Going Green: Using Google Forms to Assess your Students! {with The Friendly Teacher}

Hello EE Friends! It is Hannah from The Friendly Teacher here! We are bringing you all kinds of ways to go green in your classroom this month!

My FAVORITE way that I go green is using Google Forms. I don't like copying, actually I despise it. I mean, waiting in the line, sitting there staring just waiting for your copies to be done while your eyes burn out and your head tells you all the other things you could be doing. It is TERRIBLE! 

So, I rarely use paper assessments. Google Forms does all my assessment work for me! Google forms is a google tool that allows you to quickly make an assessment, send it to your students, and look at their responses one by one! There is no paper, the kids enjoy it more, and it is quick and easy. The students don't even have to have google accounts to do the forms!! They just need a computer and your link!

Here are some examples of what your kiddos will see once you put the form together. They fill it out and it is quick and painless! Plus, there are so many designs you can also make it CUTE! Yes, I just said it that it is painless and cute!!!! 

I am going to run your through very quickly how you set up a form! Then, you are going to go out right now and make a million assessments and never go to the copier again, sound good? :) 

First, you go to google forms! Then, you get to choose your style. There are exit slips, worksheets, assessments, etc.! There are tons of options or you can just create a blank one and put your creative powers to the test! 

When you choose your style you add a title and start adding questions! There are so many question choices.  You can make them type or just do all multiple choice, it's your call!

On the side there are lots of options. The plus sign is what you click to add a new question. You can download picture or videos to add to your question. Sometimes, I have my kiddos watch a video and then respond to what they thought of it!! You can do your own pictures and videos or add them right off of google! That last button on the sides lets you add different sections if you want to! The possibilities are endless!

Up at the top you can change the theme! They have tons and tons of fun and cute themes or you can add pictures that you have on your computer! It takes 2.2 seconds and it is adorable. (unless you are like me and will spend an hour scrolling through the screen to find the perfect one that your kids won't care about anyways)! Click the eyeball to preview the document and the send button to send it!

You can share it with your students if they have google accounts or when you hit send it will give you a link that you just give to your students! They even let you shorten the link. EASY! The students click the link, take the quiz, and hit send!

After your students have taken the quiz you will receive their responses. You can look at their responses individually or as a summary! If you want, you can download it into an excel sheet for easy grading! I find it easiest to just look at kids one by one and add their grade to the grade book! SO SIMPLE! The only downfall is giving them feedback! I typically will call them up while I am grading if we need to discuss or send them a chat box on google!

Umm can you see my kids restating of questions?!?!? Yes, child you get an A+ and you will be my favorite forever! ;)

I know, that this was a ton of information but let me tell you it is oh so worth it! It is the quickest, easiest, greenest way to assess!! Look at my kiddos LOVING their google forms!

They can even create their own google form quiz!

The possibilities are endless! You can give exit tickets, worksheets, videos, pictures, and the list goes on and on! Turn anything into this paperless and GREEN google form!

If you need help setting this up, email me at thefriendlyteach@gmail.com and I would be happy to help you out! I am signing off!

Assessment Tips & Tricks {with The Sunny Side of Second Grade}

Hey y'all! Welcome back for our last post on Assessment Tips & Tricks. Today I have for you a very cool website I have been using to help with assessments. My students are still getting used to it, but I have high hopes! :)

As you probably know, I work at a Magnet School for Technology and Innovation. We are always looking for ways to incorporate more technology, but do so sensibly. As a PLC, common assessments are essential to determine standards mastery. Our team found a lovely pack on TPT that has been helping us bring common assessments to life in our classrooms and across the campus. With the website I am about to introduce to you, you can literally upload any picture and make it fillable. Say whaaaat?! Oh wait...there is more!!

Not only can you do that, but if you wanted to, you could type up your own assessment. The possibilities really are endless. I am talking written comprehension, reading response, math questions, word problems, you name it, you can make it. And what's the best part? All the answers come through to your screen LIVE! That's right!! If you have your computer screen up, you can see students' answers as they input them. You wanna talk about reteaching glory?! Can you hear the angels singing already?

Okay...now let's unveil this baby! May I introduce you to GoFormative. 

Have I convinced you to sign up yet? Look how colorful!!

Thank you Jen Jones for this amazing product. Character change is really a beast for my little sweeties, but that is a whole other post.

I hope this saves you time and paper money as much as it has me. I know my students are totally loving using this website. They have become very self reflective when seeing their scores immediately. In addition, I am able to sit down and conference with them immediately, if time allows, in order to reinforce some skills they may be having difficulties grasping.

Technology Tips: Go Noodle! {Mrs. Thompson's Treasures}

 

Do you give your kids "brain breaks" throughout the day? Getting your students up and moving regularly can let them get out the wiggles and help them focus and learn better when you are trying to teach! With so much pressure put on our little ones these days with assessments and testing, they need outlets to move around, have fun, and just be kids!

 

One place we go for fun brain breaks is www.gonoodle.com  

 

At GoNoodle, you choose a character for your class, and choose from many different kinds of videos to watch and move to. You can do Zumba, silly songs with Koo Koo Kangaroo, or even run races with famous Olympians!

 





Most of the videos are just a few minutes long, so you can slip one in at anytime of the day! There are also "Indoor Recess" mixes put together for you if your class needs a longer break.

 

Each time you complete a brain break, your class earns minutes of physical activity that is added up. When you get a certain amount, your character grows. The kids love to see their progress and see the character change!

 

We have only done the free version (which has plenty of videos and has been enough for us), but there is also a paid version that includes more. Visit www.gonoodle.com to get started! Your kids will LOVE it!

Digitialize Your Classrom with Technology Tips & Tricks

Hey friends! It's Keri from Enchanted Kinder Garden.

I love ALL of these tips that have been given so far. Today, I'm bringing you a few of my favorite techy tips/tricks. 

Here's a repost from last year. It's an oldie tip, but a good one. This is by far my FAVORITE trick that saves me OODLES of time. Have you ever been making something and decided 40 pages in that you really hated that font? Did you go back and change every single font that you've used on every single page? Never again. Here's a SUPER quick way to change them.

I am going to show you how to change the bottom font.

Find Replace. I did this tutorial on a PC, but it works the same on Macs. It's in a different place. On a Mac, go to Format ---> replace fonts. I have a Mac that I work on most of the time now.

Sorry I cut this one off, but click it!

You will see a screen prompt similar to this one. Make sure the font you want to change is in the top. I'm going to change KG Miss Kindergarten. In the second field, find the font that you want to change it to. Click replace. It will replace every instance of KG Miss Kindergarten in my file.

Now, all of that font has been replaced and it only took me a few clicks. If you don't like it, you can always change it back without too much trouble. You can also quickly go through different fonts quickly to see which you like best. EASY.

My summer project will be to move ALL of my paper files over to digital. I have way too many printed, inherited, borrowed, and begged resources in binders that I don't use. I'm going to move them all over into separated themed files. My resources are all sorted by themes, topics, months, and so on. When I am looking for something I can quickly go to that folder and find EVERYTHING that I own. I rarely look in my binders anymore to plan my lessons.

How am I going to do this easily? Here's how.

We got a new copy machine at school this year. It has a USB port to allow us to print from a jump drive. Now, for the wonderful part. It can also copy papers onto your jumpdrive. I was SO excited when I figured that part out.

This one is for any of you that make your own resources. Ever wanted to make a table of contents and make it clickable? Well, here's a SUPER quick and easy tutorial.

I hope one of those tech tips and tricks help ease the load that you already have trying to be the best teacher, blogger or resource maker that you can be. Have a wonderful week!

Technology Tips & Tricks: Do you Symbaloo?

Hello friends! It's Kim here from For a Love of Teaching to introduce you to one of my favorite technology organizing tools!

Have you heard of Symbaloo?

Do you have websites bookmarked here, there, and everywhere?

Do you have amazing websites you've found over time to use in your classroom or with your students, but can never find them when you need them?

If so, then Symbaloo is perfect for you!

Symbaloo is a FREE visual bookmarking tool that makes it simple and fun to organize the best of the web. With an account you can access your bookmarks from any device and share your online resources with others.

How can you use this in the classroom you might ask? Until recently I didn't really see how this would be a "classroom tool", but trust me it is! You literally have all your favorite websites at your fingertips, and even better than that - you can organize your resources, share, and access them from any device.

You can create a webmix of links, share it one time, and your students will get automatic updates when you make changes. Symbaloo will generate a link for you to share either privately or publicly that will take students and parents straight to your webmix. Symbaloo will also generate you a embedded code to add to your class blog or school website.

Teachers are also using Symbaloo to create lesson plans by creating a webmix for each subject they teach. Teachers can create website links, image links, or video links that they plan to use while teaching a particular lesson.

Here's my "personalized" classroom Symbaloo Webmix that I share with my students and parents. Parents no longer email me or call to ask, "Do you have a good website for math practice?" Or, "Is there a reading website I could use with my child at home?" They don't have to ask, because it's all in my webmix, and they can usually find what they're looking for!

Check out this great article I found: 11 Ways to Use Symbaloo in the Classroom

Symbaloo isn't just for school or work either. You can use it to create your own personal homepage full of websites you visit regularly! You can organize a variety of different webmixes such as your favorite online stores to shop, recipes you'd like to try, news and weather websites, or favorite blogs you like to follow. 

Check out Symbaloo's website for more ideas. The possibilities are endless!

How do you Symbaloo?