Huge Secondary Science Giveaway

Super Science Back To School Giveaway! 

Welcome Back Science Teachers!!

I hope you are thoroughly enjoying your summer!! I know I am! I can’t believe how quickly summer seems to be wrapping up!

I know some of you are already back at school, and some of you have a few more weeks still.  Even if you’re not quite ready to go back, a bunch of science teachers over at TeachersPayTeachers want to make the transition back as smooth and easy for you as possible.

Fantastic Science Giveaway! 

We have a fantastic giveaway going just for you, science teacher. We are giving away FOUR $100 TeachersPayTeachers gift cards that you can use to save a lot of time and get some awesome resources for your classroom!

Take a few minutes out of the end of your summer to hop from blog to blog and collect all of our secret words. It will be worth it!! They form a secret sentence.

Once you have the sentence, go to any one of the Group Giveaway Rafflecopter boxes, on any one of our blog pages, and type in the secret sentence in the right order.

We will pick four winners after it ends after midnight on Friday August the 17th.

My Secret Word is #2: “knows”

Another Chance to Win! 

A bunch of us are also hosting our own individual giveaways as well, so make sure you stop by and enter to win! All in all, there will be over $1000 worth of prizes given away this week!

For my individual giveaway I am giving away $25 of resources from my store, Science in the City. You can choose any bundle or set of resources that fits your needs. When entering this giveaway you'll be added to my email list; I send out resources and tips for teachers each week!

MAKE SURE YOU SCROLL DOWN TO ENTER BOTH GIVEAWAYS!!

An InLinkz Link-up

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Sharing Feedback on Google Assignments

Sharing Feedback on Google Assignments

When students are doing an assignment in Google Drive one of the difficulties maybe how to best get their scores and feedback to them. This is especially true if you are doing a series of smaller assignments, such as warm ups.

A few general ways

There are a few general ways to do this and I will give you some tips on each one. 

1. Use a learning management system, such as Google Classroom (probably the easiest), Schoology or many others. 
2. Give them feedback directly on the document using the comment tool 
3. Create a spreadsheet or PDF document that lists grades by ID number. There are pros and cons of each of these of course.

In Google Classroom

In Google Classroom it can be pretty self explanatory to grade an assignment there, and give feedback. Then those grades will likely have to be entered into your gradebook, unless your school has a way of importing them.

Sharing a Single Slide and Giving Feedback

I have sets of warm-ups that are a set of Google slides that cover the whole unit. For example, here is a set that I have on weather.




If I want to share only one slide with a student that day, I would do the following steps:

• Copy that slide to a new presentation
• I would share with them through either Google Classroom, or by creating a force copy link. 
• You can see what the student sees by clicking here.
• The student then can type directly into the slide, and then either submit through Google Classroom, or share back with me. For me to be able to comment, they must share with either ‘can comment’ or ‘can edit’
• It then becomes very easy to comment on their work, from my computer. More information on using comments for student feedback is available here.

If I do it this way, I often keep a piece of scrap paper next to me to record their grades, or another window open to record grades as I go through, if I am not using Google Classroom.

Google Forms and a Spreadsheet

I discussed how I use Google Forms and create a spreadsheet by ID number in this post.

Other Tools and Tips

There are other tools as well, which I will touch on just briefly.

• If you are often entering repetitive feedback, and want to have a bank of comments, feedback, and even stickers that you can use, take a look at this article on using Google Keep for Quick Student Feedback
• 
  
• If you (or your students) would find it helpful to give spoken feedback, look into the Kazienza app. It is a very simple Google Chrome app that enables verbal feedback.
• 
  
• Only in Google Docs (not Slides, etc), there are several tools for rubrics, which can also simplify the process of grading and giving feedback to students. This can also be done within Google Classroom. And lastly, one more Google Classroom rubric hack.

I hope that these tools help make your digital transition a bit easier, as you find more effective ways to manage your grading and give feedback to your students.

What do your students need to know and be able to do to be confident using Google Drive?

What do your students need to know and be able to do to be confident using Google Drive?

Benefits of Google Drive

Google Drive is a great tool and it's easy to use, but students need to be comfortable and confident for it to be successful. Students can store any file in Google Drive, access them anywhere, share with others, work saves automatically, and they can search for their work.

How to Best Prepare Your Students

However, to take advantage of these benefits, students need to be comfortable with Google Drive. What they need to know will really depend upon the assignment that you want them to do but some basic skills and facts that student should know include the following (I am including a link with a good summary to each):

1. Understanding sharing settings 
2. Understanding how to search for and save (organize) files
3. Basic formatting tips -- the G Suite Learning Center is a great resource, even with printable PDF’s that would be great to put on tables, or hang around the room! I am linking here to the section on Docs. 
4. How to make a forced copy (this can also be done through Google Classroom
5. It may help students if you make a template that they can fill in. This takes away a lot of the fear of staring at a blank document. You you could give the option of using a template. Some students will want to be creative but not all. I often make a template with a forced copy link as in #4. Another option is to make a template, as described here
6. Think about the specific assignment that you want them to do, and what skills will come in most handy.

When and how should I teach these?

I am not a big fan of doing a big intro, but a quick mini lesson, or even a few steps at the beginning of the assignment that will teach and review the necessary skills. These assignment specific skills might include things such as:

• inserting pictures 
• formatting 
• inserting links 

Be patient as students are learning new technology. We often think that they are ‘born with technology in their hands’ and that they already know all of this, but in many cases they do not. They may know some technology skills, but not necessarily the academic ones we are trying to teach them. Work with your students and you may learn something from them too.