Day 26: Introducing Students and Teachers to Google Classroom

Today I had the great pleasure of working with students and staff at Hillsdale Elementary School. My goal was to support teachers and help them gain experience and comfort with Google Classroom.  The two teachers' purpose was to give their students an opportunity to use the online space in an authentic way.

From recent experience, I have learned that the best approach to integrating new technology is to have the students complete a task while using it, yet one that is somewhat more simplified than they might do without the tool.

These were the students' Learning Goals:

We really accomplished a lot in one block of time!  Ideally, you would want to break this down into about 3 or more separate lessons. Think about the fact that the time spent building a strong foundation will pay off in the long run. Here's a quick overview of what we did:

• oral discussion to activate their background knowledge: How do we behave in our regular classroom in order to be successful learners and to help others learn?
• students were given a challenge question to discuss with a partner and then reflected on how well they followed the expectations discussed earlier
• the teachers were taken into Google Classroom and set up a new class, then gave the code to their students who used it to join.
• teachers created a Google doc with a two-column table so students could brainstorm expectations for how they should interact in Google Classroom (Here's a peek at a copy of what they have so far.) The teacher posted it in Google Classroom as an Assignment and chose the option: "Students can edit file" so they could ALL edit that ONE file!
• next, students applied those expectations by participating in a written conversation.  The teacher posted a "Question" in Google Classroom.  This enabled the students to reply to a prompt before getting to see classmates' responses and then could even challenge the thinking of their peers by posing questions or making connections in a reply. Teachers were happy to hear about their ability to assess the student work in this activity
• finally, the teacher created another quick Google doc with one specific question that each student would answer independently.  It was added to an Assignment and posted for the students using the option "Make a copy for each student".  After completing the brief task, students clicked on Turn in.  It was also pointed out to them that they are able to "unsubmit" work

Reflecting back on the lesson, we would advise teachers to be sure that all students were already set up on their Board Google accounts and comfortable using their login and password before beginning these three separate lessons.  Teachers and students will need to revisit and add to the list of Expectations they co-created as the need arises. Posting them in the Google Classroom or on the wall as an anchor chart will emphasize their importance.  Differentiated instruction was achieved by showing some students how to use Voice Typing in their Google Doc and then having it read back to them using a text to speech extension.  Students were very engaged so it will be exciting to see how their skills evolve while they learn through this valuable tool.

Many thanks to Kim, Mac and their students at Hillsdale Elementary School.