove into the article itself, jotting notes and responding to other annotation mobsters.

Formative Assessment Made Easy with Superquiz

Super Quiz is a great new formative assessment tool that has just been released.  Super Quiz is an Add-On for Google Sheets that quickly creates data and statistical displays of any student responses. Flubaroo has been another popular grading tool for Google Forms & Sheets for a long time and now there's another option that teachers can choose from. With Super Quiz, you don't need to wait for data on your students, you can instantly get breakdowns that will allow you to make quick instructional decisions and support struggling students.