New Tools, Games... Music? in Class

For the last two days I've been experimenting with some different tools and ideas that I haven't regularly used before.

The first was Class Dojo, and it appears to be a hit!  Students compete with each other to earn the different Dojo Points - Starting the Do Now, Working Hard, Helping Others, or being On Task.  Now that I have set up classes online I can wander around holding my cellphone, awarding students points for great work.

 I know that I need to DO something with those points soon though! I have a store of prizes in my office that I need to find time to wrap in newspaper - perhaps the person with the most points each week can do a lucky dip prize draw on Friday! I think it might be a good idea to reset the points at the end of each week and give everyone a clean slate and even footing again, ready for a new week of hard work.

Today I also trialled Socrative Space Race. The first thing I had to do was sign up with school email and create my own quiz questions. Then I could choose whether to run the quiz as Quiz, Quick Question, Space Race or Exit Ticket.

If you select Space Race, you get to choose how many teams you want the students to be randomly assigned into. Socrative gives you a room number (my Chemistry Quiz is in Room 688040, as you can see below).  When students come to play all they need to do is enter that room number and wait for the teacher to click 'Start Activity' once everyone is ready. Then they enter their names and answer questions correctly to help their space ship blast as far as they can!

Something else I have been trying a little is using music in class.  Last week I played 2 minutes of Pharrell's song "Happy" while one of my classes packed up after a messy Elephants Toothpaste experiment. Before the music came on they were dragging their feet a little, but with the upbeat song playing, clean-up became a breeze! I will definitely play music during pack-up again, but I need to make sure the lyrics are clean and wholesome! Perhaps this can be a weekend project for me, compiling a list of usable, upbeat songs for clean-up time.

In a similar vein, today with one of my classes I played Motzart during the Do Now. I think that it settled them some, but I need to repeat this experiment and observe the outcome again!  Some students requested we let the song play on beyond the Do Now, others didn't enjoy it as much. 

I also had a go using movement to help another class remember a concept they have been struggling with; the difference between reactants and products. I got this idea from observing a wonderful maths teacher in my school - she taught her class a rhyme with actions to help her them remember a division concept!

We constructed a rhyme together - "reactants are ingredients you need at the start, products are what you see at the end, made of new parts" (we toyed with the lyrics "like a piece of art," but decided it wasn't as good) - and then I made up a few actions to go with the lyrics.  As we practiced it together some moves were altered (my original action for "new parts" was not specific or cool enough to start with) and I gradually rubbed words off the board until everyone could remember the actions and rhyme without reading the words.

After a few rounds of this I thought we had finished so I went to move on to the next activity when a student said "we should try it without you Miss," which I thought was a GREAT idea! So everyone did it one more time without me. We will see tomorrow whether this helped the class remember the difference between reactants and products! 

For some summarising activities recently I've been using Canva.com to create some really visually appealing (if I may say so myself) infographics. They are incredibly easy to make, by dragging and dropping different components and double-clicking on any text you want to change. By downloading or taking screenshots of the canva creations I've been able to put them into Google Drawings and add text boxes over the top for students to write their observations or summaries into.  Check out the image below to see how Caroline shared her understanding of Gas Tests:

The next step will be for students to create their own infographic, using either canva.com or infogr.am or piktochart.  I think I will try this with PLa first, as they all have working netbooks.  I could also envision maths teachers using infogr.am, and next year I would love to get some seniors to make summaries of biological concepts with Piktochart, perhaps like this one:

How to Make Groups in Gmail

Sometimes I need to quickly push work out to students, and there are two ways I know to do this (aside from having it available on class sites). 

The first is to use the 'Smart Copy' on Teacher Dashboard, and the second is to create a group on Gmail. I only just learned how to do the second, so I thought I'd make this post!

In Teacher Dashboard each year level is called a 'Class.' Unfortunately, I teach three different year 9 classes who are in the same year level, and they are all mashed together in Teacher Dashboard as one huge year 9 'Class.' 

This meant I had to separate the giant Year 9 'Class' into their actual classes by assigning each their own colour. You can do this by clicking on the squares next to students' names and giving them a colour. PLa is blue for me, PTt is yellow and RTd is orange. You will need to do this too before you can send a smart-copy to each class individually, or if you are lucky, you may just have 1 class per year level!

When you're done you'll be able to use smart copy and send it to just one class.  The 'smart copy' button is that tiny little button on the left hand side under 'Dashboard.' It looks like two teeny, tiny bits of paper. Click on it. 

Once you click on it, this will pop up. If you have the work to push out then select 'use an existing document,' and then select which doc (or form, or spreadsheet, or drawing, or presentation) you want. 

Find the document that you want to share. Select it.

Choose what kind of sharing you want to do. If you select to 'copy' then each student will get a copy of the doc in their own folder, ready to use. 

Next up is a neat option to add the students' name to their doc; all you have to do is type %F at the start of the document name, and it will automatically put their own name in the title in their folder! Smart :)

Ahh, finally, now we are up to the stage of selecting which students to share the document with. I have to select by group, or else the work will go to all three of my Year 9 classes, who are all quite different and work at different speeds. You might be able to just share with a class, if you only have 1 in each year level. 

Make your last selection, and then you will be able to share it! 

The other way that I just found to do this is to create a group in Gmail. This is handy in case you quickly need to contact a class as well; to remind them about homework, to arrange a catch-up session, for notices about permission slips, or share work etc etc. 

In gmail, click on 'Mail' and select 'contacts.' 

Once you arrive at the new screen click on the button with a little person with a + next to them, and begin typing the names or emails of all the people you want to add to the mailing group. The names and emails will automatically separate, and you can add more than one person at a time. 

Once you have everyone you want, click 'add.' These people will now show up in your list of contacts below.

Scroll through the list and tick the names of everyone you just added, then return to the top of the screen to where there is a little group of people. Click on that and from the drop-down menu click on 'create new.' 

Type the name of the new group.

Don't forget to click on 'apply' or no one will be added to your new group. 

Now, when you want to send an email to a group of people you can just type the name of the group, rather than add their names individually.