I posted this photo on Instagram the other day...
It's one of my bunnies testing his knowledge of figurative language in poetry using a Google Form. I got a few questions about how we use Google in 2nd grade, so I thought I'd write a blog post about it! :)
First things first, I have a class website. Maybe your district gives you one... mine does, but it's more of an informational page for parents and not really kid-friendly. So I created a free Weebly website.
This is the site that all of our second grade classes use. We have links, activities, quizzes, flipped classroom stuff, etc for reading, math, science, and social studies. You can pick your own domain name, so we chose something super simple and easy for our second graders to remember. It's MUCH easier for them to type in: ***.weebly.com and click a few times, rather than https://docs.google.com/a/waterford.k12.wi.us/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dG5ueWxWRE5VcVgtdG5zUjVjYjVIeUE6MQ (which is the link to one of our Google forms). It's very easy to use Weebly, and it's FREE! We have trained our kids to go to this site, and they can easily navigate through it and get to the activities or external webpages through our Weebly page. I'd share our actual page with you, except we have a lot of district-paid subscriptions with the usernames and passwords on the site, and I don't feel right sharing those. Thanks for your understanding :)
OK, next you need to figure out what you want the kiddos to do. You can do something more independent like this:
This activity was for our high language flex group... when our TAG teacher isn't available, her group works on independent activities on the computer. All the information gets sent to me when they're done so I know how they did). It takes a lot of preplanning and behind-the-scenes set-up but engagement and accountability is super high, even though there isn't a teacher supervising. We try to get a parent volunteer on these days to monitor the kids and troubleshoot should computer problems arise.
When they're done watching the video and doing the Compass activities, the students are to complete a Google Form. All of the teachers in my district have a district-created Google account. You can view the form by clicking here.
Another way I use my Weebly site/Google Forms is to quiz kids at the end of a lesson/unit. Just recently we spent about a week and a half learning about all the different kinds of figurative language, and I wanted to check in on their understanding using a different format. I couldn't get the whole form on a single screenshot, so here it is in two photos:
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First things first, I have a class website. Maybe your district gives you one... mine does, but it's more of an informational page for parents and not really kid-friendly. So I created a free Weebly website.
OK, next you need to figure out what you want the kiddos to do. You can do something more independent like this:
This activity was for our high language flex group... when our TAG teacher isn't available, her group works on independent activities on the computer. All the information gets sent to me when they're done so I know how they did). It takes a lot of preplanning and behind-the-scenes set-up but engagement and accountability is super high, even though there isn't a teacher supervising. We try to get a parent volunteer on these days to monitor the kids and troubleshoot should computer problems arise.
When they're done watching the video and doing the Compass activities, the students are to complete a Google Form. All of the teachers in my district have a district-created Google account. You can view the form by clicking here.
Another way I use my Weebly site/Google Forms is to quiz kids at the end of a lesson/unit. Just recently we spent about a week and a half learning about all the different kinds of figurative language, and I wanted to check in on their understanding using a different format. I couldn't get the whole form on a single screenshot, so here it is in two photos:
If you want to see the form how my students saw it, click here; although please don't submit the form... unless you want me to grade YOU too! :) The bunnies loved doing this and didn't even know that this was an assessment!
I get all of the data in a lovely table:
I was able to use this data to pull small groups and do some reteaching. In their defense, figurative language is TOUGH!
So that's how I use Google Forms (and Weebly!) in a nutshell. Anyone else out there use Google Forms to assess? I'd love to know what you do!
