We never signed up for this, but we’re learning. Educators around the world have been thrown into something they weren’t prepared for. Yes, we use technology in the classroom, but being told you’re teaching from home, completely online, in a matter of days is slightly different. For some, the teaching is the easy part – it’s the barrage of emails, online video meetings, and following up with students that’s taking up the most time.
The educators I know are doing their best to keep the instruction moving and to keep their kids engaged. And most importantly, they’re taking risks and trying things out. Some are succeeding with new tasks the first time, others will succeed after some adjusting. At my school, we’ve been using GSuite and Google Classroom for a couple of years. We’ve had training on SeeSaw, Flipgrid, Google Forms, and a lot more. Even with all of this training, we are learning on the fly.
Recently, one of my teachers wanted to use Google Forms to give a math quiz. We worked on it together, brainstorming back and forth. It went okay.
Here’s what we learned.
BEFORE this even went out to students, we collaborated on setting up the quiz correctly. The teacher created the quiz and the answer key and sent it me to test a few things. The data validation for the answers was good, but there were a few questions where we needed to test the format of the answer. I had to Google a few things to get the validation correct, but we worked a few things out and changed the format of some questions to make it work much better.
Below are the settings that were used for the quiz. The locked mode is the way to go so students cannot open any other tabs while taking the quiz.
After the students took the quiz, the teacher reflected on how the quiz was graded. She chose to have the grades released after manual review. (You can see this in the settings above) This worked out well in this case because the teacher realized that she needed to regrade parts of the quiz. Questions like the ordering problems that were worth 5 points counted the entire problem incorrect even if the student had some of the numbers ordered properly. In the future, she will change how some questions are asked so that the form grades the quiz “correctly”. Also, with the word problems, she wanted to give students partial credit if they had part of the answer correct.
I took the quiz for practice and received an email after the grades were manually released.
I love the message the teacher put in the email. She’s learning along with the students and letting them know is so important. After clicking “View” I was able to see the entire quiz and the correct answers. This email is great for students. Below is an example of a question that will be adjusted in the future because the teacher wants to give partial credit for the answer. If anyone knows how to do that, let me know.
Overall, this teacher’s first attempt at using Google Forms for a math quiz was fairly successful. I was glad I could help work through it. Collaborating on these types of projects makes things so much easier. If you’re new to this, find a buddy to work with, you’ll be much happier and most likely, more successful.
Last week, the 8th grade reading classes came into the library for a Book Tasting. A book tasting, if you’re not familiar with it, provides students with an opportunity to sample a variety of different books in a short period of time. This idea certainly isn’t mine, there are several examples of book tasting ideas online, but I was happy to take the main concept and give it a try. The 8th grade reading classes were a perfect group to start with since they were about to begin a new unit focusing on fantasy and dystopia books. The students needed to find a free read for the unit so we decided to pull a bunch of books and give the students a chance to sample a few during the session.
During the class period, students came in and before heading to a table, listened to a brief overview of what was going to happen. To help set the mood and make the event more festive, we put tablecloths on the tables, made placemats, and added table decorations. When it was time to start, they sat at a table and had about 5 minutes to choose a book on their table, read the inside flap or back cover, and then read the first few pages of the book. They also had a 
Overall, the students seemed to enjoy the event. They were really into it and found that it was a fun way to experience several books in a short period of time. The plan for the future is to do these again during lunch, with students signing up to participate. We will probably have different genres at each table to get kids to try a variety of books, which from what I’ve read, is typically how Book Tastings are done. Regardless, the event was fun, the teacher and students enjoyed it, and it brought an exciting event to the library.
In Lehman's Terms 