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An active process in which knowledge and understanding are acquired through participation, inquiry, involvement and direct experience.

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An active process in which knowledge and understanding are acquired through participation, inquiry, involvement and direct experience.

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learning that is personal

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Solving problems that occur in the real world as oppose to problems that occur in Narnia

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When students are able to use imagination and critical thinking to create new and meaningful forms of ideas where they can take risks, and be independent and flexible. Instead of being taught to reiterate what was learned, students learn to develop their ability to find various solutions to a problem.

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When students are able to use imagination and critical thinking to create new and meaningful forms of ideas where they can take risks, and be independent and flexible. Instead of being taught to reiterate what was learned, students learn to develop their ability to find various solutions to a problem.

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An educational approach that aims to customize learning for each student's strengths, needs, skills, and interests. Each student gets a learning plan that's based on what they know and how they learn best.

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An educational approach that aims to customize learning for each student's strengths, needs, skills, and interests. Each student gets a learning plan that's based on what they know and how they learn best.

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Allowing students voice and choice to be recognized as a part of their learingin process

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a student centred approach to education, where classroom practices begin from the understanding that students all learn differently and are always at a different point in their learning journey to their peers.

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a student centred approach to education, where classroom practices begin from the understanding that students all learn differently and are always at a different point in their learning journey to their peers.

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Five teaching strategies designed to challenge and engage students

"In education, student engagement refers to the degree of attention, curiosity, interest, optimism, and passion that students show when they are learning or being taught, which extends to the level of motivation they have to learn and progress in their education" ( edglossary.org). When students are engaged with the lesson being taught, they learn more and retain more. Students who are engaged in the work tend to persist more and find joy in completing the work.

You may ask the question, "What types of work are engaging?" We know from speaking to students that they prefer work where they can have hands-on activities and get to collaborate with their peers. They tend to be less engaged when listening to teacher lectures or doing repetitive tasks and "busy work."

In this article, we will discuss five innovative teaching strategies that engage students: (1) inquiry-based learning, (2) QR codes, (3) problem-based learning, (4) wisely managed classroom technology, and (5) jigsaws. These teaching strategies encourage students to use their imagination to dig deep when engaging with the content of the lesson. The students are actively involved with the learning and can work with their peers in collaborative groups to showcase their learning.

Many of these strategies take students to levels of learning they never thought possible. The students actively seek knowledge and don't just sit and receive the knowledge from a lecture or worksheet.

Inquiry-Based Learning
Inquiry-based learning is one of the most powerful teaching strategies in the classroom because research tells us that students learn best when they construct their own meaning. Inquiry-based learning triggers student curiosity. Teachers act as facilitators during the inquiry-based learning process.

According to Heather Wolpert-Gawron in the Edutopia article, "What the Heck is Inquiry-Based Learning?", there are four steps in the process:

1. Students develop questions that they are hungry to answer

2. Students research the topic using time in class

3. Students present what they've learned

4. Students reflect on what worked about the process and what didn't

In a classroom where students research a topic then present their findings, inquiry-based learning allows students to "learn deeper and wider than ever before" (Wolpert-Gawron, 2016). In traditional teaching, students are less likely to ask questions and are expected to listen and answer questions posed by the teacher. Inquiry-based learning allows students to pose the questions and research and convert the information into useful knowledge, thus ramping up the level of student engagement.

QR Codes
QR (Quick Response) codes are easy to create and have multiple uses in classrooms at all grade levels. QR codes can lead students to information just by scanning the code on a student's digital device. In the classroom, students can use QR codes to

Check their answers

Vote on answers during class discussions

Extend information found in textbooks

Get survey information for math units on data

Participate in scavenger hunts

Access video tutorials on the material being taugh

Link students directly to Google maps

QR codes allow students to access information without leaving their seat. Students can even generate QR codes to showcase their learning with peers and parents.

Project-Based Learning
Research confirms that project-based learning (PBL) is an effective and enjoyable way to learn. PBL also develops deeper learning competencies required for success in college, career, and civic life ( bie.org).

Project-based learning uses real-world scenarios, challenges, and problems to engage students in critical thinking, problem solving, teamwork, and self-management. Once students solve the problem or challenge, they present their solutions. The problems students solve can be presented to community leaders to solve problems in their own community.

PBL uses collaboration, digital tools, and problem solving skills to come up with a solution to the problem presented. Why are so many educators interested in this teaching method?

PBL makes school more engaging for students

PBL improves learning

PBL provides opportunities for students to use technology

PBL makes teaching more enjoyable and rewarding

PBL connects students and schools with communities and the real world (bie.org).

Wisely Managed Classroom Technology
Many schools have become one-to-one schools, i.e., each student has his or her own technology item (typically a tablet or computer) to work with each day. In some districts, students can take the technology home to complete their homework.

There is a delicate balance with technology use in the classroom. Teachers must use technology in a wisely managed way and with a variety of activities. Several activities that lead to student engagement are Google Docs, YouTube videos, Quizlet, Kahoot!, and the Remind app. These innovative apps and websites can help teachers engage their students, remind them about upcoming assignments and homework, provide visual learning through videos, organize student learning, provide group collaboration, and provide check-ups on learning through games and online quizzes.

Jigsaws
The jigsaw technique is a "tried and true" cooperative learning strategy that helps students create their own learning. Students are arranged in groups and assigned a different piece of information. In their groups, students learn the piece of information well enough to be able to teach it to another group of students.

When using this technique, students become experts on the learning as they teach their peers. Once all groups have learned their information, they are placed into new groups with members from each of the small groups. Each group member shares the knowledge they gained in their informational group. This technique brings lessons to life and challenges students to create their own learning. This challenge engages students and encourages them to share their learning with others.

Each of the techniques in this article use strategies in which students question, research, use technology, and create meaning from provided materials and research. These techniques also allow students to solve problems, challenge themselves, and present their findings to others. Student engagement builds on curiosity, interest, passion, and attention. All of the techniques showcased incorporate several of these needed items for student engagement.

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Innovative Teaching Strategies that Improve Student Engagement - AMLE

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Five teaching strategies designed to challenge and engage students "In education, student engagement refers to the degree of attention, curiosity, interest, optimism, and passion that students show when they are learning or being taught, which extends to the level of motivation they have to learn and progress in their education" (edglossary.org).

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Opening Keynote: The Educator's Atlas - Your Roadmap to Engagement with Weston Kieschnick

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get started

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Frame - Immersive Meetings, Classes, Events

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Frame lets you create immersive collaboration spaces that run from the browser on desktop, mobile, or VR. Personal, playful, and powerful remote meetings, virtual classrooms, and event spaces - in the metaverse.

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SplashLearn Blog - Educational Resources for Parents, Teachers & Kids

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Do you often find your students doodling or talking during class? It is an engagement issue. It shows that your students are not engaged with your lesson. Therefore, no amount of punishment or scolding will resolve this problem.
So, what is the solution?
Teachers, you have to work on building a dynamic classroom environment where students can focus on the lessons without getting distracted. Traditional teaching methods might fail to engage students in the classroom. For example, simple lectures or whiteboards are not sufficient anymore to create an engaging learning ecosystem.

Many studies have shown that the average attention span of students is 10-15 minutes long. So that means in your 40-50 minutes class, students are engaged for only 10-15 minutes.

Now, you don't need to stress about it! Instead, you need to adopt immersive strategies to engage with your students to improve their productivity and efficiency.

Below we will learn about all the popular classroom engagement strategies.

Strategy 1. Lay Down Your Expectations and Objectives

At the beginning of the academic year, teachers should present a whole year's curriculum and learning courses in front of students. This will show students what you expect them to achieve in the class.

You can create a written syllabus for middle and high school students, including information about upcoming events, lessons, and other details. This will help both parents and students to prepare in advance.

Knowing curriculum, students can revise lessons before class. This way, they can clear their doubts during the class and feel more engaged with a lesson.

You can design creative bulletin boards for preschoolers to show them what they will be learning in the upcoming month or week.

Strategy 2. Meaningful Classroom Activities

Whenever teachers find less engaged students in classrooms, they head over to the prop box and design an activity to engage them. But unfortunately, not all classroom activities can engage students.

Research has stated that if students don't find an activity worth spending their time and energy on, they will not engage with it. In fact, students might find a way to skip the activity.

Therefore, ensure that the activity has some personal meaning or allows students to demonstrate their knowledge. When students feel connected with the activity, they will better engage.

While selecting activities for your students, make sure that:

They are fun and simple

Help students demonstrate their skills or knowledge

Establish a personal connection with students

Teach them something new

Strategy 3. Increase Teachers Autonomy Support

Engagement refers to a person's emotional quality and behavior intensity during a task. Thus, teachers must focus on improving students' emotional quality to increase their engagement.

Autonomy support is turning out to be an innovative engagement strategy. For example, in a study, students' engagement level improved when three classrooms were run using autonomous support.

Autonomy support means teachers are letting students make decisions without entirely losing control. Students are given the liberty to make decisions under the teacher's guidance in autonomous classrooms.

Teachers can increase autonomy support in their classrooms in many ways, for instance-

Taking students' opinions. Teachers can ask students to provide their input while designing classroom activities and curriculums.

Engaged attitude. Teachers can adopt an engaged attitude while interacting with students. Instead of telling them what to do, ask them what they want to do.

Give students options. Always give multiple options to students so they can make their own decision under teachers' guidance.

Give students time. Never expect students to make decisions on the spot. First, provide them with all the details and give them some time before deciding.

Strategy 4. Leverage Technology

Today, children can happily use smart gadgets for an entire day without losing their concentration for a minute. For example, they can play video games for hours but can't work on math problems for an hour.

It is impossible to keep smart gadgets away from students in this digital age. Therefore, you can use technology to create an engaging environment in your classroom.

Using EduTech resources, you can make learning fun and engrossing for your students. For example, your preschoolers might not show interest in text-based math problems. But when they get to play digital math games, they can learn addition or subtraction without even realizing it.

Teachers can leverage technology in several ways to engage with students, like:

1. Games

The best way to make learning fun for young learners is through games. With gamification, you can simplify complicated concepts with interactive visuals and audio. For instance, SplashLearn math games have helped many preschoolers learn counting, addition, and other basic math skills with ease.

2. Blogs/Podcasts

Teachers can let students submit assignments via blogs or podcasts rather than boring essays or slides. This will increase students' involvement and interest in completing the school assignments.

3. Infographics

Teachers can create infographics to teach complicated concepts to students. Using infographics, you can better engage visual learners in your classroom.

4. Virtual classes

Online classes can help to capture many students' attention. However, virtual classes are not effective for all students. But for older students, it can be helpful. So, you can ask your students whether they can better learn online or offline and accordingly decide.

Strategy 5. Share Real Stories

Stories are the best way to spike interest and remember information. When you share real-life stories instead of textbook lessons with your students, they will learn better.

For example, history teachers can share life stories of historical characters and events rather than making students read textbooks. When you tell students the real stories behind World War II, it will better improve their engagement in the boring history lessons.

You can take this teaching approach further by showing real-life stories to your students. You can take your students to war memorials, museums, zoos, or other places where they can visualize stories.

For teaching emotional values like empathy, take your class to nursing homes or orphanages. By listening to other people's struggle stories, your students will learn to value their lives.

Strategy 6. Create Some Mystery

The mystery is a unique expression that can hold your attention for longer. In anticipation of what will happen next, a person will engage more in mysterious activities.

Therefore, you can bring a mysterious element into your class to make learning engaging for your students. There are numerous ways to bring mystery in your classroom, such as:

1. Investigate a case

Teachers can give assignments to investigate a problem to students. Students have to research information through different resources and interact with people to complete their assignments. For example, geography teachers can give assignments to investigate the reason behind drought in a particular area.

2. Riddles or puzzles

To engage with preschool students, you can use riddles and puzzles games to make learning fun for them. You can easily find different puzzle games and riddles online to practice in your classroom.

Strategy 7. Keep Students Busy All The Time

One teacher can't keep students constantly engaged and busy. There come many dead points in your classroom when your students have nothing to do, like when you are checking worksheets, preparing the classroom for a new activity, or waiting for a YouTube video to load.

These dead points are sufficient to distract your students and move their attention away from the class. Therefore, teachers need to think of some activities to fill blank spaces with low-order activities. These activities must be simple, quick, and good enough to hold students' attention. For example:

Pair discussions. When you have to step out of your class for a moment, you can pair two students and give them a topic to discuss. This activity will keep them engaged until you resume your lesson once again.

Quick write-up. While you are checking worksheets, you can ask your students to write a few lines about how they are feeling today or what new things they have learned today.

Revise your lessons. You can ask your students to revise lessons you have taught them today while cleaning up your class.

Strategy 8. Set Up Outdoor Classrooms

Yes, taking your class outdoors can help to improve engagement, concentration, and self-dependence among your students. Connecting with nature is good for human beings' physical and mental health. Some studies have shown that outdoor learning can make students more creative and intellectual learners.

Taking your class outside can refresh your students' minds. Sometimes, being inside can dull your students and impact their creative thinking. Thus, allowing your students to roam around freely and explore nature will stimulate their creativity.

Therefore, you should often cut the monotone classroom routine and take your students outside to learn by observing nature.

Strategy 9. Make Your Students Moving

If you find your students struggling to sit straight for a whole 40 minutes class, you can make them move. There is no rule that you can only conduct class when your students are sitting on their benches. You can teach classes anywhere that can engage your students.

Especially if you are teaching many hyperactive toddlers, it is a perfect teaching strategy for you to create a moving environment in your class. When you keep your students moving, it will improve their engagement and interest in the class.

To make a moving classroom, you can practice the following activities:

1. Create a podium

You can put a podium in your classroom where students can bring strong ideas. For example, if a student has an idea to create a spring bulletin board, they have to stand on the podium to share their idea with everyone. This activity will keep your students moving and give them the confidence to speak in front of other people.

2. Divide your classroom

You can divide your classroom into different sections dedicated to one activity. For example, you can create a reading station, play area, writing zone, and sleep area in your classroom. This way, your students will keep moving around the class all day to perform different activities.

Strategy 10. Break the Tasks

If you dump a series of instructions altogether on your students, this will overwhelm them and suck out all their engagement. Therefore, you should break a task into multiple small sections and lay them down in front of your students.

You can further create a checklist to complete a task for your students. Thus, students can keep on checking items when they are done with them. This will keep students motivated to complete the task.

Let's Engage with Your Students!

Students' engagement level is declining every day. This is because many distractions are present around students like smartphones, TVs, and more.

Therefore, teachers have to think of unique and innovative ways to engage with their students. They have to use modern means to connect with their class. Teachers have to frequently experiment with new teaching techniques from technology to outdoor classrooms to keep engagement levels high in classrooms.

We have shared the best ten engagement strategies for modern teachers. So, let's practice those strategies and see how your students react to them.

FAQs

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10 Innovative Strategies to Better Engage With Students

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Do you often find your students doodling or talking during class? It is an engagement issue. It shows that your students are not engaged with your lesson. Therefore, no amount of punishment or scolding will resolve this problem. So, what is the solution?

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Inquiry-based learning is a learning process that engages students by making real-world connections through exploration and high-level questioning. It is an approach to learning that encourages students to engage in problem-solving and experiential learning

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Inquiry-based learning is a learning process that engages students by making real-world connections through exploration and high-level questioning. It is an approach to learning that encourages students to engage in problem-solving and experiential learning

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Empowering Kids to Be Part of the Solution

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Empowering Kids to Be Part of the Solution

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Empowering Kids to Be Part of the Solution

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Giving elementary students a project in their community provides a real-world application for their content learning.

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Starting out as a young adjunct instructor, I can painfully recall reading my lesson notes from index cards as my students sat passively with blank stares. Fortunately that didn't last long, thanks to a mentor observing my class. But I doubt my experience was much different from that of other emerging educators. After all, I had modeled these ineffective teaching practices after my own experiences as a university student.

Today, however, there has been a huge push in higher education to move beyond these passive methods of instruction that lead to less student engagement and low motivation. As Jennifer Stanchfield discovered, "More is learned through exploring and struggling than by being provided the answer."

It's harder than ever these days to keep our students' attention. But I have improved my approach over the past 30 years based on the simple belief that telling is not teaching. Because of this, I am continually exploring interesting and creative ways to engage my students.

I have identified some outstanding techniques, which I will share here, that have helped to enhance my students' engagement and motivation for learning. Many of these strategies have come from the book Total Participation Techniques: Making Every Student an Active Learner by Himmele and Himmele, which has truly transformed my teaching. So let's get started on transforming yours.

10 Engagement Strategies to Energize and Motivate Your Students

Before we break down specific strategies you can use to enhance participation, it's important to understand that there are five different types of engagement: social, behavioral, emotional, intellectual, and physical. As teachers, we may organically hit two or three of these engagement types, but some we are likely to miss, especially if we're not aware of them. I've struggled with ideas for how to get my students physically engaged, for example.

Below, I've categorized my top engagement strategies by these types to help you address all five. They have been designed for use in university classes and can easily be adapted for any area of study.

Social Engagement: Creating Connections with Students Through Collaboration and Sharing

Social engagement involves social interactions. The key to having effective social engagement is to help students get to know and trust you and other students early in the semester. The following strategies are designed to allow students to make these important connections as they help build a collaborative learning environment of support and trust.

1. Getting to Know You

Prior to the start of a new semester, I email my students a survey to learn more about their interests and preferences. Here are the key questions I ask:

What are your career goals?

How do you learn best?

Share five facts about yourself that will help me get to know you and best meet your needs.

What are your three favorite songs or musicians?

Is there anything else you would like to share that will help me better support your learning?

I also prepare a PowerPoint presentation that I use to introduce myself on the first day of class. I share personal and professional stories and family photos with the hope that my students will feel more connected to me and thus more motivated to open up themselves. I also love sharing stories about my latest connections to the country music stars I meet in Nashville (like that time I got a huge hug from Chris Janson in church).

I then have my students create name tents: They display their names on large, folded index cards to quickly familiarize the class. I also have them use this card to draw or write brief ideas about their interests, which form the basis for how they introduce themselves to their peers.

2. Find Someone Who . . .

I plan first-day-of-class activities that give students simple opportunities to get to know one another in a light-hearted way. For one such activity, I create a template with a nine-space grid in which various criteria are listed. Students must find a different person in the class who meets the criteria listed in each grid space (see Figure 1). For example, "Find someone who is an early riser."

As they circulate around the room, they must find someone for each grid space and fill in that person's name. This activity serves as a great icebreaker and helps students learn each other's names, which is important for helping them feel connected to their peers.

Behavioral Engagement: Establishing Rules, Routines, and Roles

Behavioral engagement deals with routines and behaviors that help promote learning. It is important to teach the routines and behaviors that you want your students to use to improve the quality of peer discussions and the efficiency of class activities. These strategies also help to create a sense of security as students know what to expect from you.

For example, before my students can enter the classroom, I have them wait until I open the door, as I want to be sure I have the room prepared for the day's activities. They also know that I will have a daily prompt posted for them to discuss with their peers as they arrive, which is designed to engage them in the lesson topic of the day.

Here are some other strategies for behavioral engagement.

3. Bounce Cards

With the "Bounce Card" strategy, I provide a card for each student that lists key questions or prompts I want them to discuss with a partner or small group. The questions can be generic so that the card can be used to discuss any topic. (For example, "Rephrase what your partner just said," or, "That's a great point because . . .") The questions are designed to help students strengthen their listening skills and deepen their conversations. The prompts require students to extend, rephrase, and ask follow-up questions to their bounce partners, rather than just give a simple answer.

For example, if I ask students to discuss a video clip, they might just say whether they liked it. But using a Bounce Card forces them to dig deeper. You can adapt the questions on the card to suit your educational purposes, but for the students who struggle with conversational skills, this can be a great template for helping them develop more thoughtful responses.

4. The Lecture T-Chart

You may have noticed that sometimes as students take notes, they don't seem to really be processing what they are learning. The "Lecture T-Chart" consists of a simple template where students record their notes on the left side of a page. Periodically throughout my lecture, I pause and have them use their own words to summarize the key ideas I've just presented, which they write on the right side of the template.

This pause-review-summarize process helps to strengthen comprehension and can be extended by having students share their summaries with others to further process the information through social engagement.

Emotional Engagement: Facilitating Joy, Connection, and Memories

Emotional engagement entails creating safe, positive learning experiences for everyone involved. Students will not be open to sharing their thoughts and responses in class if they feel they will be mocked or disrespected by their professor or peers.

One of the ways I create emotional connection is through music. I'll start each class playing a different student's favorite song or music video (based on what they told me in that initial survey). They love it and appreciate that I actually read their responses.

Here are some other strategies to emotionally engage your students.

5. The Ripple Method

Himmele and Himmele propose the use of the ripple method: Instead of just calling on students who raise their hand, you "ripple" your questions by first having each student respond individually to the prompt (either in their mind or in writing). They then share their responses with one to three peers before you open up the floor to volunteers willing to share with the whole class. This process ensures that every student has time to think of a response.

For example, I use the ripple method when I ask my students each week to share an "aha moment" from their clinical experiences. This relieves pressure for those students who are less motivated to engage in discussion. The students soon realize that their experiences are just as valid as everyone else's and that we are all in this together. They also realize that some of their perceived failures in the field become some of their most precious learning experiences.

Intellectual Engagement: Promoting Choice, Challenge, and Curiosity

Intellectual engagement involves curiosity and meaningful explorations. Whenever possible, give students choices in terms of tasks, topics, and strategies for demonstrating their learning. The more relevant and authentic the task, the higher the level of engagement and motivation.

Here are some activities to spur curiosity and meaning.

6. Drama, Please!

Consider using problem solving, role playing, and acting as ways of demonstrating learning. You will need to be specific about your expectations, but the freedom to explore interests and determine a mode of presentation of ideas will be motivating for many students.

In my teacher education class, I have my students roleplay parent-teacher conferences. I preface this by showing a video clip from the sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond. While the clip is humorous, it helps the students recognize the vulnerability of parents (and teachers) in these situations, which is an essential understanding when conducting an effective parent-teacher conference.

7. IQ Cards

IQ cards provide an interesting and efficient way for students to share insights about what they have learned, as well as raise questions after a lecture or class activity. Students write an insight (representing the "I" in IQ) on one side of an index card. This insight can be related to something new they learned during that class, or it can be a "so what" statement, indicating how this information can be applied in professional or personal practice.

On the other side of the card, the students write a question (Q) that they have about the information. Typically, I like to have students share their cards with their peers in pairs and then I collect the cards to gather informal assessment data about student learning. This works as an excellent closure activity as it reviews key lesson content and helps me assess whether students are grasping the material.

Physical Engagement: Making Movement Meaningful

Physical engagement involves some type of movement and is an often-neglected engagement strategy in the higher ed classroom. John Ratey, author of Spark (Hatchett, 2008), states that "exercise is the single most powerful tool you have to optimize your brain function." While time and space may be challenges to including physical movement in the classroom, small efforts to engage students physically help to keep them focused and may help change their brains by strengthening neuropathways leading to improved storage and retrieval of information.

While physical engagement can introduce novelty to your class, it's important to think about the physical and mobile abilities of your students, and to provide accommodations and make room for modifications when necessary.

The following strategies help to engage students in movement connected with their learning.

8. Whiteboard Splash and Gallery Walk

Whiteboard Splash (sometimes known as "chalkboard splash" or "graffiti wall") involves students responding to a prompt with words or pictures to explain an idea or concept by writing on the whiteboard (or large chart paper).

For example, I might ask my teacher education students, "What are the activities that should be included in the schedule for the first day of school for young children?" or "What are some strategies you can use to reflect on your teaching practice?" Students work individually or in small groups to illustrate their ideas. Then students circulate around the room for a "gallery walk" to view and discuss the displayed information.

To ensure that students don't passively walk by the work, have them write down the ideas they found new, different, surprising, or worth remembering. Students can then share the results and address additional questions.

9. Inside-Outside Circles

This is one of my students' favorite strategies for physical movement and social engagement. I have students create two concentric circles where each person is in front of or behind someone in the other circle. The inside circle group is then told to turn and face their outside circle group partner. I provide a prompt for the pairs to discuss (for example, "What are some reasons for student misbehavior?") and set a time limit for each partner to share a brief response to the question.

Students then take turns listening to their partner's response. Be sure to set a timer so students know when to end their conversations. Then I have the outside circle group move two places to the left so they are facing a different person. You can provide the same or a different prompt and the process repeats.

To hold students accountable, be sure to circulate and listen to the conversations so you get an idea of their level of understanding and interaction, which you can then use in conducting a closing discussion with the whole group. If space is an issue, consider using the hallway or go outdoors (weather permitting).

If you have students with limited mobility, you can conduct this activity with chairs (and wheelchairs) and students can still have rich interactions. Be sure to position any students with mobility limitations in the inner circle so just the students in the outside circle have to move during the activity.

For online classes, assign pairs of students to breakout rooms and give them a short amount of time (one to two minutes) to share their ideas with their partners. Then you can randomly assign them a new partner using a new set of breakout rooms.

10. Origami Review Game

Depending on your age, you may recall playing a game with origami paper creations with questions and answers on them. Partners can take turns telling each other's fortunes or quizzing each other. I use this often as a content review activity before exams. (You can find directions for the construction and implementation of this game here.)

Your role is to create eight close-ended questions that have simple (i.e., short) answers so they fit on the game board. (for example, "What type of engagement involves movement?" followed by the answer, "Physical engagement.") Each pair of students receives an origami paper creation (see Figure 2), and they take turns asking each other questions from the game piece until all the questions have been covered.

Keep It Fresh and Meaningful

Adding these simple but meaningful engagement strategies into my instructional practices has not only helped create a stimulating, joyful learning environment for my students, but it has also made me a more motivated teacher. I teach a three-hour class and the time now passes quickly for everyone.

Simply put: To keep our students motivated, we have to stay motivated. These strategies can help you avoid the rut of doing the same thing all the time. But keep in mind that even a clever idea can become stale if overused, so make sure to mix and match.

Just remember that novelty and fun are additional benefits of students' cognitive engagement; they are not the main focus of our efforts. So use your class time wisely by choosing meaningful questions and engagement strategies that are related to your learning goals. If you do so, I think you'll find that your students quickly get on board.

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10 Creative Ways to Better Engage Your Students

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Transform your teaching with these outstanding techniques that will enhance your students' engagement and motivation for learning.

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A #1000BlackGirls database was created in direct response to the multiple requests made by educators, parents and students. Like Marley Dias, so many of you have asked for books with Black girls as the main characters. And because of you, we have received thousands of books. GrassROOTS Community Foundation has put together a database of all the books we have received. You can browse titles by reading levels.

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A #1000BlackGirls database was created in direct response to the multiple requests made by educators, parents and students. Like Marley Dias, so many of you have asked for books with Black girls as the main characters. And because of you, we have received thousands of books.

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How to Use Real-World Problems to Teach Elementary School Math: 6 Tips

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How to Use Real-World Problems to Teach Elementary School Math: 6 Tips

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When you think back on elementary school math, do you have fond memories of the countless worksheets you completed on adding fractions or solving division problems? Probably not.

Researchers and educators have been pushing for years for schools to move away from teaching math through a set of equations with no context around them, and towards an approach that pushes kids to use numerical reasoning to solve real problems, mirroring the way that they'll encounter the use of math as adults.

The strategy is largely about setting kids up for success in the professional world, and educators can lay the groundwork decades earlier, even in kindergarten.

Here are some tips for using a real world problem-solving approach to teaching math to elementary school students.

1. There's more than one right answer and more than one right method

A "real world task" can be as simple as asking students to think of equations that will get them to a particular "target" number, say, 14. Students could say 7 plus 7 is 14 or they could say 25 minus 11 is 14. Neither answer is better than the other, and that lesson teaches kids that there are multiple ways to use math to solve problems.

2. Give kids a chance to explain their thinking

The process you use to solve a real world math problem can be just as important as arriving at the correct answer, said Robbi Berry, who teaches 5th grade in Las Cruces, N.M. Her students have learned not to ask her if a particular answer is correct, she said, because she'll turn the question back on them, asking them to explain how they know that it is right. She also gives her students a chance to explain to one another how they arrived at a particular solution, "We always share our strategies so that the kids can see the different ways" to arrive at an answer, she said. Students get excited, she said, when one of their classmates comes up with an approach they never would have thought of. "Math is creative," Berry said. "It's not just learning and memorizing."

3. Be willing to deal with some off-the-wall answers

Problem solving does not necessarily mean going to the word problems in your textbook, said Latrenda Knighten, a mathematics instructional coach in Baton Rouge, La. For little kids, it can be as simple as showing a group of geometric shapes and asking what they have in common. Students may go off track a bit by talking about things like color, she said, but teachers can steer them towards thinking about things like how a rectangle differs from a triangle.

4. Let your students push themselves

Tackling these richer, real-world problems can be tougher than solving equations on a worksheet. And that is a good thing, said Jo Boaler, a professor at Stanford University and an expert on math education. "It's really good for your brain to struggle," she said. "We don't want kids getting right answers all the time because that's not giving their brains a really good workout." These types of problems require collaboration, a skill that many don't associate with math, but that is key to how math reasoning works beyond the classroom. The complexity and difficulty of the tasks means that students "have to talk to each other and really figure out what to do, what's a good method?"

5. Celebrate 'favorite mistakes' to encourage intellectual risk taking

Wrong answers should be viewed as learning opportunities, Berry said. When one of her students makes an error, she asks if she can share it with the class as a "favorite mistake." Most of the time, students are comfortable with that, and the class will work together to figure how the misstep happened.

6. Remember there's no such thing as a being born with a 'math brain'

Some teachers believe that certain students are just naturally good at math, and others are not, Boaler said. But that's not true. "Brains are constantly shaping, changing, developing, connecting, and there is no fixed anything," said Boaler, who often works alongside neuroscientists. What's more, many elementary school teachers lack confidence in their own math abilities, she said. "They think they can't do [math]," Boaler said. "And they often pass those ideas on" to their students.

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How to Use Real-World Problems to Teach Elementary School Math: 6 Tips

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When you think back on elementary school math, do you have fond memories of the countless worksheets you completed on adding fractions or solving division problems? Probably not.

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Welcome to Skew The Script - the community that makes math what it already is: relevant! Your account gives you free and unlimited access to our teacher lesson materials. To get started, here are a few resources:

We have helpful guides for using our materials in traditional, flipped, or online classrooms. Find them here.

Our teacher Facebook group is a supportive community of teachers from across the country who use our materials. Join the AP Stats group and the Algebra I/II group .

Ready to get started? With your account, you now have unlimited access to our lesson materials. Get started with and Algebra I/II .

Questions? Contact us.

We're glad to have you aboard!

-Skew The Script

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Welcome to Skew The Script - the community that makes math what it already is: relevant! Your account gives you free and unlimited access to our teacher lesson materials. To get started, here are a few resources: We have helpful guides for using our materials in traditional, flipped, or online classrooms. Find them here.

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Bring the Real World into the Classroom as a Teaching Strategy

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Bring the Real World into the Classroom as a Teaching Strategy

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We have a few answers to this question. One is that personalized learning always involves these core four elements - targeted instruction, data-driven decisions, flexible content, and student reflection and ownership. Check out our Core Four white paper for a more detailed description of these elements, as well as classroom examples.

Another answer is that, "it depends" - we believe strongly in the design thinking process, and that school leaders and teachers are in the best place to put together instructional models that meet the needs of their students. Check out this great blog post on the process by my colleague, Kelly!

That being said, we realize that we can never answer this question enough. In response to this demand, here is a short collection of videos, photos, artifacts, and teacher testimonies that we hope will help illustrate what personalized learning could look like at your school or district. Some of these examples are from Education Elements districts and schools, and some are from other places!

Personalized learning is: Incorporating Self-Reflection and Goal-Setting

In Middletown, NY , the school culture incorporates student reflection and goal-setting starting with the youngest grades. Check out these classroom photos of goal-setting artifacts.

From a Middletown teacher: "[Students] use a Google form, and t
he forms are sent to me automatically so I am able to instantaneously see how they are self-assessing. It gives them a sense of accountability and it also lets me be aware of how they think they did... I use their self-assessment to help guide my instruction and to help group them for math and ELA." Check out this classroom teacher as she talks about her approach to Student Ownership & Reflection
Personalized Learning is: Flexible & Intentional Master Schedules

In Wake County, NC, school leaders at Rogers Lane Elementary School have created a master schedule that's aligned to their three core principles: Agents of Change, Out of this World Learning, and Intentional and Reciprocal Relationships. While it's still a work in progress, the schedule does a wonderful job of showing the back-end work it takes to explicitly incorporate co-teaching, multi-level classrooms, student choice, and blocks for targeted small-group instruction.

Additionally, to help parents and students better understand how this schedule would affect a student's daily experience, Rogers Lane created a "Day in the Life of" Primer .
Check out this classroom teacher as she talks about her approach to Flexible Path and Pace Check out this video from a high school teacher, where she describes how she has students use a digital tool to demonstrate their ability to collect and analyze data from a field exercise.
Personalized Learning is: Using Digital Content and Tools in a Purposeful Way - Flexible Path and Pace
Check out from an elementary school teacher about how he uses a portfolio of digital content tools in his classes. These last 2 videos are part of a larger collection of great this video videos from BetterLesson on blended learning strategies.

Personalized Learning is: Incorporating Personalized Playlists

Many personalized learning classrooms incorporate flexible pacing by having students go through content via playlists. However, not all playlists are personalized.

My colleague Brittany, in partnership with teachers and school leaders at Rochester School District, NH, put together this helpful Playlist Building 101 Guide that describes how to build a personalized learning playlist.

Personalized Learning is: Planning for Flexible Seating
Photo: Loudoun County Public Schools (VA), Twitter #LoudounPL Photo: Loudoun County Public Schools (VA), Twitter #LoudounPL

Flexible seating is a popular strategy because it is a physical manifestation of targeted, fluid instruction. With a focus on student choice and comfort, flexible seating is a great way to convey to students, "You matter."

Edutopia has a terrific article specifically focused on flexible seating at the high school level, including classroom photos and teacher testimonies. Ashley Rice Broomfield, a 1st grade teacher, shares, " I am in my 13th year of teaching, but this is my first year incorporating flexible seating into my classroom. I will never go back to traditional seating."

EdSurge also has a great post on 10+ brain-based methods to redesign your classroom, and how to include your students in the redesign process. We love this quote: "A good friend of mine often reminds me that we aren't raising a class of second graders, but in fact, we are raising future adults. She says, 'If they're old enough to do it for themselves, they should not only be allowed to, but expected to do so.'"

Finally, see these pictures above from our awesome partners in Loudoun County Public Schools, VA!

check out the BONUS:#LoudounPL hashtag for more amazing pictures of how Loudoun County schools are personalizing learning.

Personalized Learning is: Involving Students in Grading Conversations

Prolific blogger Catlin Tucker offers another great strategy - including "grade interviews" with students. Tucker shares, " As grade reporting approaches, I sit down with every single student for a grade interview. Students come to these grade interviews prepared with a formal argument. These conversations are invaluable. Students walk away knowing exactly what they need to work on or what they are doing well. Also, I feel like I know my students so much better because we sit down and chat about their learning every 5-6 weeks!" Check out her full blog post !

Additionally, student-led conferences (SLC's) can be a great way to engage both students and parents in reflection. In an SLC, a student might not only explain what progress he or she is making, but why it is that progress is occurring. This Edutopia post has a great set of resources on SLC's, sourced from articles like this Atlantic piece to protocols and videos of SLC's in action.

To learn more about how these examples build on the core four elements of personalized learning, check out our white paper.

More Personalized Learning reading

Blog: Personalizing Learning: Getting it Right

Blog: Personalizing Learning: Reflection and Goal-Setting

Blog: How to Pick the Right Instructional Model for Your Classroom

Blog: Personalizing Learning: Flexible Pace & Path

Blog: Personalizing Learning: Targeted Instruction

Blog: Personalizing Learning: Collaboration & Creativity

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Six Examples of What Personalized Learning Looks Like

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Personalized learning takes different forms in different classrooms - here are six examples of what personalized learning looks like.

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Arts & Culture Experiments - Experiments with Google

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Since 2009, coders have created thousands of amazing experiments using Chrome, Android, AI, WebVR, AR and more. We're showcasing projects here, along with helpful tools and resources, to inspire others to create new experiments.

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Is it going to transform public schools, finally bringing education into the age of digitally driven personalization embodied by companies such as Amazon and Netflix? Or is it a billionaire-backed boondoggle, aimed primarily at replacing teachers and extracting data from children? When it comes to "personalized learning," there's no shortage of hyperbole from either proponents or critics.

Here's what you need to know about the realities of one of the biggest, most controversial trends in K-12 education-starting with the most difficult question first.

What exactly is personalized learning?
Inside K-12 schools, the term is used to mean just about anything.
For many educators, it's about using adaptive software that adjusts to each student's skill level. Sometimes, it's about the systematic use of digital data to inform big decisions, like how to group students. Other schools focus on giving students more say over what projects they undertake, or how they present their work. And increasingly, personalized-learning proponents also take a much wider lens, saying schools must nurture each individual child's social, emotional, and physical development.

Some see such scattered and nebulous definitions as reason to worry that personalized learning will go the way of other short-lived reforms. Others are more positive.

"In the same way that Inuits have lots of different words for 'snow,' I think these are all personalized learning," says Larry Berger, the CEO of ed-tech company Amplify and a leading thinker and writer on the topic for over a decade.

What's the hope behind the movement?
Very broadly speaking, the idea is to customize the learning experience for each student according to his or her unique skills, abilities, preferences, background, and experiences.
The hope is that will improve a wide range of student outcomes, from engagement to achievement to wellbeing.

Personalized-learning pioneer Dianne Tavenner told Education Week in 2017 that it's about the type of education good teachers have always envisioned, but haven't always had the tools to make a reality.

"Personalized learning is a way to actually enact the pedagogy we believe in and that kids thrive in," said Tavenner, the founder of Summit Public Schools, a California-based charter network that operates about a dozen of its own personalized-learning schools while licensing its personalized-learning software to hundreds of others.

So is this a new idea or not?
Not really.
The personalized learning movement has two primary wings, each of which is grounded in decades-old (and often warring) philosophies about how children learn. The so-called "engineering model" of personalized learning emphasizes efficient mastery of academic content. The idea is that experts can map out what each child needs to learn, measure what of that each already knows, and then create the optimal path for him or her to learn the rest.

Other approaches to personalized learning are rooted in progressive education traditions. This wing of the movement generally holds that learning happens when schools tap into students' interests and passions, giving them individualized opportunities to ask questions and explore and take risks.

The former approach dates at least back to the 1950s, when psychologist B.F. Skinner was experimenting with "teaching machines" intended to let students answer questions and receive feedback at their own pace. The latter goes back more than a century, to John Dewey. It's often seen today in schools that emphasize more project-based learning.

In both cases, what is new is the way in which technology-from big data to online collaboration tools to social media-is being used to amplify methods educators have been using more or less forever.

Where did the new push for personalized learning come from?
Big-picture, it's a reflection of deeper trends in both society and the K-12 sector.
Technology has already transformed other sectors of society, such as retail. Often, this has taken the form of using digital data to learn more about individuals and their preferences, then target them with information, advertisements, and recommendations. In part, personalized learning is a reflection of the push to apply those tools and ideas to education.

It's also emerged out of rising opposition to standardized tests and the so-called "factory model of education," which critics contend has left both children and teachers feeling like widgets inside the classroom. These broad forces started to come together in tangible form roughly a decade ago.

Beginning around 2009, for example, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation began committing hundreds of millions of dollars to support research and development around personalized learning.

Then, under President Obama, the U.S. Education Department gave half a billion dollars to encourage districts to embrace the trend, primarily via its competitive-grant program known as Race to the Top. More recently, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the venture-philanthropy group started by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, pediatrician Priscilla Chan, has vowed to give hundreds of millions of dollars per year in support of its vision for "whole-child personalized learning," encompassing students' emotional and physical development as well as their academic learning.

States, companies, other philanthropies, and a network of nonprofits and advocacy groups are also now backing the movement.

Do personalized learning strategies work?
Oh yeah. Big-time.
In 2018, for example, the Education Week Research Center conducted a nationally representative survey of the country's school principals.

More than half characterized personalized learning as either a "transformational way to improve public education" or a "promising idea."

A whopping 97 percent said their schools were using digital technologies to personalize learning in some form or fashion.

Does personalized learning work?
That's precisely the wrong question to ask.
John Pane, a senior scientist at the RAND Corporation and a leading researcher of the personalized learning movement says the reason why goes back to the incredible variation in how personalized learning actually happens inside real classrooms.

"At this stage, we really need to be looking at the actual components of what people are trying to do and assess them each on their own," Pane said.

That's an argument that proponents generally embrace. They point to the strong research base for some of the core building blocks of most personalized-learning models, including providing students with differentiated instruction and real-time feedback.

Some studies of specific personalized-learning products, used in particular situations and under particular circumstances, have also yielded promising signs.

But other such studies have shown small or even negative results.

And what about personalized-learning models that seek to transform entire schools? Experts estimate there are maybe 1,000 or so such schools in the country. How are they doing?

Summit is one of the best-known, best-funded examples, having received more than $40 million from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. But Tavenner's group has declined to undergo independent third-party evaluation.

The results for other models that have been studied are generally not great.

"The evidence base is very weak at this point," said Pane, who led a Gates-funded study of about 40 personalized-learning schools, finding modest gains and big implementation challenges.

Are there other arguments against personalized learning?
You betcha.
Critics such as independent researcher Audrey Watters warn that personalized learning is a pretext for "massive data collection" and surveillance of students. They point to the rapid adoption of analogous technologies in other sectors (think, for example, Facebook), before the unintended and adverse privacy-related consequences we are now seeing could be ironed out.

That 2018 Education Week Research Center survey also found that a strong majority of the nation's principals worried that the trend was leading to too much screen time for students (85 percent expressed "some," "a lot" or "a great deal" of concern), students working alone too often (77 percent), and the tech industry gaining too much influence over public education (67 percent.)

Where does all that leave schools?

Pane and his team at RAND say K-12 educators, administrators, and policymakers are in the unenviable position of having to make high-stakes educational decisions with "imperfect evidence."

That doesn't mean they should stick their heads in the sand, the RAND team said. Personalized learning holds promise. Careful, cautious attempts at some elements of the trend may make sense. Stick to common sense and the evidence we do have, they advise. Resist pressure to throw out established practices that work just because they're not new and shiny.
But think twice before diving in.
"I would not advise schools to dump massive resources into going fully into personalized learning," Laura S. Hamilton, a senior behavioral scientist and distinguished chair in learning and assessment at the RAND Corporation, told Education Week in 2017. "Experiment with some new approaches that might be a good fit for your particular school or district, but monitor it very closely."

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Is it going to transform public schools, finally bringing education into the age of digitally driven personalization embodied by companies such as Amazon and Netflix? Or is it a billionaire-backed boondoggle, aimed primarily at replacing teachers and extracting data from children? When it comes to "personalized learning," there's no shortage of hyperbole from either proponents or critics.

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Creative Learning with Amber Kemp-Gerstel

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Short Inspiration Video: Solving Real World Problems

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Short Inspiration Video: Solving Real World Problems

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Solving Real-World Problems: Bringing Authentic Context to Learning

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Book Creator - Love Learning - Book Creator app

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Teachers love it. Students love it. Book Creator is the simplest, most inclusive way to create content in the classroom.

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15 ways to create unforgettable multimedia with Adobe Spark

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Creating great images, pages and video can spark students’ interest in learning. Adobe Spark makes that possible for free. This post is written by Claudio

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The theme of this month and next month on this blog is all about creating teaching resources, but this week - we thought we'd do a fun twist and focus on projects that you can do using Canva WITH your students in the classroom.

But first things first: if you're not familiar with Canva, Canva is a 100% free online tool that you can use to design all sorts of graphics. It is a cloud-based, online website that can be used on any device and from anywhere. It saves all of your work online so you can open up your designs any time and any place.

Canva works for any device that you have in your classroom - Chromebooks, laptops, tablets and they even have an app!

The great news? Canva for Educators is now officially free for all educators which means you get access to the amazing Canva Premium features for free.

Canva is extremely user-friendly, and it comes with countless templates for every type of resource you could imagine to start off from.

Here are some examples:

Worksheets

Posters

Infographics

Graphic organizers

Videos, gifs and animations

Presentations

And the list goes on and on!

You can see the list of all templates they offer for free HERE.

This is not only fantastic for your creation of teaching resources, but also for guiding students who may have never used this tool before through creating their first piece!

If you haven't signed up yet, you can check out Canva for Education HERE and sign up for your free account.

And if you're looking for more Canva training... we maaay just have something that could interest you coming out in the next month or so. Join the waitlist to get first access as well as access to possible special bonuses to our newest resource for using Canva to make teaching resources for the classroom.

Canva is a great way to create some evidence of learning for a project that you have in your classroom. One example is if you're doing a unit on blues music in your music classroom; you could have your students write an essay, sure... but what about having them also create a poster for a fictitious blues concert for a famous blues musician?

This could be a great and creative way to engage students to learn about the unit from a more visual way! And we also know how motivational having a fun project is in the classroom for your students.

So without further ado... what kind of fun projects can you cook with Canva in the classroom with your kids? Here are 8 ideas to get you going!

1. Create Event Posters

This one is an easy one. If you have any sort of school event coming up, such as:

A music concert performance

A play

A dance show

An art show

A bake sale

A sports competition or race

You can easily have your students whip up a fun event poster! Invite them to get creative. The best thing is - you'll then have a handful of awesome posters to hang around the school to hype up your event.

For example, here is something I just created off of using one of the 'Poster' templates supplied by Canva!

This is a wonderful way to engage students, get them excited about the upcoming event and drum up buzz around the student body.

You can find Canva's poster templates here.

2. Make a Resume for a Relevant Character

This is another fun one if you're currently exploring any types of characters in your classroom.

Here are some ideas for each classroom:

English classroom: the protagonist in the novel you're currently reading, a student's favorite character from your reading list this year, or a student's current favorite author

History classroom: a historical figure from an event or time period that you're studying

Science classroom: a famous inventor or scientist from the past; great way to highlight some scientific discoveries and timeline in the resume!

Art/Music classroom: a famous deceased or alive artist or musician that you're studying!

Foreign language classroom: ask your students to create a resume for themselves in the language that you're teaching!

The ideas are endless, and this is a great way for your students to get truly creative in what they want to showcase in the resume itself. They can include a work experience breakdown, a brief biography about the person, a section on their education (if they have any!), a headshot, a 'fun facts' section using icons that Canva provides, etc..

Here is one example I just whipped up for Juliet from Romeo & Julie in Canva using their... you guessed it... Resume Templates!

You can find Canva's resume templates here.

3. Make a Wanted Poster for a Literary Villain

I personally think this idea is so fun and a great one for the younger kids.

If you're currently studying a particular novel, it'd be great to have your students design a wanted poster for the villain of that book. They can include things like their name, a picture, what they're wanted for and the reward for turning them in... dead or alive!

Here is one fun example of our favorite nose-less villain:

You can find Canva's WANTED poster templates here.

4. Make a Diagram

This one is highly applicable to all different classrooms.

One example for the science classroom is to invite students to create a diagram showing the water cycle or alternatively, create a labelled diagram of a flower or of a cell!

5. Do a Climate Change Project

This is a unit of learning I've seen popping up more and more in recent years.

A great way to engage creativity in a serious topic like climate change is to add a Canva spin to it so students can explore their understanding further.

Maybe you ask them to create a piece of art that, in their opinion, exemplifies climate change.

Here are a few things you can give them as options:

A poster

An infographic

A little workbook of top tips

A presentation on the top effects of climate change

Here is an infographic template example that Canva provided all about climate change!

6. Make a Cover

This one is vague but it applies to so many classrooms.

Music classroom: create a cover for a vinyl or a CD

English classroom: create a book or ebook cover or a cover for their expository or persuasive essay; create a modern or abstract book cover for a classic

Here is a book cover example!

7. Create a Graph or a Chart

Canva also has graphing capabilities built into their website. So now, you can ask students to create a graphical version of their research results in Canva!

Great for the math classroom or any classroom involving the use of surveys, polls, interviews or statistics where students can present their key findings via graphics. This would be a great thing to implement for the science fair or as a creative form of a lab report.

This is also a great way to teach data visualization from an earlier age.

Here is an example idea:

8. Back-to-School Get to Know Me

You can have students make a "get to know me" graphic of themselves!

They can include things like:

Photos: Collage of their family and friends

Text: What's their name? What are their favorite foods? Colors?

Pin up the graphics around the classroom so students can get to know each other by walking around and exploring what others have made.

This is also a great way for kids to really take ownership of their design and show who they are!

Here is an example!

You can find Canva's photo collage templates here.

If you're curious for more teaching resources made in Canva...

Sign up to our waitlist to be the first to hear about our brand new online training on creating Canva teaching resources for YOUR classroom! Those on the waitlist will get special early access plus possible special bonuses! Sign up here.

I actually have a free online class where I walk you through how to create teaching resources as well that you can join by clicking HERE. You can also get a PD Certificate after you take the free class!

Here's also a podcast episode I did a few months ago where I talk through how to create awesome teaching resources using PowerPoint, Keynote or Google Slides.

Download your copy

Would you like to take a copy of this with you? Click the button below and a copy of this will be sent directly into your inbox.

Click here to download

Be the first to join my brand new course..."Create Beautiful Teaching Resources, Fast" Online Course!

Create Beautiful Teaching Resources, Fast is an online, self-paced course for teachers who want to create amazing resources for their classroom.

In this course, you will go from feeling overwhelmed, time-poor and lacking ideas to feeling like a smart, savvy designer who can quickly make custom teaching resources that are worthy of selling on Teachers Pay Teachers.

The Waitlist will get first access to join the course PLUS a special bonus upon joining the program! Join the waitlist to get exclusive, priority access.

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8 Creative Canva Projects You Can Do WITH Your Students in the Classroom

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The theme of this month and next month on this blog is all about creating teaching resources, but this week - we thought we'd do a fun twist and focus on projects that you can do using Canva WITH your students in the classroom.

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Posted in

Cool Tools, Creating Accessibility, Student Creation

Recently, I read the article " Best Read Alouds on YouTube" from the website We are Teachers. This article is full of great YouTube channels where favorite picture books are read aloud by a variety of personalities.

The read-aloud portion of my day was always one of my favorites. Whether as a classroom teacher or as a media specialist, I relished the opportunity to share my reader's voice with my students. I tried to bring the story alive and I felt an inner sense of pride when the kids would listen to the story with rapt attention. But there is always a moment in my teaching life that has stood out. One year, I was teaching language arts to a really rowdy group of 8th graders, most of whom were reading significantly below grade level. We were doing a unit on poetry, slugging through the classics, when a student asked if he could read his favorite poem aloud to the class. I was so excited that he had a favorite poem that I immediately agreed and listened in awe as he presented us with an amazing version of My Beard by Shel Silverstein.

This performance kicked off a really cool string of days where the kids searched out their favorite poems, practiced reading them aloud and then performed them for the rest of the class. Student engagement was high, but most of all, students were practicing their fluency and really digging into text so that they were able to read their favorites with voices that would entrance and capture the attention of their classmates.

I am thinking that it is time for students to share their read-aloud voices with us. Instead of listening to an adult voice, it is their turn to bring stories to life. I know that we don't have the time in our day to have 25-30 kids read their favorite stories or passages to the class, but we can use our technology to give them the chance to record their favorite stories for their classmates. (Or their parents, or their siblings, or just you, or really, just themselves)

Students can select their favorite picture book or passage from a book and practice their fluency until they have all of the confidence of a kindergarten teacher singing the ABC song. Of course, students might need to see a few examples of awesome read-alouds, which is where you, oh amazing teacher come in. If reading aloud isn't your thing, click on the article above and fill the brains of your students with excellent examples from one of the YouTube channels listed in the article. Once they feel like the read-aloud rockstar they are, choose one of the platforms listed below and let them get on with their bad selves. Imagine the listening library that your students will create for one another. Imagine the fluency practice they will be getting! And don't think that this idea is just for little kids. Big kids like to read aloud too. They can choose picture books or pieces of their favorite novels. Just get them reading and sharing their voice with their peers!

Flipgrid: Create an entire grid dedicated to read-alouds. Students can choose to sit in front of their devices and show the pages of their book as they read aloud, or you can rig up a stand where the camera points at the book only and the student narrates from behind the screen. Shockingly enough, some of our students are a little camera shy. Students can then visit the read-alouds of their classmates, leave feedback, or suggest new titles for their friends to read. I bet you will find there is a lot of natural voice-over talent in your classrooms.

Seesaw: Students can add their read-alouds to their journal and their stories can be shared with families and other students in the classroom. Just like with Flipgrid, students can either hold their books in front of the camera or can hide behind the camera as they turn pages and bring their stories to life.

Padlet: Padlet has a nifty tool that allows you to record a video directly into a Padlet post. You can create a shared Padlet and student can record right on the Padlet for their classmates to see. The only drawback to the Padlet is that videos can only be five minutes long. This might be a great option for those shorter, favorite passages from older readers.

Screencastify: Using the free Screencastify chrome extension, students can record their read-aloud using their Chromebook camera and microphone. Once their video is recorded, students can then put their videos into a Google Slide presentation or upload directly to a class YouTube channel. If it were me, I would create shared Slides presentations that were themed by genre. Then I would put the links to the Slides presentation in Google Classroom, students could create their videos and add them to the correct presentation. My favorite part about this is that you will have have a library of read-alouds that you can use with future classes.

I would love to hear your ideas about how you would get your students creating their own read-aloud. What tools would you use? How would you get them to interact with your new library? How will you motivate them to join in?

Posted in

Cool Tools, Student Creation

Flashcards are a tried and true educational tool that have a place in just about every classroom. From vocabulary words to math theorems to important places, flashcards have been used by students in just about every grade level.

Sometimes, students get together to drill each other on flashcards, but for the most part, the creation of flashcards is a very solitary experience. But now we can make the creation of flashcards a more collaborative activity for students by using Pear Deck's Flashcard Factory.

Using Flashcard Factory is a simple as 1, 2, 3:

One: Create your study set/vocabulary list in Flashcard Factory

TWO: Initiate the live activity with your students by clicking on the red "Play Flashcard Factory" button. Students will be paired up and separated into two groups; day shift and night shift. If you are unhappy with the groupings, you can use the shuffle button to remix the students. Once students have gone to sit with their partners, you can launch the factory and student pairs will draw images and write sentences that define the terms.

THREE: As a class, students and teachers review the created flashcards. If the flashcard is an awesome example of the definition of the term, it gets voted in. If the flashcard is weak and doesn't pass muster, it gets left on the factory floor. Students are encouraged to discuss and debate each flashcard, building an even greater knowledge and understanding of the word.

When you have created a study set using student materials, you can then "ship" your new flashcards right to Quizlet. Quizlet then lets you share the completed study set with your students via Google Classroom so that they can study or play games with the sets when they are ready.

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To use this new and awesome tool, go to www.peardeck.com and join up/sign in and click on "Start a Vocab List." Happy flashcarding!

Posted in

Building Relationships, Cool Tools, Creating Accessibility, Student Creation

This summer, I attended a conference and Joe Sanfelippo, the author of Hacking Leadership and The Power of Branding, was a keynote speaker. He passionately spoke with us about the idea that educators need to share what is happening in our classrooms with our families and the community at large. Joe wants us to build relationships while we flatten the walls of our school and broadcast student voices. A major point he hit on is that we need to share our stories to build relationships with our families because if we don't show them what we are doing in our classrooms all day, families create their own truths. By using tools like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, we can reach our families and give them a peek into what is happening in our classrooms every day.

I love his ideas and his passion, but I know that some teachers are hesitant to begin this journey because they feel that they don't have time to be snapping pics and crafting posts for the interwebs to view. They are more focused on the teaching and learning that is going on in their classrooms and not necessarily on sharing all of the wonderful things that are happening within their walls.

Would you be excited if I told you that there is a tool out there that allows you to inspire learning, engage your students, create amazing activities, give students opportunities to explain their thinking and share their voices, and communicate with parents all while saving teacher time? Well, there is a tool and that tool is called Seesaw!

Seesaw is considered to be a digital portfolio and while it is definitely a place where students can collect and reflect on their learning, it is so much more than a digital portfolio. Seesaw gives students powerful creative tools to capture their learning but it doesn't stop there. Once students have added materials to their online journal, those learning moments are then shared with their teachers and even more importantly, their families! Families can view their child's work in the Seesaw app right from their phone, tablet or computer. And since families are already connected, the teacher can send out daily updates, announcements, cute pics of students at work, videos of happenings in the classroom and weekly newsletters.

As a communication tool, Seesaw gives students an audience for their work. It gives families a window into what's going on every day in their child's classroom. It, as Joe Sanfelippo suggests we do, flattens the walls of your school and broadcast student voices. Teachers can quickly and easily share all of the amazing things that happen every day in their classroom with just a few clicks of a button.

As a teaching and learning tool, Seesaw excels! The teacher can create activities for students to engage with. These activities can be varied, but the point of them is that it is an opportunity for students to "show what they know." Seesaw gives students creation tools like a camera to create a video or still images, and drawing tools and text features so that they can explain a concept, write and reflect, capture an experiment or share their newfound knowledge.

When you see Seesaw in action, you will know that it is going to be the tool that will be a game changer for you. I found this awesome video from fellow user, Suzanne Awrtey, that shows some quick ideas about using Seesaw with primary age children. If you don't want to watch the entire video, check out clips at 2:44, 3:12, 4:10, 4:43 and 5:49.

It might seem overwhelming for a teacher new to Seesaw to come up with activities for their students, but fear not for Seesaw now has a library with activities that are already created by fellow teachers. Browse through and select activities that match your grade level and subject, hit the "Share" button, and you are in business! Just look at some of the amazing activities I found!

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Once you begin using Seesaw in your classroom, you will find that Seesaw makes the paperwork beast easier to manage since you won't be lugging papers back and forth every night. Instead, you can see and hear what your students are thinking and create new opportunities for learning based on their responses. The best part is that Seesaw works on all devices! It works in an environment where every student has a device just as well as in a room where you only have 1 or five devices. Students can still use Seesaw as part of a center activity or as a journal activity. You don't have to be 1:1 to be able to implement Seesaw in your classroom.

As you are reading about Seesaw, you might be worrying about who will be able to see the work of each student. Don't worry because privacy is a big deal with Seesaw. By default, all student accounts are private to the classroom only and you decide when it is time to begin sharing student work. When you are ready, you invite parents to be a part of your Seesaw community, and once they join, they only have the ability to see the work of their own child or any announcements that you send to the class. And unlike other tech companies, Seesaw doesn't collect or sell student and teacher data, nor do they claim ownership of any material you put into Seesaw.

The takeaway from all of this is that Students are empowered when they use Seesaw. The creative tools allow for choice, collaboration, and sharing. During this process students reflect and apply critical thinking skills, and these insights are shared with important audiences.

Who is Seesaw for? Every student from PreK to grade 12. And the best part? Seesaw is free for teachers and families! The free Seesaw account allows the teacher to have up to three Seesaw classes and 100 activities in use. Of course, if you fall in love with Seesaw, there are upgraded options that give you even more of the good stuff.

To get started with Seesaw, go to seesaw.me and create a free account. Or, if you want to try out Seesaw Plus for 30 days, click on this link before you create your account. One of the awesome things about Seesaw is their PD program where you can be a self-directed learner by using their "Help" center. In fact, here is their " Get Started " guide. They also have an amazing PD in your PJs program to help you learn at your own pace.

What are you waiting for? School is starting and your students are ready to share their voices! Make Seesaw a part of your classroom this year.

Posted in

#onenewthing, Creating Accessibility, Google Classroom, Student Creation, Teacher Workflow

It is almost time for summer break, where all teachers stop working and spend the summer working on their tans while they sip frosty beverages by the pool!

HAHAHAHAHAHA....excuse me for a second. I think I might have just laughed so hard that I peed a little.

This summer, like every summer, most of us are going to spend significant time on our teaching craft. Self-directed learning, grad classes, conferences, seminars, professional books, team plannings, curriculum overhauls; you name it, we are doing it.

My district is hosting a Twitter challenge where teachers are encouraged to tweet about one new thing they are working on this summer. This new thing can be something for school or something personal. For example, my #onenewthing on a personal level is I am going to try running a mile...without dying. On a professional level, my #onenewthing is attending ISTE for the first time to hopefully learn more about using edtech to personalize learning. When you think about what you want your classroom to be like next year, what one new thing are you going to focus on this summer? Can I make some suggestions?

Master Teacher and Student Workflow in the Classroom

If you haven't yet embraced it, make learning how to use Google Classroom your #onenewthing. Google Classroom provides you with the ability to create a well-defined workflow for yourself and your students. Get yourself organized. Get your students organized. Make it the one-stop-shop for your students. Use it as a place where students can create, collaborate and share. One of my favorite ways to use Google Classroom is as a way to give timely feedback to students. A great resource to help you get started is 50 Things You Can Do with Google Classroom by Alice Keeler and Libbi Miller.

If you aren't the book-buying type, check out the Google Classroom section of www.alickeeler.com or the Google Classroom section of the Shake Up Learning website.

Increase Student Engagement and Amplify Student Voice

Have you been acting as the "sage on the stage" in your classroom? Does all information run through you and you direct access to content while controlling the pace with which students interact with said content and show mastery? Do your students all show mastery in the exact same way and either turn in identical answers on assessments or projects that are almost identical to each other? If you are ready to start giving students ownership of their learning and a choice in how they show what they know, then make your #onenewthing all about student empowerment and student agency through voice and choice in the classroom.

Sure, you can use Google Classroom to pass out and collect assignments and you can use other Google tools to provide lecture notes and guided learning opportunities, but if you become more innovative and embrace learning in a digitally rich environment, Google Classroom and other GSuite for Edu apps can have a profound impact on student learning. Instead of just having your students write a paper, why not give them a choice of tools to use to either create an infographic, a video, a presentation or any other way they might decide best allows them to show their learning? Perhaps your students will combine Google Draw and Screencastify to explain their mathematical thinking and create a visual of the problem they are solving. Or maybe your students will use Google tools to collaborate with other students in the next classroom, the next city or the next state.

To get started with this #onenewthing, check out one of these three awesome books (click on each cover for more information):

Package Lessons to Allow for Choice, Pace, and Place

Are you ready to take that increased student engagement and amplified student voice and kick it up a notch? Are you ready to be a "guide on the side" and give students the ability to learn at their own pace and perhaps even in their own place? If so, then make HyperDocs your #onenewthing. HyperDocs are lesson designing for the 21st-century classroom because it removes the teacher from the front of the room and creates opportunities for the students to engage with content in a way that forces them to move from consumption to creation. The tenants of a HyperDoc require a student to engage, explore, explain, apply, share and reflect on their learning. Since the lesson is packaged in a digital format (which means that you can give students a choice in how they access content), it allows the teacher to remove themselves from the front of the room and assist students on an individual basis as they work through the HyperDoc. And since students are not bound by a traditional lecture session, they are able to work at their own pace, often in their own place, seeking out assistance as needed. To learn more about HyperDocs, check out the official website, https://hyperdocs.co/ or explore the HyperDocs Facebook group to interact with other teachers on this HyperDoc journey. There is also an awesome book that will walk you through the philosophy and creation of Hyperdocs.

Gives Students a Platform to Share and Celebrate Their Awesomeness

We live in a Youtube world where people have become millionaires by sharing videos of the most mundane aspects of their lives. I cannot even count the number of times I have seen my kids watching videos of other kids play video games, playing with slime, unwrapping boxes or sharing their thoughts and beliefs about any random topic that pops into their minds. Our students want to be heard. They want to leave a footprint and they want to see what their peers are up to. Not only do kids want to see each other, but their parents want to be able to see what they are doing as well. That is why learning how to use social platforms like Flipgrid or Seesaw might be a great #onenewthing.

Flipgrid bills itself as a place for students to go to share ideas and learn together. Give your students a prompt. Give your students a place to share. Allow them to be creative and express themselves as individuals. Spark discussion and find opportunities to share with other Flipgrid classes from around the globe! Or, keep your discussions personal and give students a chance to speak directly to you without other distractions. Check it out and I promise you won't be disappointed.

Seesaw is is a student-driven digital portfolio that empowers students to independently document what they are learning at school. The family of each student has the opportunity to connect with the Seesaw classroom to see videos, pictures, and the awesome work of their very own child.

What Should Your One New Thing Be?

I know that trying new things in the classroom can be daunting and intimidating, but never forget that your students are trying something new every single day at school. Spending the summer as a learner is an amazing way to connect with your students. If you try out any one of these new things, or any new thing for that matter, you are modeling risk-taking and growth mindset for your students. Be a learner! Be a risk taker! Try out just #onenewthing this summer that will help turn your fall classroom into a place where learners feel engaged and empowered.

Posted in

Cool Tools, G-Suite for Education, Student Creation

Recently, I had a high school French language teacher approach me to ask for help designing an activity where students research Parisian monuments and locations of interest, report pertinent information and show pictures and location of the monuments. And of course, since this is a French class, they would need to use their French language skills as they report on all of these interesting sites.

I immediately knew what tools to share with her; Google MyMaps and Screencastify. MyMaps allows for students to collaborate on the same map, write interesting information right on the map, and add images to their points of interest. Once the students create the written and visual portion of the assignment, they can use Screencastify to record a personal tour guide narrative as they click through their points of interest.

The steps to set-up the project were relatively easy since students will be doing most of the creation. Michelle, the French teacher, created a MyMap with the satellite view that plunked the user right in the center of Paris. She copied the map four times to share with each of her classes, made the maps editable by anyone with the link and then grabbed the share link to put into an assignment in Google Classroom. Expectations for students are that they are to pick three or four points of interest in Paris to research and provide basic visitor information that would entice tourists to come to take a look.

Since multiple students are sharing the same MyMap, they can create their own layer to house their points of interest. The layer building process is very easy:

Click on the layer name (should currently be called Untitled Layer). Students type in their names. Once someone grabs the first layer, they will need to add a new layer by clicking the "Add Layer" button and then add their name to

Students type their place of interest or monument into the search bar at the top of MyMaps

Once the location has been identified, they can either click the "+" button on the details dialog box or click the "Add a Marker" icon next to the hand icon on the map.

Now they can add details by typing in the text box and add images by clicking on the camera icon. Images can be added from a Google search or pulled from a student's Google Drive. Multiple images can be added to any point of interest on a MyMap.

They can then use the bucket tool and select a color for all of their pins. This allows them to quickly differentiate their pins from those of other students.

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Now comes the fun part! Once the students have created their 3-4 point of interest, they will act as a tour guide and share their findings by narrating (in French, of course) as they click through their map points and images. They will use Screencastify to record their work since it so easy to use and stores right in Google Drive.

The final part of the activity will have the students posting their Screencastify videos into a collaborative Google Slides presentation. Instead of having to sit and listen to presentation after presentation like they have done in the past, students will select five or six videos created by their peers, watch them and then talk about which Parisian sites they would like to visit based on what they saw in the videos.

I love this project! It allows students to choose the sites that interest them the most, gives them opportunities to create in a digital environment while they practice their language skills, and allows for peer-to-peer feedback on the final project. I can see this type of activity being used in so many different subject areas and classes. Why don't you give it a try?

Posted in Cool Tools, G-Suite for Education, Student Creation

Learning is more than listening and writing down correct answers on a worksheet or test. Learning is when students take concepts in, turn them this way and that, look at them from all angles and remix them with concepts already discovered, and then create something new as they construct new knowledge for themselves. Students need to be more than consumers, they need to be creators. They also need the opportunity to share their creations with a larger audience which allows their creations to be more meaningful and authentic. If you want to give your students some opportunities to create in a digital space with Chromebooks as their platform, try out one of these awesome edtech tools.

Google Drawings: An often overlooked and definitely underused program in G Suite is Google Drawings. Drawings gives the user a blank canvas that, just like every other application in the Google product line, allows for creativity and collaboration. At its most basic, Drawings acts as a desktop publisher. Start with a blank canvas, add text and images, then download or share. Drawings can be downloaded as a PDF, png, or jpg. Drawings can also be published directly to the web! As a creation tool, the possibilities are endless, but here are a few suggestions:

Students create diagrams during lab work

Students create an infographic to showcase understanding of a concept

Students create a Drawing that explains their process and thinking about a math problem

Students use Drawings and Google Maps to teach about historical or geographical concepts

Students create a poster for projects like the science fair - look at my amazingly awesome example!

Book Creator for Chrome: Book Creator bills itself as "the simplest way to create and share ebooks in your classroom." The program runs as a Chrome app and students (or teachers) can combine text, images, audio, and video to create a media-rich book that is hosted online and can be shared with other students, teachers, parents, and communities. The creation tools are very easy to use and making high-quality pages is a cinch even for the youngest user. The camera and microphone features allow the creator to add personal images and narration of their text. Creators are able to link to their Google Drives and pull content directly into their ebook, which allows for app smashing where students create content with other tools and then bring the content in from where it is stored in Google Drive. There is also a feature that allows for a Google image search (the best part is that the search will only bring back images labeled for reuse). When it is time to share, the book can be published online, downloaded as an epub, or printed.

Of course, a natural use of Book Creator would be to write and publish stories and poetry books. However, it can be used by your students to create a wide variety of products like nonfiction text, research journals, or how-to manuals. If you want to see how other teachers have used Book Creator, check out this Pinterest Board or look at the book below.

Powtoon: Powtoon is an animated story builder that allows students to create engaging explainer videos on a wide range of topics. By using storyboards or templates along with items and sounds from an extensive library, students can create a professional looking video that will wow even the most critical teacher. Concept explanation and idea sharing take a brand new path while students learn design elements and video editing techniques. Instead of having every student get up in front of the classroom and read from their notes, have them create a Powtoon, post the link to it in a shared space like Padlet or Google Slides and then have students interact with the videos. You could even have the creator of the video create an exit ticket that students need to complete after they have watched the video selections.

Here are a few examples of concept videos created by students:

There are a multitude of creation options out there on the interwebs. These three just happen to be some of my personal favorites. Introduce these to your students or allow them to go and search out one of their own. The point is to get them creating. Let them show you what they know in new and innovative ways instead of ending every unit with a paper and pencil test or a worksheet.

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Posted in Cool Tools, Creating Accessibility, Student Creation Recently, I read the article " Best Read Alouds on YouTube" from the website We are Teachers. This article is full of great YouTube channels where favorite picture books are read aloud by a variety of personalities.

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We care about your students' privacy. CoSpaces Edu takes student privacy very seriously and is COPPA and FERPA-compliant.

We have several measures in place to make sure that the data that you and your students store in CoSpaces Edu is always kept safe.

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CoSpaces Edu for kid-friendly 3D creation and coding

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Boost your kids' learning experience by letting them invent, build and code their own creations. Runs on mobile, tablet and desktop, including Chromebooks.

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Screen Recording

Screen recording (often called screen casting) is the process of capturing whatever you see on your computer screen while simultaneously recording your voice. Many screen recording tools allow you to choose what you wish to record: your screen, your webcam, or both. By choosing "both," you can insert an image of yourself in the corner of the screen cast recording, which can make a recording more personal by allowing the viewer to actually see you speaking.

The image below illustrates a typical screen casting workflow. First, you would open the computer program or screen that you wish to record. In this example, it's the AVID Open Access website. Then, after launching the screen recording software, you would select what you wish to record (screen, webcam, or both), and then start recording. You can usually manage the recording process with on-screen controls. In this example, both screen and webcam are recording, so you can preview the webcam at the bottom left of your screen.

While screen casting is a popular and useful strategy for teachers who wish to create an instructional video for a flipped classroom or a distance-learning lesson, it can be even more powerful in the hands of your students. If you are wondering how you might use screen casting in your classroom, consider some of the integration ideas below.

Integration Ideas for Screen Recording

Teach Backs: Have students use a screen recorder to explain a concept that they have learned. Essentially, they are "teaching back" the lesson content. As teachers, we know the power of teaching. We often don't really understand a concept or topic completely until we have to teach it, and this process lets our students be the teachers. This strategy integrates well into a jigsaw activity, or you can use it for both formative and summative assessments. It can also be a virtual alternative to student presentations.

Whiteboard Animations: In some ways, this is like the teach back strategy. However, rather than narrating content that has been previously created, students explain themselves in real time as they record themselves annotating on a digital whiteboard. This allows them to sketch out the concepts as they are explaining, much like they would do at a classroom whiteboard or while sketchnoting. This is a popular strategy with math teachers who want to see and hear their students working out a problem.

Documentation of Learning: In this application, students use screen casting software to periodically record their progress. This works really well for performance skills, like public speaking, playing an instrument, or doing a push-up. It also applies really well to science experiments, where students can document their work and analyze the results.

Storytelling: There is power in telling stories. It can make abstract concepts come alive and make them more understandable. It's also a way for students to apply the content they are learning to the life they have lived; this makes the learning relevant and real. Screen casting tools can give students a platform for telling, capturing, and sharing these stories. One powerful method is to have students first create a slideshow, and then screencast themselves talking through it.

Peer and Self-Evaluations: Video is a great format for capturing feedback. Sometimes, this is through self-reflection, and sometimes this is to offer insights to a peer. For instance, after a student has created some form of a digital product, they can present it on their screen and walk the listener through it-explaining which parts they feel turned out really well and which parts they still wonder about improving. Similarly, students can offer feedback to peers using this same strategy. This works great for providing feedback on writing and presentations since the reviewer can show the project on their screen and record their annotations as they provide feedback. The visuals help to avoid misunderstandings and add clarity to the narration.

Classroom Newsletters: Parent newsletters do not have to be created by the teacher nor do they need to be something that is printed and sent home in a Friday folder. In fact, allowing students to create these newsletters through video screen casts can make this communication come alive for families, and families will love seeing and hearing their family member take a turn as the voice of your class newsletter. It's still helpful for you to give some structure by providing some parameters and a process, but then empower students to do most of the work. Let them help generate the script, create a slideshow to guide the talking points, and take turns recording the weekly message in their own voices.

Screen Recording Tools

Screen recording tools are available for virtually any platform or device. In many cases, there are several excellent options from which to choose, and it often comes down to personal preference or specific features that you are seeking. Be sure to consider your learning objectives first, and then find the best tool to help you accomplish that goal. Of course, if your district recommends a specific tool or has purchased one for your use, that will be your best option.

If you don't have access to a paid screen recording tool, you can probably find a free one to meet your needs. In many cases, these products offer limited free features to get you started and then require a purchase or subscription to access the premium features. Because of this blend of free and premium features, these are often referred to as "freemium" products. Most tools offer the option to trim the beginning or end of the video, and many allow you to edit out parts in the middle. Some allow you to highlight your cursor or annotate the screen during a recording.

Use the following list to introduce yourself to some of the most popular screen recording tools available. You may want to try out several of them, and then determine which is the best fit for you and your students.

Loom ( Tips)

Record videos through the Loom website or convenient Google Chrome extension, which makes it ideal for any device, including Chromebooks. Finished videos are stored for free in the Loom site, but they can also be downloaded if you prefer to share them through YouTube or a shared drive. Loom offers its premium version free to students and teachers through a simple verification process. Videos can be up to 45 minutes long.
Screencastify
The Google Chrome extension makes this another great choice for Chromebooks. The free version allows for editing and exports to YouTube or Google Drive. Recordings are limited to 5 minutes with the free version.
Screencast-O-Matic
Screencast-O-Matic can be launched from the website or through their Google Chrome extension. With the free version, you can record up to 15 minutes, trim the beginning and end, and publish to YouTube or Google Drive.
Vimeo
Vimeo can be accessed via their website or Google Chrome extension. Vimeo offers unlimited recordings and time limits as well as the option to record screen, webcam, or both. Videos can be downloaded, embedded, or shared with a link.
QuickTime
Since QuickTime is included on Apple computers, this is an ideal option for screen recording on those devices.
Windows Game Bar
To activate this tool, click the Windows key and the letter G at the same time on your PC. While created to record Xbox video game play, it works well to record your screen with audio.
iOS Screen Recorder
This option is available on iPads or iPhones with iOS 11 or later. This recorder can be accessed by swiping down from the right corner of the screen or by going to Settings > Control Center > More Controls.
Educreations
This iPad app is a variation on traditional screen recorders, in that you can only record the whiteboard area within the program. However, it does allow you to insert images and record your pen strokes as you write, draw, or work math problems, and it can be a great way to create tutorials. Once finished, you can share the recording with a link, embed code, or Google Classroom.
Explain Everything
This is another whiteboard recording tool, but it works on any device. You can create up to three projects with the free version. Create a project from scratch or use a template. You can also collaborate on a project using a shared board with voice chat.

Seesaw ( Tips)

If you plan to share your recordings through Seesaw, you may want to use the integrated screen recording tool to create them. This internal recorder allows you to record yourself with the webcam, or you can record the drawing canvas, including pen strokes. Recordings are limited to 5 minutes.

Video Production

If you wish to move beyond lightly edited, one-take recordings, you will probably want a more full-featured video production tool. These tools allow for deeper editing and numerous creative options, such as transitions, audio tracks, video effects, layered tracks, green screen effects, multiple export formats, and more sophisticated editing options. Because these products include additional features and more robust options, they also require more time to master. Still, while the learning curve is steeper, the payoff is often worth it since these tools offer almost unlimited creative opportunities for you and your students.

Integration Ideas for Video Production

Once you enter the world of video production, you unlock nearly unlimited creative options. These opportunities are usually limited more by your classroom situation than the software itself. For instance, you'll need to consider how much time you can allocate to a video project. It will take more time for your students to learn the ins and outs of the software before they are able to produce a finished product, and as the projects become more complex, they will also take longer to write, record, edit, and publish. However, if you choose to have students work on multiple video projects, they will become more efficient with each opportunity, thereby reducing the amount of time that you will need to routinely dedicate to the project.

Even when a project requires a considerable investment of time, it still may be worth it. There are many benefits of digging deeper into a project, including the opportunity to develop transferable life skills, like communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and problem-solving. Bigger projects also give students the opportunity to develop perseverance while exploring course content on a much deeper level than they normally would.

The following list of integration ideas are just idea starters for you. In your classroom, you are the expert and will want to design projects that meet your learning outcomes. However, this list may give you a foundation upon which to build, combine, refine, and reinvent your own video production ideas.

Newscasts: This is a great way to involve an entire class on one project, and it can be adapted to nearly any topic or content area. Have your students determine their audience and purpose, and then collaboratively brainstorm the lineup of features and news stories for the broadcast. Divide students into teams (perhaps one story per team), and then have teams divide up the responsibilities. Once each group has created their story, have them combine them into one finished video production.

Narrated Slideshow: This final product may be similar to a screen cast, but the process is different. For this activity, have students first write a script that addresses your academic prompt or leading question. Then, have students use the audio feature in the video production software to record themselves reading the script. Once the audio is in place, have them insert images, text, and transitions to visually represent each of the ideas that they are explaining.

Documentaries: Documentaries are a great catalyst for student inquiry and research. Given a topic, the students need to find the most informative and insightful content they can to include in their script. This gives students an authentic reason to research and seek out answers. It's also a great opportunity to integrate primary sources, like photographs, letters, field trips, or personal interviews. Personal interviews can be especially powerful because they add in a human element and make the topic more personal. Email and videoconferencing tools open up new opportunities to connect with experts beyond the classroom and can enrich the experience.

How-To Videos: YouTube is filled with how-to videos, so your students are probably already quite familiar with them. How-to videos can be a great video activity for procedural or task-oriented topics. Once again, it allows students to become the teachers of the content rather than just the consumers. The project is both a learning activity as well as a way for you to assess your students' learning.

Dramatizations: These videos can range widely in scope. They can be role-plays that are quickly captured in one take, or students can develop them into larger productions that become full-featured mini-movies with complex storylines. English language arts teachers might have students reenact a scene from a story or play, or they might ask students to rewrite a scene to be set in a different time period or setting. Younger students might act out a fairy tale. History teachers could have their students conduct interviews with historical figures or reenact a historical event, such as the First Continental Congress. Science teachers might have students dramatize science concepts, like cell division, with each student being a part of the cell and talking about their function in the process. It's also a good idea to involve students when creating the project parameters. They often have great ideas, and the additional ownership can be motivating.

Digital Storytelling: In its simplest form, digital storytelling is the use of multimedia tools to tell a story. Because the definition can be quite broad, the opportunities and options are likewise broad, and there is definitely overlap with dramatizations. To create a digital storytelling assignment, consider your content area and determine what "story" your students can tell. Is it a story of their learning in your class? Is it the story of a science experiment? Is it a documentation of their artistic creation process? Is it their own personal story of how the academic content connects with them and their lives? The options are nearly limitless.

Extended Productions: This type of project includes things like time capsules, video portfolios, and class yearbooks. These take a longer time to write, film, and produce. In fact, they may even extend over the course of an entire school year. In some cases, they might even extend throughout a student's experience in a school building. For instance, they might create their own middle school learning journal. With any of these extended projects, it is important to do regular, formal check-ins on their progress. It's also a good idea to embed learning activities through the process to keep it connected to current learning. These might even culminate with a public showing, giving the students a more authentic audience (and additional motivation) for their work.

Stop-Motion Animations: String together a series of still images to give the illusion of moving objects. This animation technique is ideal for illustrating scientific concepts, like cell division. It can also be used effectively for storytelling. Move your characters little by little in each consecutive frame to have them move across the screen. Even the youngest learners have fun using LEGO people or paper characters to animate their story. In history class, you could create animated military maps or the addition of states during westward expansion.

Green Screen Magic: Using green screen (chroma key) effects, you can record yourself in front of a green screen, and then insert any video or image as your background during the production phase. This can be a great way to inspire your students' creativity and allow them to interact virtually with almost any content. For instance, they could be a tour guide to another country, a famous museum, or even the inside of the human body.

Video Production Tools

While you may find a tool or two that you can access free of charge, most of these production suites are "freemium" products. Therefore, you will need to determine if the free versions will meet your needs or if you need to explore a paid option.

While there are other products on the market, our list will explore options that include some degree of free access. As with any free service, you'll need to study the available features as well as limitations on maximum length for each video, storage limits, export formats, and available features.

WeVideo ( Tips)

WeVideo is a powerful online video editing solution, and it is one of the most popular options for students using Chromebooks. With the free plan, you can export up to 5 minutes of video per month. Free videos include a WeVideo watermark when exported.
iMovie
iMovie is the full featured video editing program from Apple. There are versions for both Mac and mobile iOS devices. If you have an Apple device, this is likely your best option since it is both powerful and free to Apple users.

Clipchamp ( Tips)

The free editor is quite robust, as it allows editing of video, image, and audio files, with the ability to add subtitles, filters, and visual effects, like slow motion. With the free version, you can record webcam videos up to 5 minutes in length and export videos up to 480p (standard definition).
Kapwing
The free Kapwing editor allows access to all Kapwing tools and projects up to 7 minutes long. Content stores on the site for 2 days, so this is best for quick projects. Final videos are public and can be downloaded. Kapwing offers a wide gallery of video tools beyond their editing studio (meme generator, subtitler, video resizer, etc.).
YouTube Studio
YouTube Studio is free and offers a few limited editing options for videos that you have uploaded to YouTube. This is not a full-featured editor, but you might choose this option if you simply wish to crop the beginning or end of your video or if you want to remove parts in the middle. You can also add a few simple effects, like blur and an audio track.
iMotion
iMotion is a time-lapse and stop-motion app for iOS devices. It's a free download with in-app purchases. There are numerous other apps available for both Android and iOS devices for creating videos with special effects, like stop-motion or green screen production. Search the App Store for ideas.

Multimedia That Includes Video

Sometimes, a project can go beyond video to include other forms of media, like audio, images, text, links, and more. For some multimedia projects, you might decide to require certain elements, and then allow freedom to create and customize beyond those requirements. For instance, you might define the final format (a video, for instance), but then allow for creativity within those broad parameters, or maybe you allow any final format as long as it includes a video. Oftentimes, the format is less important than whether students are actively and deeply engaging in their new learning and have an opportunity to create, communicate, collaborate, and solve problems.

Seesaw is an example of a multimedia creation tool. It allows students to draw, add images and shapes, and insert text, as well as record or upload video and screen cast their work with a voice recording. This mix of media types offers students many creative options for communicating their ideas.

Integration Ideas for Video and Multimedia

Most of the integration ideas for screen casts and video production can also apply to multimedia presentations. As with any classroom activity, the learning outcome should drive the activities and creation goals. The biggest difference with these multimedia creations is that the students have an expanded palette of options when creating. Also, depending on the tool that you choose, the toolkit may be available in one place. This simplicity can help students focus on the learning outcome rather than searching in multiple places for different tools.

Here are a few additional learning activities that apply nicely to multimedia production suites.

Show and Tell: Students use both visuals and words to communicate. The visuals might include images and video while words may come in the form of printed text or recorded audio. Since most of these tools allow for multiple forms of media on a single page, students can create interactive pages with multiple types of content, including video. Students might even use video to explain the other elements on the page.

Tell a Story: These tools are ideal for storytelling. This might include the broader definition of digital storytelling introduced earlier, or it might be a more literal definition of a story. Students can write, show, or tell their story using whatever multimedia tools they wish. Again, this can include video combined with other types of media.

Video Presentation: Some multimedia tools will allow students to export their final product as a video. This allows them to share their diverse media options in a single media platform: video. These presentations can be used for a variety of communication purposes, such as sharing back individual research, teaching back a concept, or connecting course content to a personal experience.

Reflections: This creative space can be a great opportunity to allow students to reflect on their learning journey in a format that best fits their communication style. Since multiple tools are present in one place, they can mix and match as desired. This process combines self-reflection with an opportunity to express themselves creatively.

Multimedia Creation Tools With Video Recording Options

There are a number of platforms that allow for multimedia creativity and include a built-in video recording tool. While video recording might not be their number one purpose, the inclusion of video can offer increased opportunities for creativity. Even though these video recordings do not offer editing options and must be recorded in one take, they can be powerful because of their overall simplicity and because they are merged with a variety of other creative options that go beyond video.

Seesaw ( Tips)

Seesaw started out as an online learning journal, but it has grown considerably and now features assignable activities. Even the free version offers an interface that allows students to post images, videos, drawings, documents, links, and text. The interface is both simple and powerful.
Buncee
Buncee allows you or your students to create multimedia slideshows. In addition to the ability to add text, images, and backgrounds, you can record and insert videos up to 3 minutes in length. The simple interface makes this a great multimedia option for learners of all ages.

Book Creator ( Tips)

Create online books with text, links, images, audio, and video. With the free online version, teachers can have one library with up to 40 books in it. The free version of the app offers one free book. Students can set up their own account, too. Finished books can be published digitally, downloaded as an eBook, or printed.
Adobe Spark
While not a traditional video creation tool, Spark allows you to create a video export from a series of slides. Each slide can include videos, text, photos, icons, and background music. You can also record a voice narration on individual slides, and then when you're finished, you can export the entire project as a video file.

A Creative Twist on Video Creation: Animations

There are a number of products available that allow you to create cartoonish or artistic video productions without the need to record your own video clips. With these tools, you create a series of scenes (or slides) using templates, sound clips, and props included in the program. You can typically add your own text to the slides but not audio or video. When you are finished designing, you can export the finished project as an animated video. This can be a fun way to share a message in a video format without needing to record your own video footage.

Integration Ideas for Video Animation

Once again, the ideas that work for other video formats can also work here. However, these video creations are oftentimes shorter in length. Because of this, they may lend themselves to a narrower or more focused message.

GIST Statements: A GIST statement is typically a short summary of 20 words or less. Animated videos can be a creative way for students to form and communicate these summaries. The cartoonish aspects of these tools can help make the concepts more visually memorable.

Elevator Speeches: Similar to GIST statements, these are short summaries of learning. They are sometimes called 60-second summaries, and the name comes from the idea that you should be able to share these ideas during a brief ride on an elevator. Short videos can be a great way to capture these summaries in a creative format.

5-Second Summaries: This is a spin-off of the YouTube trend of 5-second movie summaries. Students create a 5-second animation to recap the main concepts of their learning. They force students to reduce new learning to its essence. It can be both fun and challenging.

Thank-You Notes: Build in a social and emotional learning focus by having students write thank-you notes to a classmate, teacher, or someone else in their lives. A spin on this would be to have them write thank-you notes from one character to another in a story.

Book Trailers: Like movie trailers, book trailers are short videos introducing a book to an audience. The intention is for students to get others interested in reading the book (while also showing that they understand the book themselves). These trailers can be made with these animation tools or any of the other video tools described in this article.

Advertisements: Students can create a short animated video to advertise something. They could pretend to be a character in a story trying to sell something of value, or they could role-play a historical figure advertising themselves for a job or a political office. Science students could each take an element from the periodic table and create an ad for why their element should be chosen as the most important. Tech, art, or FACS classes could advertise products that they have personally created in class.

Powtoon
Create cartoon animations that can be exported as a video. The free version allows up to 3 minutes of HD video (and 100 MB of storage). While you can only access the free templates, music, and creative elements, these are likely enough to get you started. Finished products will also include the Powtoon branding. This is a good option for students who might be camera shy or are looking for a safe way to get started creating.
mysimpleshow
Create explainer videos in a whiteboard animation style. There is a four-step process where you draft, write, visualize, and finalize. Once you have created your script and made your visualization choices, mysimpleshow puts it together, complete with narration. Free videos are published as public videos and are accessed with a link.
Animoto
Create videos in an animated slideshow format. Add slides, and then drag and drop images, text, music, and other template content into the frame. Adjust the timing for each slide and export as a video. With the free plan, you can create unlimited videos in standard quality (720p) and choose from 50 music tracks, three fonts, and 30 color swatches.

Make It Conversational With Video Dialogue

Video can be powerful when it's a one-way form of communication. However, its potential can be amplified when it becomes a two-way communication stream, and there are several video tools that can help to make this happen in our classrooms.

In this spirit, this next set of tools and integration ideas is less about creating products than it is about creating virtual conversations. In most cases, this means video will be used for simple, one-take recordings that involve limited (or no) editing. However, these platforms are designed in a way that allows the video recordings to be connected in a more conversational format.

Typically, students will post an initial recording. After this, they will listen to the video recording of someone else and then respond with their own recording. This format can eliminate barriers for students who are not skilled at written responses or need more time to process their thoughts. It also allows conversations to happen asynchronously over longer periods of time. Because video allows viewers to see facial expressions and hear vocal inflections, students can communicate more nuanced messages through their posts with a reduced chance of misunderstandings.

Integration Ideas for Video Dialogue

The main concept behind these integration ideas is to connect people. This will most often mean connecting students in your classroom with each other. However, you can also broaden the conversation by going beyond the walls of your classroom. Consider connecting with another group of students you teach during a different class period. You could reach out to another teacher or even another school. To stretch your students even more and give them an authentic audience, consider connecting with community organizations, nursing homes, or targeted local citizens. Determine your learning goal, and then consider an audience that would be both feasible and meaningful. These connections can be both powerful and insightful learning opportunities.

Community Building: Video is a great way for your students to introduce themselves to each other. This community-building strategy works especially well at the beginning of a course or group project. Students post a video introducing themselves, and then they reply to others. In the case of a group project, you can have students respond to others in their groups. It is helpful to give students guidelines for what to include in their recordings as well as how to respond. When students respond to others for the first time, sentence stems can be especially helpful, and they can help share responses that are positive and supportive. You will also want to make sure that all students have responses to their posts.

Noticing and Wondering: This can be a great processing or introduction activity. Students observe something (like a natural phenomenon) or read something (like the beginning of a story), and then they record what they notice and what they wonder. Peers respond to these ideas. This can be a great discussion starter or an activity to engage students at the beginning of a lesson.

Two Stars and a Wish: This can be used as a reflection strategy during or after a lesson. Students share two stars (things they liked) and one thing they wish might be different next time. Students can listen to other students' posts and reply with follow-up thoughts or questions. You could even facilitate some sort of polling question based on these reflections and use the data to share your next lesson. You may use this poster (or a screenshot of it) to give students sentence stems to guide their responses.

Discussions: In this variation of a traditional discussion post, students submit their thoughts as videos rather than text. This allows students to asynchronously talk to each other. Like with the community-building example, students post both their thoughts and responses to other posts. Typically, the teacher will provide the initial prompt. If you wish students to respond with video, you may also want to model by posting your prompt as a video.

Philosophical Chairs: This strategy is part debate, part self-evaluation, and the structure can be customized. In general, students learn about a debatable topic and choose a side. Then, they post a video explaining why they took that position. It's usually helpful to label the post with "for" or "against." After that, students watch other posts (you determine how many). Students can reply to posts with their own thoughts. At the end of the activity, students would reexamine their position and determine their final stance on the topic. You can even have students keep a running journal where they recommit after each post they watch. While this is set up in a debate-style format, students are encouraged to be open to changing their positions as they learn more about the issue.

Q & A: In this format, the teacher provides the general topic, and then students pose their own wonderings or questions about it. Then, students read the "I Wonder..." questions from their peers and reply with their own thoughts and answers. This is a great way for students to process something that they have read or viewed for class and allows them to drive the discussion.

Peer Critiques: Students coach each other and offer performance tips in sports all the time. This strategy brings that practice to academics. Students post a video, and classmates respond with critiques. This practice lends itself really well to classes that "create" products; this might be art, shop, or FACS. It also works well in performance-based classes, like speech and music. It can be adapted to nearly any subject with the proper setup and directions. As with any other peer evaluation, sentence stems can help shape positive and constructive responses.

Asynchronous Interview Questions: This works really well if you can share this platform with audiences outside of the school. For instance, students could pose history questions to residents at a retirement home. The residents could then respond to the student questions, providing primary sources for class discussion.

Everybody Has a Story: This activity builds off the idea that everyone is unique and has something that makes them unmistakably themselves. This could be used as another community-building exercise, or it could be a way to study historical or fictional characters. One structure has students posing initial questions, with each student responding to the prompts with their story. Another option is to begin with each person sharing a unique story and others responding with follow-up questions.

Connect the Dots: In this variation, the video discussion is about finding connections between class content and the world beyond school. Each student can pose a question about something they are learning in class, and other students can respond with applications they see beyond the classroom.

Video Discussion Tools

Flipgrid ( Tips)

Flipgrid is a video discussion platform. The teacher creates the initial question or prompt, and then students can respond in a discussion-style format. Students can watch other posts, and then reply with their own video recordings. Flipgrid is a Microsoft product that is free for educators.
VoiceThread
VoiceThread is a media player with a highly interactive discussion space built into it. Ideas are presented in a slideshow-style format, and then participants can respond to slides with video, audio, or text comments. When responding with video, you can record screen annotations at the same time. The free account allows you to create up to five VoiceThreads. Students must be 13 years old to set up an account. This works best in the Google Chrome browser.

LMS Discussion Tools

Nearly every learning management system has a discussion tool, and most allow you to post in video format. Sometimes, you can combine text, video, and other media in a single post. Explore your LMS to see what options are available in your school's platform.

Make Your Video Interactive

This last section is not about creating videos, but rather, it's about "creating engagement" when watching a video. This is an important concept since the act of watching a video is inherently passive, and these tools offer you a way to confirm that someone did indeed watch your video, while also providing a way to get a glimpse into what they were thinking as they watched it. Typically, teachers will embed interactive questions or comments into the video watching experience. At specified points, the video will stop, and a prompt will appear. Oftentimes, the viewer will need to respond before the video will continue playing.

Integration Ideas for Interactive Videos

Student Accountability: While this is not really about student creation, teachers find it valuable nonetheless. As the teacher, you can embed your video into one of these tools to provide you with valuable viewing analytics as well as formative quiz question results. This allows you to determine if students actually watched and understood the video content.

Student Creation: This is where these tools become even more powerful. By having students create quiz questions for their videos, they must think critically about their purpose and what questions will measure the success of their message. Of course, the questions and interactions they add should align to your academic objectives.

Analysis and Discussion: While most of these tools provide ways to collect data on viewership, Vialogues allows you to set up a live, interactive discussion about a video being viewed. This not only makes the viewing experience collaborative, but it also makes it much more engaging and vibrant. You could set it up for your students to participate in, or you could have students create their own video for discussion.

Video Critique: You could use Vialogues for video critique rather than straight discussion. Because comments are time-stamped to specific locations in the video, you could have students critique videos and video content through this process. To make this most effective, provide students with criteria upon which they are reviewing the video. Students could even do this to their own videos to create a "director's narrative," where they explain their creative choices throughout the video that they have put together.

Video Engagement Tools

Depending on the tool, you will find various ways to embed interactivity into your video. The most common option is to insert questions at key stopping points. The most common question types are multiple-choice, true/false, and essay responses. Some platforms also allow you to insert your own voice notes. This can be helpful if you want to customize a video that you find on YouTube or another hosting platform.

When a viewer gets to a marked point in the video, the video stops, and the question or note appears. Once the viewer answers the question, the video continues. Some platforms even allow you to prevent viewers from skipping ahead without watching the video.

Most of these tools provide convenient dashboards that allow you to track participation in the video experience. They might report data about how viewers answered the embedded questions, the amount of video watched by each person, and the number of times each section has been viewed.

Vialogues is a little different in that it allows viewers to engage in a text-based conversation as they view the video content. With this tool, viewers can stop the video at any point and post time-stamped comments.

Edpuzzle ( Tips)

Edpuzzle allows you to upload your own video or use videos from common platforms, such as YouTube, Khan Academy, National Geographic, and TED Talks. You can embed true/false, multiple-choice, and essay questions, as well as voice comments. Choose if you want to restrict viewers from skipping ahead, and then share. Edpuzzle offers a user-friendly analytics dashboard for teachers, and you can create up to 20 Edpuzzle videos with the free account.
PlayPosit
PlayPosit is very similar to Edpuzzle. You can add videos (called bulbs) from an upload, YouTube, or Vimeo. Then, you can add "interactions," such as multiple-choice, free-response, fill-in-the-blank, discussion, or polls. As with Edpuzzle, you can set viewing limitations, like the ability to rewind or skip ahead. Analytics are available through a spreadsheet download, and with the free account, you get 100 total student attempts per month.
Vialogues
Vialogues fosters an interactive and collaborative video watching experience. Create your Vialogue by uploading a video or linking from YouTube or Vimeo. Then, invite participants. Participants can add time-stamped comments, and moderators can add polls, surveys, and multiple-choice questions to the discussion. Vialogues is free, and an embed code is also available.

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Imagine, Record, Create: 6 Ways to Unleash the Power of Video for Student Creation - AVID Open Access

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Screen recording (often called screen casting) is the process of capturing whatever you see on your computer screen while simultaneously recording your voice. Many screen recording tools allow you to choose what you wish to record: your screen, your webcam, or both.

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AI-powered visual workspace for team collaboration | Mural

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Boost team collaboration and innovation with Mural, the AI-powered visual workspace. Plan, strategize, and execute projects seamlessly on one intuitive tool.

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Bring design and dev closer

Introducing Dev Mode, a new space in Figma for developers. Bring clarity to designs and give developers the tools they need to translate them into code.

Explore Dev Mode

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Figma: The Collaborative Interface Design Tool

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Figma is the leading collaborative design tool for building meaningful products. Seamlessly design, prototype, develop, and collect feedback in a single platform.

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Educational 3D printer projects to do with kids

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As we enter 2021, many of us are stuck in regional lockdowns owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, and schools are closing. With that challenge on their hands, parents around the world are looking for solutions to keep their children out of mischief, keeping them from having too much time on their tech,…

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What process can teachers use to engage students' curiosity?

Many of us use a problem-solving model to help effectively and efficiently answer questions, make decisions, and solve problems. In engineering, they use the Engineering Design Process to solve problems; in the medical field, they use the OODA Loop method that originated in the military for combat operations to make decisions; and as teachers, we use instructional design models to design effective lessons. Inquiry is essentially another form of the problem-solving process.

To help guide your students through this inquiry process, we have developed the ANSWERS model. This process will help students think critically as they generate questions and search for answers. The model is flexible and can be used for quick inquiries that are part of a short lesson and also more complex and longer inquiry projects.

While it's important to complete the steps in the process, it's also important to recognize that the inquiry process is rarely linear. Students will find themselves weaving back and forth and between steps. For example, after they pose their question and start noting the possibilities, students may find themselves asking new questions, which leads them to consider new possibilities. It is important that they consider the end product, as well as their audience, as they plan and design how to share their findings. They will also need to review, reflect, and revise throughout the entire process. You may use and share this Searching for Answers: Inquiry Process poster to help guide students through these steps.

In this series of articles, we will dig more deeply into each step of the ANSWERS model and offer digital strategies, tools, and templates that you can use as you teach your students to learn via the inquiry process.

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Engage Students by Cultivating Their Curiosity - AVID Open Access

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Many of us use a problem-solving model to help effectively and efficiently answer questions, make decisions, and solve problems. In engineering, they use the Engineering Design Process to solve problems; in the medical field, they use the OODA Loop method that originated in the military for combat operations to make decisions; and as teachers, we use instructional design models to design effective lessons.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
What process can teachers use to engage students' curiosity?

Many of us use a problem-solving model to help effectively and efficiently answer questions, make decisions, and solve problems. In engineering, they use the Engineering Design Process to solve problems; in the medical field, they use the OODA Loop method that originated in the military for combat operations to make decisions; and as teachers, we use instructional design models to design effective lessons. Inquiry is essentially another form of the problem-solving process.

To help guide your students through this inquiry process, we have developed the ANSWERS model. This process will help students think critically as they generate questions and search for answers. The model is flexible and can be used for quick inquiries that are part of a short lesson and also more complex and longer inquiry projects.

While it's important to complete the steps in the process, it's also important to recognize that the inquiry process is rarely linear. Students will find themselves weaving back and forth and between steps. For example, after they pose their question and start noting the possibilities, students may find themselves asking new questions, which leads them to consider new possibilities. It is important that they consider the end product, as well as their audience, as they plan and design how to share their findings. They will also need to review, reflect, and revise throughout the entire process. You may use and share this Searching for Answers: Inquiry Process poster to help guide students through these steps.

In this series of articles, we will dig more deeply into each step of the ANSWERS model and offer digital strategies, tools, and templates that you can use as you teach your students to learn via the inquiry process.

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Engage Students by Cultivating Their Curiosity - AVID Open Access

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Many of us use a problem-solving model to help effectively and efficiently answer questions, make decisions, and solve problems. In engineering, they use the Engineering Design Process to solve problems; in the medical field, they use the OODA Loop method that originated in the military for combat operations to make decisions; and as teachers, we use instructional design models to design effective lessons.

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What the Heck Is Inquiry-Based Learning?

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Teachers use inquiry-based learning to combat the “dunno” -- a chronic problem in student engagement. Check out these four steps for creating inquiry-based curriculum.

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Collection of Virtual Fieldtrips Resources

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Collection of Virtual Fieldtrips Resources

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With traveling being hard to do during these times, here are some websites that you may like to try! Anywhere from researching polar bears, to having panoramic views of cities, to exploring the immigration process at Ellis Island. Where is you going for your next field trip?

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Virtual Field Trips | Barron Public Library

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With traveling being hard to do during these times, here are some websites that you may like to try! Anywhere from researching polar bears, to having panoramic views of cities, to exploring the immigration process at Ellis Island. Where is you going for your next field trip?

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In order to design a space that meets the unique learning needs of every student, you first need to get to know them. After all, learning can't be personal if you don't know the people you're teaching. In fact, it's important that you get to know them both personally and academically. Personal connections will allow you to establish trust, better understand what motivates each student, and meaningfully connect new learning to past experiences. Academic understanding will allow you to design learning experiences that appropriately target each student's level of proficiency while maximizing their learning preferences and strengths.

In their book, UDL and Blended Learning: Thriving in Flexible Learning Landscapes, Katie Novak and Catlin Tucker (2021) suggest conducting "empathy interviews" as a way to learn about your students' academic needs and preferences (p. 58). They list four questions to ask each student:

What do you think you need to know or do to be able to meet this goal?

How would you best like to learn it?

What materials can I get you that will help you to meet this goal?

How will you share that you met it?

Asking these types of questions can help you shape the learning in a way that increases success for each student. It also gives them a voice in the process, which can lead to a sense of ownership in the learning experience and confidence that they are being set up for success.

In addition to this interview-style approach, there are many other ways to get to know your students. Explore strategies for connecting with your students and building classroom community in the AVID Open Access articles, Accelerate Learning by Making Connections: Build Trust Through Relationships, Community, and Connection and Build Classroom Community to Support Your Students' Social and Emotional Needs.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) focuses on designing learning in a way that breaks down barriers, so every student can learn. CAST-a leader in the study of Universal Design for Learning-explains in their video, UDL At A Glance, "...If you design for those in the margins, [it] works better for everyone." To make learning more universally accessible, CAST suggests five tips for designing learning experiences that "are meaningful and challenging for all learners":

Start with a clear goal.

Encourage flexible means to achieve the goal.

Ensure all learners can access the materials and environment.

Make learning personally relevant.

Promote expert learning.

These suggestions build upon the personal connections that you make with your students. The better you know them, the better you can ensure they have the access they need to succeed and the better you can connect the learning to their individual interests. This relationship can also help you determine how to modify the learning experience to meet the unique needs of each student. In their Universal Design for Learning Guidelines, CAST outlines a framework for personalizing the learning and increasing student success. They suggest offering "multiple means" of access in three key areas.

Engagement: This is the "why" of learning. Is the learning of interest, relevance, value, and authenticity to all students? Is learning offered in a way that sustains effort and persistence? Can students choose to engage in the learning in different ways?

Representation: This focuses on the "what" of learning. Is the information presented in a way that is accessible and understandable to all students? Is it presented in multiple media formats with optional scaffolding for those who need extra support?

Action and Expression: This is the "how" of learning. Are there multiple pathways for learning? Can students show what they know in different ways? Can they access various formats of instructional models, feedback, and support? Are assistive technology tools offered as well as multiple modalities of communication and expression?

For each of these three areas, student voice and choice is critical. Students will be much more engaged in the work if they can choose a topic that is of personal interest. In the area of representation, students will benefit from multimedia formats. If students can choose to read, listen, view, or research to learn new content, they can access new information in a way that matches their preferred mode of learning. For action and expression, students will benefit from being allowed to demonstrate their learning in multiple ways. A traditional multiple-choice or essay test is not inherently differentiated and does not work for many students. Instead, by allowing students to choose how they will show what they know, they can work in a format that lets them maximize their talents. For instance, you could allow them to create a video, write a paper, produce a podcast, put on a performance, or even have a conversation with you about their learning. One size does not fit all, and when it's possible, we should allow for flexibility and choice.

To learn more about Universal Design for Learning, explore the valuable resources found throughout the CAST website.

For more information within AVID Open Access, you can review the article, Design for Accessibility With the Universal Design for Learning Process.

Universal Design for Learning allows you to design learning experiences that will increase accessibility for your students. However, even with these supports in place, there is a great benefit to being able to meet personally with each student or work with smaller groups of students. These types of connections improve the student-to-teacher ratio, which can in turn allow you to better receive personalized feedback from each student, assess individual student progress, respond to learning needs, and ultimately personalize the learning. When learning is personalized, it is also accelerated, since each student is getting what they need to maximize their potential growth.

Technology and blended learning are two catalysts that you can use to design student-centered learning experiences, allowing you to meet with smaller groups of students.

This blended learning strategy involves the use of learning stations. Students are typically divided up into small groups and then assigned a series of stations to complete. They can rotate from one station to the next on a set schedule, or they can be allowed to move to the next station upon completion of their current station. The key to this approach is to design each station in such a way that students can complete them without the teacher being physically present.

The workshop model, described here by Edutopia, is similar to station rotation and is popular for teaching reading and writing. In this approach, the teacher begins with a whole-class mini-lesson (about 10-15 minutes) before students disperse to work independently or in groups. This student work time can be structured as rotating stations. At the end of the lesson, the teacher brings all students back together for a class debrief, questions, and sharing. Teachers using the workshop model can achieve many of the same benefits as teachers using station rotation.

In both models, creating student-centered learning activities can free you up to work with students while the rest of the class is engaging in their individual, group, or station work. There are three main ways that teachers can design opportunities to meet with students.

Create a teacher station. In this approach, the teacher designates one of the stations as the "teacher station." Each group of students will take a turn at this station, and the teacher will use this time to check in more personally, present a short mini-lesson, check for understanding, or reteach a concept or skill to a small group of students.

Set up individual conferences. While students are completing their station work, the teacher can meet with individual students on a rotating basis. The teacher might create a schedule that ensures a meeting with each student, or students can be allowed to sign up for appointments as needed. Depending on the number of students and the length of each meeting, it may take more than one day to meet with every student individually. In that case, conferences can be extended over several days of station rotation work.

Monitor stations and pull students. This is a less formal, but more responsive, approach. As students work in stations, the teacher is free to move around the room and monitor student progress. If a group of students is struggling, the teacher can join the station and provide direct support. If an individual student is having difficulty, the teacher can pull that student aside and support them individually.

To support Universal Design for Learning within the context of this model, it's important to build choice into each station and to vary the learning modalities. One popular approach is to make sure that at least one station is online and at least one is offline. Similarly, make sure that at least one is independent and at least one is collaborative. In some cases, you can give students the choice to work alone or with a partner. These options allow students to personally choose a path that will best help them be successful.

A playlist often looks much like a checklist of learning activities, where students are allowed to make choices as they work through a progression of tasks. A choice board is one popular version of a playlist. These boards can be designed in many different ways, but regardless of the specific design, students must be required to complete a sequence of activities that will lead to mastery of the learning objective. A common approach is to offer choices for how to "learn" the material. This is followed up by choices for how to "practice" or "process" this learning, and finally, options for how to "demonstrate" mastery of the learning. The integration of choice supports the concepts of Universal Design for Learning and helps to break down barriers to learning.

For examples of how a playlist might be formatted, explore these templates:

Much like with station rotation, students should be able to work through the playlist with minimal teacher support. This allows them to work at their own pace, and it frees up the teacher to meet individually or with small groups of students, to offer mini-lessons, support sessions, individual conferences, and small-group check-ins.

In its most basic sense, flipped learning means that students acquire learning through independent (or group) study without the teacher, and then later, they apply, reinforce, or extend their learning with the teacher or classmates. In the traditional flipped-learning model, students complete their independent learning as homework. Oftentimes, this means reading something or watching a video. Then, when they return to class, the teacher facilitates rich interactions and reinforcement of the learning. In this approach, the teacher can also use the in-person class time for individual conferences, small-group reteaching, or extension activities.

Increasingly, flipped learning is being integrated into the station-rotation and playlist models. This is commonly called the "in-class flip." For stations and playlists to work, students must be able to complete their work independently, and digital tools allow teachers to flip the learning in a station by providing meaningful instruction and directions virtually. Most commonly, students will watch a video at a learning station or as part of a playlist. This might include the teacher explaining what to do to complete a required task. For many students, it is comforting to see and hear their teacher provide the directions, as it brings a sense of connection and familiarity. Similarly, recordings of the teacher conducting a mini-lesson via video can be very effective. Catlin Tucker suggests that any content being conveyed in the same way to all students should be recorded, so teacher time can be reserved for more personalized and differentiated interactions.

For any of these strategies to work well, you will need some type of delivery and management system. Popular learning management systems include Canvas, Schoology, and Google Classroom. These platforms are especially important when you are integrating digital tools into the process. Think of this as your virtual classroom space and consistent one-stop shop for your students. It provides one easy-to-access location for finding and completing coursework. This is especially helpful when implementing blended-learning strategies. Station work, playlists, and flipped-learning assignments can all be organized and stored in folders inside the learning management system. Because they are all in one place, students can easily move from one task to the next with easy access to the required resources.

A learning management system also supports Universal Design for Learning. It provides a convenient platform for posting content in a variety of formats: text, audio, video, web links, interactive digital manipulatives, and more. These resources can often be embedded directly into the pages of the LMS for easy access. This helps to simplify the learning experience since it's much easier for a student to stay on a page and click a video play button than having to follow a link out to another page, locate the video, hit play, and then find the LMS page back when they are finished. Another benefit of using a learning management system is that digital resources allow students to more easily use assistive technology to access content and learning resources. Popular assistive technology includes closed captioning as well as text-to-speech and speech-to-text tools.

A learning management system can even help with relationship building. Within the LMS environment, students can access discussion threads, embedded resources from Flip ( Tips) and Padlet ( Tips), or shared documents where they can collaborate and share virtually. This again allows students to interact through multiple media formats. While we should facilitate face-to-face interaction, integrating virtual collaboration and communication is also advantageous. Digital communication tools, especially when used asynchronously, can make students with anxiety feel more comfortable sharing their thoughts, and it provides them with more time to think. Rather than being put on the spot to answer a question, students can process, and then respond when they're ready. Conversations can also extend beyond the typical class period, and students can return at a later time to review responses.

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Accelerate Learning by Designing for Personalization - AVID Open Access

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In order to design a space that meets the unique learning needs of every student, you first need to get to know them. After all, learning can't be personal if you don't know the people you're teaching. In fact, it's important that you get to know them both personally and academically.

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Virtual field trips are a game changer. Not only do they fill in for real field trips when budgets and other roadblocks prevent in-person options, but virtual field trips also open doors to educational experiences all over the country and the world, both past and present. No fundraising or permission slips required!

(Note: For anyone who needs it, YouTube offers a closed-captioning option. Just click the CC button in the bottom right-hand corner.)

Amazon Career Tours are free virtual field trips that inspire students to pursue careers of the future. Tour whenever, wherever on Kahoot! Each tour comes with a Teacher Toolkit that includes a facilitation guide and student worksheets.

2. The Zoo

There are so many amazing online options when it comes to zoos that we couldn't narrow it down to just one. Most zoos have live webcams in some of their most popular exhibits, such as the KC Zoo Polar Bear Cam and the Giant Panda Cam at Smithsonian's National Zoo. However, some zoos offer a more in-depth look. You'll definitely want to check out the San Diego Zoo as their site for kids includes behind-the-scenes videos and stories, as well as a variety of printable activities and online games. Check out our full list of virtual zoo goodness.

3. The Aquarium

It's a similar story with aquariums. You have your pick of live webcams, but our favorites are the Georgia Aquarium's Ocean Voyager webcam (wait for the whale shark!) and the "Jelly Cam" at Monterey Bay Aquarium (so soothing). The Seattle Aquarium even has a 30-minute video tour. Want more under-the-sea fun? Here's our ultimate list of virtual aquarium field trips.

4. The Farm

The classic preschool field trip goes online! You can have your pick of dairy farm field trips, but we like this one from the Dairy Alliance and this one from Stonyfield Organic. Farm Food 360 gives students the opportunity to immerse themselves in Canadian farm and food tours-from raising pigs to making milk and cheese. We're also loving these virtual egg farm field trips from the American Egg Board.

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5. An Art Museum

We found 20 art museums with virtual tours, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art's # MetKids and its awesome Where's Waldo? setup. And you can't miss the world-famous Louvre in Paris (no passport needed!). Check out the current virtual tours: Traveling Materials and Objects, the Advent of the Artist, the Body in Movement, and Founding Myths: From Hercules to Darth Vader!

6. A National Park

From webcams at Hawaii volcanoes to a virtual run along the rim of the Grand Canyon, you have tons of options here. Our top pick would have to be Yellowstone. The interactive maps are a great way to see the Mammoth Hot Springs and Mud Volcano, but we think kids will be psyched about the Old Faithful Geyser livestream and the opportunity to make their own predictions for its next eruption. Check out everything the National Park Service has to offer virtually.

7. A Planetarium

Through Stellarium Web, kids can explore over 60,000 stars, locate planets, and watch sunrises and solar eclipses. If you enter your location, you can see all the constellations that are visible in the night sky in your corner of the world.

Take your students on a virtual field trip of a recycling center and a modern landfill. Plus, there's a full-on curriculum that includes lesson plans, take-home handouts, and more.

Nickelodeon teamed up with two astronauts on the International Space Station to demonstrate how slime reacts to microgravity and had kids reproduce those same demonstrations back here on Earth. It makes for an amazing 15-minute virtual field trip.

The Nature Conservancy has a brand-new virtual field trip entitled "You're the Scientist! Citizen Science, Frogs & Cicadas." Check out their full library of videos on topics like climate change and water security.

Discovery Education hosts a variety of virtual events -each with a companion guide with hands-on learning activities. Current offerings include "Making a New Life: The Courage of a Refugee" and "The Future Is Now" (architectural and engineering innovations). Stay tuned for their upcoming civics virtual field trip, "The American Ideal."

This virtual field trip from Great Lakes Now has three components: coastal wetlands, algae, and lake sturgeon. Each video is a quick five minutes long.

Explore online exhibits and discover the history and evolution of play. Check out board games that changed play, sports video games that shaped digital play, and the making of Monopoly to name a few.

Kids can learn about the most recent Census and how census data is collected and used. This virtual field trip also features interviews with subject matter experts and an interactive challenge.

The "Museum of We the People," the Constitution Center serves as a "headquarters for civic education." Check out the Interactive Constitution section, and be sure to watch the virtual tour.

Houston, we have a virtual field trip. Three, actually. All with companion educator guides. The star of the show is the behind-the-scenes tour of the Johnson Space Center.

Boise State put together this fully interactive virtual field trip with text, photos, audio, and video about the history of music. The four featured music locations are: Vienna, Austria; New Orleans, Louisiana; Cleveland, Ohio; and Bristol, Tennessee-Virginia.

This living-history museum provides a look into life in an early American community. The website offers five different webcams featuring areas such as the tavern and the armory.

This virtual experience of George Washington's home is incredibly well done. Enter the different buildings-from the opulent mansion to the chilling slave quarters-and click on different items for video and text explanations.

This virtual tour comes with a real tour guide! Blaine Kortemeyer is the Assistant Chief of Interpretation and Education, who lends his expertise on the building of this national monument. The 3D Explorer is also an excellent tool.

Take a visit to the National WWII Museum for "a cross-country virtual expedition to discover the science, sites, and stories of the creation of the atomic bomb." Don't forget to download the classroom guide!

For a look inside the iconic building, check out the 360° tour of some of the most historic rooms of the People's House, from the Situation Room to the Oval Office. Examine each room and check out the contents up close.

The National Museum of Natural History's virtual experiences are self-guided, room-by-room tours of permanent, current, and past exhibits. Be sure to send kids to the second floor Bone Hall so they can take a look at all different kinds of skeletons.

A collaboration with over 1,200 leading museums and archives, Google Arts & Culture is an incredible storehouse of monumental works of art. We recommend the Street View and Play sections.

Boasting the world's largest collection of 360° image videos, 360 Cities provides kids with the opportunity to see stunning panoramas across the globe, including their video of the ice floe on the Vistula River in Poland.

It's the official residence of the Queen of England, and boy, is it opulent! Get a peek inside the gorgeous Grand Staircase, White Drawing Room, Throne Room, and Blue Drawing Room.

See one of the wonders of the world with this amazing, thousands-year-old fortification system known the world over. This virtual tour has four scenes available (you have to pay to get access to all 14). The bird's-eye view of Mutianyu pass is a highlight.

Most of us recognize the giant stone statues of Easter Island, but what's the story behind them? Nova's online adventure "Secrets of Easter Island" delves into the mystery with a virtual tour.

National Geographic lets you explore the world's largest cave, located in Vietnam. Use the interactive map to enjoy the fully immersive experience (sound on!).

You don't need a time machine! Discovering Ancient Egypt has a ton of free resources, but it's the interactive pyramid map and 3D temple reconstructions that really give it a field trip feel.

Virtually visit Turn Back the Clock, a museum exhibit that ran for two years at the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago. Through compelling personal stories, innovative interactive media, and pop culture artifacts, the exhibit takes guests through seven decades of history-from the dawn of the nuclear age to significant policy questions our leaders face today.

No, really! You can absolutely "go" to the red planet. With Access Mars, you can see the actual surface of Mars, recorded by NASA's Curiosity rover. Trust us-don't skip the intro. And if your kids liked that, check out this 4K tour of the moon. These may go down in history as some of the best virtual field trips your students get to experience.

Take a virtual tour of this historical battleship located on the Camden waterfront. This battleship has traveled more miles than any other!

No need to travel to Rome! Take in the amazing art and architecture located in the Vatican Museums with these 360-degree views.

Download the app and climb aboard the virtual tram line! Take a virtual walk through the Space Center Houston with informational stops along the way.

Virtually visit museum rooms in the famous Louvre located in Paris. Even check out The Louvre kids' site for student-friendly galleries and stories. You can't visit The Louvre without seeing the Mona Lisa, so check out their immersive Mona Lisa experience available in the app store.

This interactive tour of Ellis Island lets students explore places like the Baggage Room and the Stairs of Separation through short stories, historical photographs, videos, and audio clips. Students can also hear the stories of real kids who recently immigrated to the United States, explore colorful charts and graphs with immigration data, and watch a 30-minute movie that includes a Q&A with National Park Service Rangers who explain what coming to America was like for many immigrants.

38. Plimoth Patuxet Museums

Travel back to the 17th century with options for free, on-demand, digital resources or a live, 1-hour virtual school program led by a Plimoth Patuxet Contemporary Indigenous Museum Educator. Students explore Wampanoag daily life and history; discover the real history of Thanksgiving and the legend behind it; meet a 17th-century Pilgrim; get an interactive sneak peak into 17th-century wardrobes; and learn about simple machines and water power at the Plimoth Grist Mill. There are also options for virtual hands-on history workshops, including Wampanoag Pottery and Write Like a Pilgrim.

When you can't visit the museum in person, 3D virtual field trips to the Children's Museum Houston are the next best thing. All videos are produced and curated by museum educators and feature hands-on activities that can be done in the classroom. Topics include nutrition, math, states of matter, forces and properties of water, and more.

Beyond the Battle Field is a virtual field trip for grades 2-8 hosted by Lauren Tarshis, author of the I Survived historical-fiction series for kids. Students will meet a museum educator as well as the museum curator, and explore artifacts and documents from the American Revolution. Plus they'll hear the stories of teens who served during the war. There's also a Classroom Kit available with a vocabulary list and discussion questions by grade level.

If you liked this roundup of the best virtual field trips and want more resources like this, be sure to subscribe to our newsletters.

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40 Amazing Educational Virtual Field Trips

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You can't always get there in person, but lots of places will let you "visit" online. These are the best virtual field trips out there!

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What Are The Phases Of Inquiry-Based Learning? A Guide For Teachers

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What Are The Phases Of Inquiry-Based Learning? A Guide For Teachers

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by Terry Heick

According to Indiana University Bloomington, Inquiry-based learning is an "instructional model that centers learning on a solving a particular problem or answering a central question. There are several different inquiry-based learning models, but most have several general elements in common:

Learning focuses around a meaningful, ill-structured problem that demands consideration of diverse perspectives

Academic content-learning occurs as a natural part of the process as students work towards finding solutions

Learners, working collaboratively, assume an active role in the learning process

Teachers provide learners with learning supports and rich multiple media sources of information to assist students in successfully finding solutions

Learners share and defend solutions publicly in some manner"

The process itself can be broken down into stages, or phases, that help teachers frame instruction. The model we've created can be used as a guide for teachers, as it includes teacher and student indicators at each stage, ideal "tones" of each phase, and even apps that can support that phase as well.

Inquiry-based learning is an approach that can easily accommodate project-based learning, challenge-based learning, place-based education, blended learning, and other trends in education.
4 Phases of Inquiry-Based Learning: A Guide For Teachers Big Idea: Dive into engaging, relevant, and credible media forms to identify a 'need' or opportunity for inquiry
The first phase of inquiry (often produced by strategies for promoting inquiry-based learning) is one characterized by interaction. This interaction can be:

Student-to-material. This material is ideally obtained through formal (i.e., research) and informal (e.g., reading, social and digital media, collaboration) means. It can be modeled or supplemented by teacher-provided materials

Student-to-peer. This interaction is chosen by teacher or student, informed by need for information and perspective

Student-to-expert (experts within relevant fields at accessible levels)

Student-to-media (digital, text, pure data, etc.)

The nature of inquiry is ideally both curiosity-based and fluid. Narrow criteria, restrictive rubrics, and other traditional artifacts of 'school work' can stifle inquiry at this point of the learning process. The teacher's role at this point in the learning process is focused on resources, modeling curiosity, and cognitive coaching.

Tone: Open-minded, curious, unburdened, playful

Student Indicators: actively skims a variety of media, follows curiosity, responds with awe, dwells with certain media depending on curiosity or perceived utility; seeks out peers for ideas and resources

Teacher Indicators: models curiosity, thinks-aloud when interacting with disparate media, asks probing questions, withholds evaluative statements, provides exemplars, monitors and encourages student thinking habits

Apps: FlipBoard, Pocket, Podkicker, Zotero

Appropriate Questions: What sources of information are available to me? What do others around me know? What's worth studying? What possibilities, problems, or situations tend to interest me? What types of experiences, perspectives, and data are available to me? When am I at my best?
Big Idea: Summarizing, paraphrasing, and categorizing learning with teacher or expert support.
This happens by analyzing data, identifying and clarifying misconceptions, and otherwise 'getting a feel' for the scale, nature, and possibility of selected topics of inquiry.

After skimming, reading, watching, and otherwise interacting with a variety of media, this stage of the inquiry process is centered around students clarifying both their own thinking, and the nature of 'things' around them: ideas for projects, scientific challenges, opportunities for revision, need for design thinking, a new scale to tackle persistent problems, etc.

Thinking patterns are both inward and reflective, and outward and communicated. In that way, students both reflect on their own knowledge, while beginning to identify possible pathways forward.

Tone: Slightly more focused, reflective, independent, cautious

Student Indicators: Paraphrases understanding in familiar language; resists looking for 'answers' and 'solutions'; distinguishes between fact and opinion; evaluates the credibility and relevance of sources; focused on possibility

Teacher Indicators: offers non-evaluative and frequent feedback; provides relevant graphic organizers and other ways to 'frame' student thinking; asks probing questions that focus on student thinking: what they know and why they think they know it;

Appropriate Questions: What's the big picture here? What are the pieces and how do they fit? What's accessible, and what's not? What's possible? Am I missing critical data, perspectives, or opportunities for collaboration that could further clarify my thinking? What do I seem to understand, and how do I know?
Apps: MindMeister, WordPress, Quora, reddit Big Idea: Asking questions to drive continued, self-directed inquiry
The questioning phase is a critical phase of the inquiry-based learning process, if for no other reason than misunderstandings, lack of organization, uneven confidence, or an inability to see the 'big picture' surface here more clearly than other phases.

Students and teachers alike must also be able to trust the nature and patterns of inquiry that are often recursive and iterative: They often move back and forth between phases, and new skills and understandings can be obtained in frustratingly small increments. Inquiry-based learning is more about the process, tone, and instincts of learning than other 'tidier' academic forms, which can require both students and teachers to adjust their measures of progress, quality, and success.

Tone: Creative, confident, interdependent

Student Indicators: Curious, precise with questions, self-monitoring, big-picture thinking, little-picture application

Teacher Indicators: models questioning, thinks-aloud in revising irrelevant or otherwise flawed questions; models use of concept-mapping tools to analyze thinking; hosts QFT sessions and Socratic seminars

Appropriate Questions: What's worth understanding? Where are my knowledge gaps? What is both within and beyond my reach? What have I done in the past that can help me in this situation moving forward?

Apps: Evernote, MindMeister, twitter, Quora, reddit
Big Idea: Designing an accessible, relevant, and curiosity-driven action or product to culminate and justify inquiry
At this final stage of the inquiry-based learning process, learners are focused on design.

Design of solutions to address problems within a manageable scale

Design of logical and curiosity-based applications of current understanding

Design of next steps to extend their own learning pathway

Tone: Creative, restrained, calculating

Appropriate Questions:What now? What audience makes sense for this research? Where can I do 'good work'? What would be 'cool'? What have others before me done?

Apps: Posts, Mextures, Inkist, Google Drive, DesignPad, Foldify

Student Indicators: Clarifies thinking, busy, self-directed, uncertain but efficacious, follows curiosity

Teacher Indicators: Creates 'conditions and means' for collaboration; i dentifies areas for revision, reflects back on entire process (i.e., "how we get to this point")
4 Student Questions For Post-Phase Reflection
After the inquiry-based learning process is 'finished' (for the purposes of classroom work, publishing, grading, etc.), it can be helpful for students to reflect in the inquiry-based learning process through questions such as:

What skills did I depend on?

What do I now understand more deeply, and how do I know?

If I had more time or resources, what else could I have done?

What is the role of inquiry in learning?
4 Phases of Inquiry-Based Learning: A Guide For Teachers; image attribution flickr user woodleywonderworks and usgahumphreys

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4 Phases Of Inquiry-Based Learning: A Guide For Teachers

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The phases of inquiry-based learning can vary depending on context but generally include Interacting, Clarifying, Questioning, and Designing.

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You might have stumbled across the flipped classroom by way of professional development or in one of your college education courses. If you're a bright and shiny new teacher, maybe you've even experienced the flipped classroom for yourself.

But as the case often is, it's one thing to study theory, and it's quite another to put it into practice. That's why the key to successfully flipping your classroom is finding resources that make your life easier.

Before getting into the nitty-gritty of setting up your first flipped class, let's get on the same page about what we're talking about when we say flipped classroom, and how it came to be the educational juggernaut that it is today.

Flipped classroom 101: How did this become a thing?

The flipped classroom earned its moniker for inverting, or "flipping," the traditional classroom model.

The traditional model is how you were probably taught in school. If you need a visual, just picture the Charlie Brown classroom where the teacher's "voice" is a trombone muted with a rubber plunger head (haven't you always wondered what that sound was?).

For this instructional style, you use class time to explain a new concept, usually with a lecture, which your students may or may not zone out. (Yawns are a telltale sign and kryptonite to teachers.)

Maybe you get through an example or two, and then assign some homework to check for students' understanding.

Ready for the flip? In the flipped classroom model, the explanation, via video, becomes the "homework," allowing students to learn 100 percent at their own pace.

That means that exercises, activities and projects that were once homework now become classwork, so you can circulate and give your students some much-needed one-on-one attention (especially the ones who are struggling).

Now that you know what the flipped classroom is, where did it come from?

While it's a little foggy as to exactly who coined the phrase, the origins of the flipped classroom can be traced back to California professor of education Alison King's infamous 1993 paper, "From Sage on the Stage to Guide on the Side."

To break it down, the "sage on the stage" is the teacher in the traditional model, while the "guide on the side" refers to the teacher's role in the flipped classroom.

Besides having a knack for rhyming, King was able to look into her crystal ball and predicted that the traditional model would "not be effective for the twenty-first century, when individuals will be expected to think for themselves, pose and solve complex problems, and generally produce knowledge rather than reproduce it."

While it did take a little time for her ideas to pick up steam, the world of education eventually got comfortable with the shift of teachers from the stage to the side.

But what really sparked the movement were the advances in technology and the internet.

The flipped classroom and technology: the beginning of a beautiful friendship

In the '90s, the OG's of the flipped classroom got by with PowerPoints with audio voiceover and videotaped lectures. They might also tell you about walking five miles to school in the snow with no shoes.

Not quite a decade later, an article published in 2000 (anyone remember Y2K panic?) reported the findings on inverting an economics class at Miami University.

Like a quaint little time capsule, it shows just how far technology has come in the past 20 years: "the use of the World Wide Web and multimedia computers (and/or VCRs) enables students to view lectures either in computer labs or at home, whereas homework assignments can be done in class."

Can you imagine believing in the flipped classroom enough to copy your lecture onto video cassettes for each of your students? #Dedication.

Today, there are so many online resources to make your teaching life easier, that it's just masochistic not to take advantage of them.

With the popularity of podcasts and YouTube, students are better equipped and more motivated to learn using technology than ever before. It's the perfect storm for the flipped classroom!

So, the stage is set for your flipped classroom debut ... but how do you get started?

How to create your first flipped lesson

Start with baby steps. After all, flipping your classroom happens one lesson at a time.

Don't worry about starting at the beginning of the year, either. Even if you're in the middle of a unit, there's no reason why you can't flip your next lesson.

Start with your topic. What's the next concept you were planning on teaching? A new Spanish verb tense? Introducing students to vectors, the origins of basketball or voting rights?

This is where video comes in. Check out this infographic for a quick overview.

First, you'll need to choose between recording your own video or finding one online. If you like the idea of recording your own lesson, make sure you brush up on some tips for recording teaching videos like a pro.

The quicker option is finding a video on your topic that's already been created. At Edpuzzle, we happen to be big fans of Crash Course and Khan Academy (big shout-out to Salman Khan's TED talk on using video to reinvent education), but the options are virtually endless.

You can get set up with Edpuzzle and start using it to assign videos in less than ten minutes (yes, we've timed it), and make your life even easier by getting stats on student progress and understanding.

It's one thing to throw a video link up on the board for students to watch at home, but it's quite another to add comprehension questions to your video and see who's watched it in real time.

Now on to step two ... your students have all watched your video at home, and it's time to see what they've learned!

If you're using Edpuzzle, when your students come to class the following day, you'll already know who's got it and who needs a little extra help. If you're flying blind, try surveying students at the beginning of class to see how the process went before you dive into activities.

Now, your class time can be used for students to work on practical application of their knowledge. You can circulate and work with students who need some individual attention, or match them up with students who are already ninjas in the new concept.

If you've done all that, you've officially become "the guide on the side" - how do you like the view?

Flipped classroom troubleshooting

If the flipped classroom is so amazing, what could go wrong? The potential challenges basically fall into three categories: dealing with the critics, handling the digital divide and creating content.

Since it's such a departure from the traditional model, sometimes it can take a little convincing to get your admin, parents and even students on board with the flipped classroom.

While it can be frustrating when you're just starting out, there's an easy fix - let the results speak for themselves.

Talk to your admins or department head about how much better prepared your students will be for standardized tests with all the in-class practice and personalized attention your students will be getting. What's not to love there?

Where parents are concerned, it's a no-brainer. They might have as much homework anxiety as their kids do. With the flipped classroom, rather than trying to help their children with homework concepts they might not have a clue about, they can learn alongside their kids by watching the videos.

Then there are your students. Maybe they're as gung ho as you are to shake things up, but on the other side, they might be a little resistant initially. Try letting them watch the first video during class time, so you can walk around and clear up any doubts, like being your own co-teacher! (How meta is that?!)

As soon as students realize that they'll actually be getting more support from you and can take all the time they need to learn the concepts at home, you'll start to see your students fall in love with the flipped classroom.

Once you've got everyone on your side, without a doubt, the biggest issue facing flipping your classroom is the digital divide - in other words, the gap in access to technology based on socioeconomic status.

If your school is one-to-one and each of your students has their own tablet or laptop, you've got it made (although you should still survey your students to find out what kind of internet access they have at home).

BYOD, or "bring your own device," is another potential solution that lets students use their smartphones to watch videos at home. Still, the key is to identify what your students have access to in terms of technology.

If your students don't have their own device or access to high-speed internet at home, you'll need to get creative with solutions.

Talk to your students one-on-one to find out if they live near a public library or can access the internet at a friend or family member's house.

If that's not an option, then you'll have to help your student find time at school in the morning, during lunchtime or after school, where they can access the videos in your classroom, the library or computer lab.

There may not be a perfect solution, but you'll have to find the best possible fix to make sure that none of your students feel excluded or fall behind because of their lack of technology.

Once you've got all the logistical kinks worked out, then it's time to get to work on creating your content. While starting out might feel as daunting as tackling Mount Everest before you've done your first 5K, there are plenty of ways to start flipping your classroom without burning the candle at both ends.

Start off by searching through the thousands of videos already available to you on Edpuzzle. Need a video on how a bill becomes a law? Check out Crash Course. Teaching your students about space? Then National Geographic channel has you covered.

You've also got YouTube's arsenal of videos at your fingertips (and if you're already shaking your head no because YouTube is blocked at your school, Edpuzzle's got your back).

Another cool way to create content twice as fast? Get the rest of your department on board. You can divide up the units, so you have the benefit of sharing material with your coworkers, and your students can enjoy learning from more than one teacher.

The bottom line is, there's no need to panic when it comes to creating video content. You don't have to do all the heavy lifting yourself, and remember, for your first year, take it slow. Just flip a few units rather than taking it all on at once!

Becoming a flipped classroom hero

Time to let you in on a little secret ... why do you keep hearing about the flipped classroom?

Because it actually works.

It's fuel for the fire that sparks those magical classroom moments where your students are excited (and not because it's an early dismissal day), you're able to truly connect with them, and classroom management is a breeze, like it should be.

If you've been hesitant to flip your classroom because the whole thing sounds too good to be true, or because starting something new feels too overwhelming, it's time to let go of the excuses and the fear.

Imagine what you would tell a student who refuses to try because of fear of failure. It all starts with that first step!

To dive in deeper, try our free online certification course on the flipped classroom. You'll get a certificate of completion you can share with your school for a possible continued education credit and a snazzy badge to share on your social media profiles!

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The Ultimate Beginner's Guide to the Flipped Classroom

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Interested in flipping your classroom but don't know where to start? Check out our guide and learn how you can flip your first class tomorrow!

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In our previous article within this collection, Accelerate Learning by Making Connections: Build Trust Through Relationships, Community, and Connection, we explored how building relationships allows students to feel safe and seen, and it also creates the environment necessary to accelerate learning. While this establishes a critical foundation for growth, it is not enough by itself. Once our students feel safe and accepted, we must then empower them to own their learning. This will improve their academic performance and provide them with the skills necessary to be successful beyond school.

Developing empowered learners requires a shift in classroom philosophy, from compliance and engagement to empowerment. This is not to disregard the importance of compliance and engagement. Our students will need to follow certain protocols and procedures, and we will definitely want them to be engaged in their learning. However, George Couros pointed out an important difference between engagement and empowerment: "Engagement is more about what you can do for your students. Empowerment is about helping students to figure out what they can do for themselves." This description identifies the significant shift from a teacher-centered approach to learning to a student-centered approach. Similarly, John Spencer said, "The moment you add student ownership to student engagement, you have empowerment." In an empowered classroom, students are involved in decision-making, proceed at their own pace, and are allowed to follow their own interests and inspirations. This is an environment that increases motivation and ownership-two catalysts for accelerating learning.

So how can we take our classrooms to this next level? How can we shift our classrooms from an engaging, teacher-centered learning environment to one that is driven by empowered students? Along with establishing a supportive environment, we must take two additional steps:

1. Help students develop success skills.

2. Provide rigorous, student-driven learning opportunities.

These two elements work hand-in-hand with each other and reflect the guiding philosophy of AVID's founder, Mary Catherine Swanson. She believes, "Rigor without support is a prescription for failure. Support without rigor is a tragic waste of potential." This philosophy emphasizes that to accelerate learning in our classrooms, we need both of these elements. As the teacher, you are a critical part of this support system, and you will need to monitor and identify gaps in learning as well as build scaffolding that ensures proper support. However, you will also want to help students develop the skills necessary to support themselves when you are not there to directly support them: skills for self-support, self-guidance, and overall independence.

In addition to success skills, the second element-providing opportunity-is equally important. Accelerated learning does not happen when students spend countless hours on rote-based computer programs or work through mountains of worksheets. Although students need opportunities to practice foundational skills, much of this work focuses on low-level thinking skills. If students are only offered this type of work, their potential will be capped at memorization and basic skill building. In order to truly accelerate learning, we must challenge students with rigorous, high-level learning experiences, where they must make decisions and put their skills to use. In other words, we must follow the guidance of Mary Catherine Swanson and empower our students with skills that support success and then challenge them with rigorous learning opportunities.

Let's take a closer look at these two key components of acceleration and student empowerment.

1. Help Students Develop Success Skills

Before we can help students develop success skills, we must identify them. The University of Chicago's UChicago Consortium on School Research has done significant work in this area. Their report, The Role of Noncognitive Factors in Shaping School Performance, outlines five categories of noncognitive factors that impact student academic success. These skill areas apply to every grade level and content area.

Academic Behaviors: These behaviors include going to class, doing homework, organizing materials, studying, and participating in class.

Perseverance: This includes tenacity and grit, self-discipline, and the ability to see delayed gratification in the work being done. A student with strong perseverance typically gets things done and turns in school work.

Mindset: Students with a positive learning mindset believe that they belong, they can succeed, and their work has value. This positive mindset leads to perseverance.

Learning Strategies: These are the skills most directly tied to academic activity. They include study skills, metacognitive strategies, self-regulation, goal setting, planning, and the ability to seek help when needed. When students apply these strategies and skills, they are often academically successful.

Social Skills: This set of skills includes interpersonal communication skills, collaboration skills, and the ability to show empathy.

The report points out that these are not fixed traits, but rather skills that can be shaped by a classroom environment. In fact, the research shows "that classroom environments and instructional strategies can intentionally build strong academic mindsets and that teachers can explicitly teach and model learning strategies that improve student behaviors, perseverance, and performance." Therefore, as classroom teachers, we can build upon the positive relationships and environment we've established and facilitate skill building in these five areas. These skills can empower our students to become more successful learners.

To make this happen in your classroom, students must believe in themselves and their ability to succeed. Therefore, consider how you can build up student confidence while you are teaching the success skills.

Perseverance and mindset are two skill areas that work in tandem and are closely connected to student confidence. When students have a positive mindset, they are generally more confident and believe that they have value and can succeed. This confidence, in turn, leads to a greater degree of perseverance. This makes sense since students with a positive learning mindset believe that their hard work will pay off in the end. In fact, this cycle can become a positive, self-fulfilling prophecy. Students believe they will succeed, so they stick with a task until they are successful. This reinforces the feeling that hard work pays off, which motivates students to work hard again the next time. Success leads to success, and students see that their hard work and determination are rewarded.

There are several ways to initiate this cycle of confidence, perseverance, and growth mindset in our classrooms.

Create community and connections. As outlined in the AVID Open Access article, Accelerate Learning by Making Connections, the first priority is creating a positive and supportive environment. When students feel safe, they will be much more apt to take the risks necessary to learn and grow. When students take risks and are rewarded with success, they will be more motivated to continue taking risks. Even when they fail, if students are learning in an environment that rewards risk rather than ridicules failure, they will be encouraged to try again.

Define students by their strengths, not their deficits. All of our students have strengths and skills, and we should celebrate these attributes. When we praise the successful use of student talent, we reinforce the continued use of those skills. On the other hand, if we only point out failures and shortcomings, students become defined by their deficits rather than their strengths. While we must identify, address, and support academic needs, it is critical that these deficits do not ultimately define the student. When students see their assets first, they gain the confidence needed to carry them through the times when relearning is necessary.

Set students up for success. While productive struggle is essential to growth, we want students to ultimately succeed. If they struggle but never succeed, they may give up. On the other hand, struggle followed by success builds confidence and grit. However, we don't want to simply lower the bar so that students can succeed. Instead, we should target the zone of proximal development where students can succeed through hard work. We should keep the rigor high while preloading the learning experience with the skills and knowledge that are essential for achieving success. These scaffolds often include basic concepts, key vocabulary, or prerequisite skills. This preloading is particularly important if we identify that students have skill-area gaps in prerequisite prior learning. When prerequisite skills are learned before they attempt rigorous tasks, students will be more likely to succeed.

To be academically successful, students need skills for "how" to learn. These are versatile strategies that can be applied to many different learning situations and increase the rate of success. The previously cited research brief from the UChicago Consortium of Research reinforces this point, stating, "Helping students cultivate positive academic mindsets and effective learning strategies are the best ways to foster positive academic behaviors and academic perseverance." In other words, we can best empower students for academic success by helping them develop the winning combination of confidence and study skills. Here is a list of some of the key skill areas that students will need.

Organization: When students are better organized, they are more likely to be successful, especially when working on complex learning tasks. After all, if they can't find their work, they can't complete it. Explore the AVID Open Access article, Develop Your Students' Digital Organization Skills, for ways that your students can manage eFiles, create and use eBinders, and build and share ePortfolios.

Study Spaces and Routines: When students walk out your classroom door, you will no longer be there to guide the learning experience. Therefore, it's important that students know how to create a successful learning space and routine on their own. Explore five strategies for this in the AVID Open Access article, Establish Digital Study Spaces and Routines.

Time Management: Similar to managing study spaces and routines, successful students are able to effectively manage their time. Explore the AVID Open Access article, Develop Your Students' Time Management Skills, for tips and strategies that you can share with your students to help them work more efficiently.

Goal Setting: This process helps students own their learning. Through setting, monitoring, and adjusting study goals, students become more self-reliant learners. Use this SMART Goal template to help your students manage goal setting.

Study Skills: This is a broad, ongoing area of learning, and ideally, the teaching and learning of these skills is integrated into specific learning experiences. This integration gives the skill building authenticity and relevance. As additional learning occurs, more skills can be added, and previous skills can be reinforced and reviewed. Explore the AVID Open Access article for strategies that support independent study, research, and seeking help. You might also want to explore related articles that address skills needed for successful focused note-taking and digital reading and viewing.

Metacognitive Strategies: Self-reflection is an important part of being an empowered learner. Through reflection, students can evaluate their progress and set appropriate goals going forward. Review this AVID Open Access article about student reflection to find strategies and templates that students can use to frame their thought process. To explore further, visit the full AVID Open Access article collection about student reflection.

Self-Regulation: Rigorous learning can be stressful and complex. Therefore, it's important that students know how to manage both their social and emotional needs as well as academic strategies. We can help by providing self-regulation strategies, including brain breaks and mindfulness activities. Cherie Spencer, Social and Emotional Learning Coordinator at Galveston Public Schools, offers her perspectives in the Tech Talk For Teachers episode, Caring for Students During Pandemic Learning. In the article, How to Guide Students to Self-Regulated Learning, Stephanie Toro points to research suggesting that direct instruction is the most effective way to empower students with long-lasting, academic self-regulation skills.

Asking Questions: Empowered students do more than provide correct answers. They also ask the questions that drive the learning. Explore ways for students to formulate questions in this AVID Open Access article.

Digital Citizenship: As more learning happens in a digital environment, students must expand their skills to meet the needs of these online experiences. Explore the AVID Open Access collection of articles, Help Students Take Ownership of Their Digital Lives, for ideas and strategies to share with your students.

Collaboration: You can teach students collaboration skills by first establishing the proper environment, then identifying and teaching the skills, and finally offering opportunities for practice and reflection. Learn more in the AVID Open Access article, Teach Students Digital Collaboration Skills.

Online Discussions: No matter the context or platform, students need guidance and practice communicating. When participating in online discussions, students will benefit from structured strategies and frameworks. Explore strategies that can increase the success of online discussions in the AVID Open Access article, Foster Substantive and Respectful Online Discussions.

2. Provide Rigorous, Student-Driven Learning Opportunities

In order for our students to practice and master success skills, we must provide them with rigorous learning experiences. These experiences should be attainable, as well as complex and challenging, so that students are stretched in ways that allow them to grow both academically and personally.

This learning should also be authentic and student-driven. Students must see the work as relevant and important, and whenever possible, they should have some degree of control over their learning. When students feel empowered throughout the process, they "own" their learning. To design student-driven learning experiences, we must first determine how much student autonomy is appropriate in each situation. While we want our students to be actively involved in the decision-making process, they don't need to make every decision all the time. The degree of decision-making that we turn over to our students will be guided by the age of our students as well as the specific activity or focus of learning. Whenever possible, however, we should transfer over the responsibility for learning and decision-making to our students. This ownership will empower them and accelerate their growth.

Here are a few approaches that you can use to empower students in the learning process. While there are many variables that can shape each option, the strategies are generally listed in a progression from introductory student choice-making to advanced ownership. Explore the AVID Open Access article, Empower Students Through Creativity and Choice, for more detail about the power of choice as well as this gradual release of responsibility.

Blended Learning: When students engage in blended learning, they have some control over one or more of the following elements of learning: pace, place, path, and time. Explore the various models of blended learning to begin providing voice and choice to your students. This is an effective way to begin releasing learning choices to the learner.

Creativity and Choice: When students are allowed to choose how they will demonstrate their learning, they have personal ownership in the outcome. Explore ways that you can allow students to create digital products showing what they have learned. These ideas can also be integrated into other learning models, like blended learning, inquiry-based learning, and project-based learning.

Inquiry-Based Learning: This learner-centered process allows students to ask the questions that will guide their learning. After asking the questions, they then work to find the answers. The more freedom that students have in asking the questions, the more ownership that they will assume in the process. Learn more about the ANSWERS Inquiry process.

Project-Based Learning: When fully implemented, project-based learning has the potential to provide a tremendous degree of student ownership. Students are presented with an authentic challenge or question that drives them to develop a public product that is ultimately shared with an authentic audience. Learn more about project-based learning.

Overall, we can accelerate learning by empowering students. By giving them the skills and opportunities to engage in rich, rigorous, student-centered learning experiences, they will be better students in our classrooms and better lifelong learners in the future.

AVID Connections

AVID Collaborative Study Groups offer students an opportunity to identify a specific question from a content area and collaborate in small groups to develop and deepen their understanding through inquiry and apply their new learning in order to enhance classroom performance using inquiry, note-taking, organization, collaboration, communication, and numerous other skills necessary for college readiness.

WICOR® is an instructional approach that places students at the center of their learning by empowering them to take ownership and agency of their thinking and learning. Each component includes strategies that engage both teachers and students. WICOR involves intentional instructional decision-making by teachers to provide students with opportunities to demonstrate what they know and what they can do with rigorous course content, which in turn builds skills and behaviors that support college and career readiness.

References

Couros, G. (n.d.). Empowered in the process.

Farrington, C., Johnson, D. W., Allensworth, E., Nagaoka, J., Roderick, M., Beechum, N. W., & Keyes, T. S. (2012). Teaching adolescents to become learners: The Role of Noncognitive Factors in Shaping School Performance. UChicago Consortium on School Research.

Spencer, J. (2019, March 18). Making the shift from student engagement to student empowerment.

UChicago Consortium on School Research. (2012, June 11). CCSR review outlines new framework for noncognitive factors shaping school performance; identifies key levers for improving student outcomes [Press release]. The University of Chicago.

UChicago Consortium on School Research. (2017). The role of noncognitive factors in shaping school performance [Executive summary]. The University of Chicago.

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Accelerate Learning By Empowering Students: Develop Success Skills and Provide Rigorous Learning Experiences - AVID Open Access

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In our previous article within this collection, Accelerate Learning by Making Connections: Build Trust Through Relationships, Community, and Connection, we explored how building relationships allows students to feel safe and seen, and it also creates the environment necessary to accelerate learning. While this establishes a critical foundation for growth, it is not enough by itself.

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Flipgrid is an amazing tool that I love using to engage students! While it's great for in-person learning, it's even more useful now that so many of us have transitioned to online teaching.

Flipgrid is a free platform where students can create and post short videos of themselves responding to questions or topics. You can also choose to enable (or disable) a feature that allows students to view and comment on their classmates' videos.

While fostering classroom community and student-to-student relationships can be difficult through a screen, Flipgrid helps bridge this gap.

Flipgrid increases student interactions, which encourages relationship building among your students.

To get started:

Create a class to get your Flipgrid code to share with your students

Use the topic feature to create different assignments

Change assignment details such as the title, video length options, and instructions (you can also record a video of yourself explaining the assignment!)

Share your class grid or specific assignments by sharing the link, QR code, or using the Remind or Google Classroom feature

6 Ways to use Flipgrid with your students:

1. Lesson Responses

Students can share facts or respond to a question about a lesson or topic. Example: Describe 3 interesting details about a planet in our solar system.

2. Research Projects

Students share facts and opinions about a research topic. They can also complete a biography project and record a video from the perspective of the person they researched.

3. Reading Responses

After students complete a reading response, they can record a video of their response. This also gives students the opportunity to explain their answer in a different way.

Once their video has been posted, they can comment on classmates' videos and add to the discussion. This is just one way that Flipgrid makes it easy to engage students and increase student comprehension!

4. Digital Book Clubs

Set up digital book clubs by creating topics in your class grid for different books. After sharing the topic link with the students assigned to each book, simply attach a reading discussion card as a PDF or screenshot for each group. Members of each book club can use these as starting points to discuss their books and comment on each other's videos.

This is also a simple, yet effective way to differentiate your ELA instruction since you can pick multiple books to suit a range of reading levels.

5. Selfie Writing

After completing a selfie writing slide, students can create a video to record their response. Students can interact with posted videos by watching them and leaving a comment, which promotes positive relationships among your students.

6. Student Shoutouts

Create a "Shoutout" topic in your class grid, with each student recording a video recognizing a classmate with a meaningful compliment. Recording shoutouts on a weekly basis will get your class in the habit of celebrating each other. (Check out this other for more details about building classroom community with shoutouts!)

MORE TIPS:

Duplicate topics that you know you will reuse

Arrange topics in your class grid so that current assignments are at the top

Freeze or hide topics as needed

Pin the image below to save this post for later!

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How to use Flipgrid to Engage Students - Teach Create Motivate

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Flipgrid is an amazing tool that I love using to engage students! While it's great for in-person learning, it's even more useful now that so many of us have transitioned to online teaching. Flipgrid is a free platform where students can create and post short videos of themselves responding to questions or topics.

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40+ FREE digital escape rooms (plus a step by step guide for creating your own)

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Digital escape rooms bring the excitement of hunting for clues and the joy of solving puzzles right to your student’s devices. Here are over 40 digital

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Giving students different options of explaining their understanding is equity.

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Giving students different options of explaining their understanding is equity.