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Group projects can be difficult for some people. This offers way on how to offer more and give each of the students a job in the project. They are to do daily check ins and learn how to communicate what their part is in the project and when they are going to be finished!

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5 Fantastic Ideas for Collaboration Projects | Cult of Pedagogy

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These ideas can be adapted for any subject area, along with suggestions for adding criticality and opportunities for student agency to each one.

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I really like this because it offers a survey on what skills the students have and what they need to work on. Then, they are able to choose which seminar they should watch. These videos can offer information on what they need to work on in the classroom. Students can sign up for the seminars and if it is more than a few, the teacher can offer that topic as a whole class discussion.

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Listen to the interview with Melanie Meehan (transcript):
Sponsored by EVERFI and Today by Studyo

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Over the years, we've covered a lot of different ways to differentiate and personalize instruction, methods for giving each student what they need when they need it, rather than planning the exact same learning experiences for everyone, every day. ( Click here to see all of our posts that connect to differentiation in some way.) The good news is that there are so many ways to differentiate - here we'll focus on another strategy that we're calling seminars.

I say "we're calling it that" because I assume you're already familiar with the word seminar - a short-term gathering of people for the purpose of learning about a given topic. Typically, adults attend seminars. University students attend seminars. What we're talking about today is offering a version of that concept to students within your own classroom. These seminars are mini-lessons given during class time, but the key is that most of the time they are optional - students only sign up to attend if they have an interest in or need to learn more about the topic. And yes, they could just be called mini-lessons - in fact, I heard about this same concept years ago from the high school teachers at the Apollo School - but something special is added when you call them seminars.

That's what Melanie Meehan calls them. Meehan is a Connecticut-based elementary writing and social studies coordinator who has written three books about teaching writing and contributes to the collaborative blog Two Writing Teachers. She appeared on episode 192 of the podcast, where we talked about backward chaining, another differentiation strategy. While working on that piece, she also mentioned the seminar strategy, and I liked it so much I thought we should give it its own separate space.

Melanie Meehan

In the podcast episode above, Meehan talked with me about the logistics of how she sets seminars up in her classroom and what an effective tool they are, not only for differentiation, but also for building student agency. And just like with backward chaining, seminars can be used in any subject area and any grade level.

What do seminars look like in a K-12 classroom?

"Basically, seminars are small group instruction," Meehan says, "and that is, as far as I'm concerned, the sweet spot of differentiation." She acknowledges that seminar is a deliberately 'fancy' word, but "it's a word that kids love."

The seminars are 7 to 10 minutes long, with each seminar covering a small, focused topic. They are offered during times when students are working independently on other tasks. During a typical class period, Meehan usually offers one or two seminars.

When she first introduces the concept of seminars to students, she talks about her own daughters attending seminars in college: "It was the special classes where they got to really work on what they were interested in. So I'll bring them up as seminars in terms of what are you really interested in learning about? And it just generates some excitement and some joy around the whole process."

Nuts and bolts: What are the logistics?

Choosing the Topics

Seminars can be offered in any subject area; because she teaches writing, Meehan's seminars are all geared toward that. "It can be any of the learning targets that align with the standards that the unit's going after," she explains. "So that could be developing sections for my writing, it can be making sure that I have enough information in a given section. It can be making sure my reason's clear. Depending on what genre they're working on, those seminars can be content-specific. But they can also be writing behavioral. They can be, I'm having a hard time getting to work. I'm having a hard time staying on task. So sometimes I'll put those up too."

Topics can come from Meehan's observations of students at work, noticing areas of struggle. They can also come from student surveys. Meehan has a Google Form ( click here to make a copy) that asks students to evaluate themselves with these questions:

"Once I have that information," Meehan says, "I can establish seminars based on that. If I get four kids who have checked that they need some work on including small stories into their argument pieces, I've got a seminar going."

Sign Ups

Meehan has students sign up on a sheet of chart paper with lined sticky notes indicating the seminars being offered that day. "So I can just pull that sticky note right off of the chart, and be like, oh, okay. You four needed to work on ways to help your introductions. Great. Seminar's going on about hooking introductions. I've got Jenn, Melanie, Garth, and Julia, you four come on up. I'm giving that right now."

Ideally, seminars will only be given to groups of four to five students. If more than five sign up for a seminar, Meehan will offer two separate sessions. If a large number of students show interest in a topic, that becomes a whole-class lesson.

How do these lessons fit into class time? Meehan describes a typical 45-60-minute class period: "I'm envisioning a 7 to 10 short, what we would call a mini lesson. So a quick, here's your learnings for the day. You don't necessarily have to do it today because you might be in a different place in your writing process, but probably at some point in this unit, you are going to need this teaching point. And, you know, off you go, and you're working on your independent pieces. So during that independent time, and in my head, there are two 20-minute solid blocks of independent writing time. So you've got your 7- to 10-minute full group lesson that everybody's listening to, you've got your 20 minutes of independent writing time, during which time you have the opportunity to teach kids as small groups or teach kids individually. I like to challenge the teachers that I work with to think about having in those 20 minutes one small group and one conference, at least.

"So if you can fit those in in those 20 minutes, then you're doing a good job being efficient, because after that 20 minutes, you'll do a quick interruption. You might highlight something that you saw. You might have an additional teaching point, you might ask somebody to share what they're proud of. That's the two-, three-minute interruption, which sometimes kids need, right? Great, everybody. Back to work. You got another 20 minutes, and teacher, you've got another opportunity for another seminar and another meeting with the kids."

Are seminars always self-selected?

Meehan's long-term goal is to build student agency, with students understanding their own needs and taking steps to meet them. Seminars are an important part of making that happen. "Ultimately the goal of learning is transfer," she says. "It's owning your learning and being a learner out in the world without a teacher at your side. So I love having kids sign up for their own seminars."

With that said, Meehan also occasionally assigns seminars to students. If a seminar is being held and she knows a student needs to work on that particular skill, she'll either gently encourage them to attend or simply tell them they really need that seminar. And if, during a writer's workshop, she notices four or five students who appear to be stuck or off-task? "You've got a seminar. Like, hey, friend, have I got a seminar for you. This one's going to be mandated."

Sometimes student choices don't always align with what Meehan thinks they need, like when a student chooses a seminar on a skill they have already mastered. But in those cases, she usually won't interfere. "I can move them along quickly through the choice that they've made and honor that choice," she says. "And then they're much more pliable toward my recommendation for the next one."

Leveling Up: Student- Run Seminars

Once students have gotten used to attending seminars run by the teacher, you can start to move toward having students give the seminars themselves. When Meehan notices that a student really understands a topic, she'll instruct them to listen to her give a seminar as if they'll have to teach it themselves.

"I'll be like, you're going to be the one who listens and then turns it around because we've got so many other kids who need it," she says. "So you're going to become my teaching partner, and at the end of this, you're going to go off and teach it to another group, and I'll teach it to the other group."

By taking this approach, Meehan not only becomes more efficient at managing demands on her time, she also builds more confidence and agency in her students.

"I think that we run past the power of the abilities of some of the kids in the room," Meehan says. "Kids are sometimes really effective teachers to each other." So if she notices that a student is starting to master a skill, she might say something like, "You've used transition words brilliantly in your piece. Could you run a seminar on that for your friends?"

Having students teach each other also pushes them to a new level of mastery. "A kid might have a specialty or a strength that they want to develop, and that also forces them to kind of prepare for it and make sure that they're extra good."

Seminars in Any Class

Although this idea is being presented here in a writing class, which is built on a workshop model, seminars could be offered in any subject area. Even if you are teaching a content-heavy subject, as long as you build in some time for students to work independently, you'll have an opportunity to offer seminars on the unique set of skills needed for success in your subject.

LEARN MORE

You can find more from Meehan on her website, melaniemeehan.com. The seminar approach appears along with lots of other fantastic strategies in her 2022 book, Answers to Your Biggest Questions About Teaching Elementary Writing ( Amazon | Bookshop.org).

Come back for more.
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How to Personalize Instruction with Seminars

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Listen to the interview with Melanie Meehan (transcript): Sponsored by EVERFI and Today by Studyo This page contains Amazon Affiliate and Bookshop.org links. When you make a purchase through these links, Cult of Pedagogy gets a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you.

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This is a great list! I really like "talking points," which is where teachers can message in English and parents can have it translated into over languages. If English is not the sole language being spoken at home, this is an awesome way to make sure that those families are still receiving the messages being sent out! It's also offered as a mobile app or a text only for parents who don't have a smartphone.

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Listen to this post as a podcast:
Sponsored by Hapara and JumpStart

If you've been reading this blog or listening to my podcast for awhile, you know that every year, I put out a new edition of my Teacher's Guide to Tech. This year's guide is the ninth edition, and we put a tremendous amount of work into making it the best one ever.

For starters, we've added 120 new tools and four new categories - artificial intelligence, drama & theater arts, early learners, and literacy. We also added a few new feature pages on microlearning, working with English learners, and publishing student writing. We also added a few lists of ten throughout the guide, curated lists of teaching-related resources that didn't quite fit in any category. We also completely reorganized the Tips section, which is over 40 pages of articles all hand-picked to help you make smarter decisions about the tech you use. And finally there's the main work of every update, which is to check each and every listing that's already there and make sure everything is still accurate. Every year I am shocked by how many tools change their name, shift their primary function, or disappear completely.

If this is the first time you're hearing about the guide, this video will show you what it is and how it works:

It takes about three full months every fall to update the guide for the upcoming year, and I want to thank my team - Marnie Diem, Brandie Wright, Lucia Hassell, and Kim Darche - for helping me make that happen.

The guide is packed with tools that can meet so many of your needs as a teacher, and many of them are already well established and widely used. But every January, we like to choose six that we think deserve a little extra attention. Most are not actually brand-new to the world, but each one has something special about it. So here we go!

The Tools

1. ChatGPT
chat.openai.com
This one has to come first because everyone seems to be talking about it right now, and for good reason. Released in November of 2022, ChatGPT is a free tool that uses machine learning to compose just about any piece of writing you tell it to.

"In plain English, it's like a magic Alexa," Marnie Diem says. "Or a magic Google. You ask, Alexa, explain to me how a radio works. ChatGPT does it in writing. It uses artificial intelligence to write essays, short stories, plays, you name it." When she first saw it working, Diem had the same reaction many other educators had; with a tool like this, students would never need to produce a single line of original writing again. Forget plagiarism - this tool essentially serves as a ghostwriter for anyone who uses it. "I went into full panic mode," she said. "This is going to change writing instruction forever."

Since that initial reaction, she has since landed in a more pragmatic place. "It's about finding a way that it can help our learning instead of do our learning for us," she says. The tool can be used for doing research, by asking it to explain a given concept to you. It can provide teachers with texts that can be used for lessons. It can even write lesson plans. But despite how good it is, it still needs a human touch. "This tool is not 100 percent accurate," Diem says. "But when we take what it gives us and humanize it and put in our skill set and our knowledge, we could have this tool for a really positive impact on education."

"If we focus on the fear," she says, "we'll be in trouble. If we focus on ways we can use this tool to help our teaching and learning, we're going to have a lot of fun with it."

2. TalkingPoints
talkingpts.org
This free app allows teachers and parents to message each other in their preferred language: The teacher can send out a message in English, and the parent can have it translated into one of over 100 languages. Parents can also respond in their preferred language and it will be translated back for the teacher. It's available as a mobile app or text-only for parents who do not have smartphones.

Brandie Wright's school has a high population of families that speak Arabic and Spanish, and these families had always been harder to connect with than those who spoke English. As soon as she started using TalkingPoints, she started hearing from families that had never responded to messages that were sent out through the school's other communication systems.

"When you create your student list," Wright says, "you put the parents' information in there, including the home language." Once that information is set, all messages that go out to that family are automatically translated into that family's preferred language. So you send a single message out to a big group of families, and each family receives the message in their home language. So this can be used as a single messaging system for all students.

Whether you have just a few families who don't speak English or a large, diverse population speaking multiple languages, TalkingPoints can help you engage all families much more effectively.

3. Ahaslides
ahaslides.com
AhaSlides makes any presentation interactive with colorful, eye-catching live polls, quizzes, word clouds, brainstorming activities, spinner wheels and other interactives that gather real-time feedback and engage your students.

Let's say you already have a lot of PowerPoint or Google Slides presentations that you've used for years. You can now add interactivity by just importing one of these files into AhaSlides and putting interactive elements in between your content slides. Then, when you give your presentation and you get to one of these slides, participants can respond through their phones or other devices (they join with a simple URL or QR code) and the results appear instantly on your presenter's screen.

The free version of this tool limits you to only a few participants, but they have pretty reasonable educational pricing for schools, so my advice is to give the free version a try and if you love it, see if your school will pay for a bigger license. The video below gives you a general idea of what AhaSlides has to offer, but if you want a more in-depth look at how it works, watch this video.

4. The Juice
thejuicelearning.com
This current events platform delivers five articles to students every day. Designed for grades 5-12 at four different reading levels, the standards-aligned articles are written by the Juice staff and sourced from a variety of news outlets. Each article has vocabulary, a comprehension quick check, and the option to read or listen to the articles. Included in every issue are infographics, articles on SEL and STEAM topics, and "extra Juice" links, which send readers to previous Juice articles that relate to the daily topic.

"So you enroll your class, and you assign a reading level to each individual student," Kim Darche explains. "And then automatically, the students are given their 'Daily Juice' in the level that you have assigned them. Then on the teacher's end there's this insane dashboard that talks about which articles the students have read, what questions they got correct, how long they spent reading."

What impresses Darche the most is the quality of the articles and how closely aligned they are with the current events covered by major news outlets. "The articles range; they go from global, cultural affairs to sports. It feels like a newspaper that's getting delivered." she says. And even more impressive, she says, are the comprehension questions that supplement the articles. "The questions blew me away as much as the articles did."

5. 1619 Project Pulitzer Center Resources
1619education.org
The 1619 Project was originally launched in August of 2019 as a special edition in The New York Times. Developed by Nikole Hannah-Jones, "The project illuminates the legacy of slavery in the contemporary United States, and highlights the contributions of Black Americans to every aspect of American society." Since its initial publication, it has grown and evolved to include two published books and a podcast.

To make the most of the project's rich materials, the Pulitzer Center began building a collection of free, teacher-created classroom resources that use the 1619 Project as a springboard. For the last two years, the Center has sponsored two cohorts of educators from across the United States who have developed materials for the collection. Lesson plans are available on the site for all grade levels and in a wide variety of subject areas.

Our team member Lucia Hassell was a part of the 2022 cohort, and while she says the work was challenging, it was absolutely worth it. "Although this work can be labeled as 'hard history,'" she says, "I think it's important to lean into this work. Some of it, for me, has to do with my ancestry and my roots, but think about how we can challenge ourselves and our students to think about where we are right now and where it all started."

The video below, from the Center's first annual conference, does not showcase the resources on the site, but it features the reflections of teachers who have used the materials in their classrooms. It provides an optimistic and inspiring look at what's possible. Information about applying for future cohorts can be found here.

6. Along
along.org
In recent years, educators have become more aware of the importance of social emotional learning in our students; more specifically, the need to pay closer attention to our students' emotional state and respond when help is needed.

The Along platform is a free digital reflection tool used to deepen student-teacher connections and set up a system for regular check-ins. It makes it easier to build relationships with our students and maintain regular contact with them.

Here's how it works: Teachers choose from a database of research-informed questions and resources to share with students. They then add their own response to the prompt before sharing with students. Students see the prompt and their teacher's response - these can be created in video, text, or audio - and then post their own response in a completely private and secure setting.

If you're in need of a tool to improve your connection with students outside of academics, Along may be exactly what you're looking for.

The Teacher's Guide to Tech

The 9th edition of the Teacher's Guide to Tech is loaded with tools that can enrich your teaching. With over 650 tools in more than 50 different categories, this is the resource you need to quickly make smart decisions about the technology you choose for your classroom.

This year's guide has over 120 new tools and three brand-new categories: artificial intelligence, drama & theater arts, early learners, and literacy, plus features on microlearning, teaching English learners, and publishing student writing. We've also completely reorganized and updated the Tips section, over 40 pages of articles about how to use technology thoughtfully. Along with that, we've made sure that every single tool listed has up-to-date information, videos, and links to their sites, so you can find what you need and get back to teaching.

Where to Get Your Copy

Single-User Licenses: If you just want a copy for yourself, you can get it at Teachers Pay Teachers or on Teachable.

Multi-User Licenses: To get the guide for your team, school, or even district, you can save a lot by getting multi-user licenses. I offer the deepest discounts for these on Teachable.

Purchase on Teachable
Purchase on TpT

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A messaging platform that translates for you, a daily curation of current events, the one that writes essays for you, and more.

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While topics of education are important, it is also important to have topics of discussion where students can have real talk. Just like how sometimes, they need to be moving around to learn, sometimes they need to be able to discuss other topics that are relatable to them. Current events or trends and even just coming up with a silly topic like "chocolate - what are your thoughts?" is a great way to get the students talking and then move on to the topic of the day in class.

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Authentic Group Discussions with the Real Talk Strategy | Cult of Pedagogy

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After years of listening to shallow student discussions, this teacher found a way to make those conversations more natural, more interesting, and more real.

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This is a great way to encourage students to use their imagination while learning how to write stories. The students are not limited on how much they need to write and they are encouraged to write about whatever they want and then they can share it with the class. The more the students write their stories down, the more confident they could become in sharing and also writing more in their stories!

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I started my career in first grade, many years ago in London, and now I've returned to it in a public school in Oregon. What remains the same is the magic of this grade: The children discover the power of reading and writing as that secret code of lines unravels on the page. In my early days as a teacher, I developed an interactive method of storytelling in my first-grade class that inspired reading and writing. I discovered then, just as I am rediscovering now, that first graders have the capacity and desire to become storytellers themselves.

This process brings a host of learning benefits to the classroom.

Make Time to Start the Day with a Story

In my first-ever Edutopia article, I outlined my particular methodology for storytelling. The key takeaway is that this isn't a one-person (adult) show, but an interactive process that involves the students as participants. There is very little preparation-students don't need it. You'll require a story to tell, but there's no rule that says you need to learn it by heart. The process works just as well with you reading from a sheet, which I do for a new story. In fact, this is really just a version of reader's theater-a strategy commonly used in classrooms.

The biggest challenge for any teacher when taking on a new skill is to find time in their already overstretched schedule, particularly as many are under additional pressure to deliver new curricula to address post-Covid gaps in learning. So, what I propose is using the first 10-15 minutes of your day for community storytelling. I don't manage this every day, but at least three times a week, either I or the students are telling a story.

From Teacher-Led to Student-Led Storytelling

While the imaginations of students are filled with stories, they won't arrive in your class knowing how to stand up in front of their peers, recruit actors with on-the-spot auditions, tell a story, and direct actors at the same time. These are all presentation and stagecraft skills that take many months to hone. The result is akin to a very short play where the "actors" repeat the lines of dialogue you say as the storyteller or narrator. This has the double benefit of guiding the students and assisting those with less English. More confident students will ad-lib, which can be amusing for everyone-as long as it's in small amounts and sticks to the story.

Here is the eight-step process that I'm currently working through with my first-graders.

1. In the first one to two months: The teacher tells stories and models all the required skills, reminding students that they can also be storytellers if they want.

2. Follow the golden rule: Students must write their story down at home and bring it to share in class. There is no fixed rule on length. At the start of the year, the stories were brief: a few sentences across a couple of mostly drawn pages. When I taught narrative writing across multiple pages with a clear beginning, middle, and end structure, I found that the stories students wrote at home reflected that format.

Importantly, you're creating a space that inspires extracurricular writing and creativity. Yes, you can use this model for sharing stories in any writing and reading lesson, but this community time is something special. It doubles up as my "morning meeting" and social and emotional interaction time that many schools are focusing on, post-Covid. Storytelling is such a great and ancient way to explore human behavior, feeling, motivation, and consequence.

3. Keep a dress-up box: Offer materials like masks, colored linen, hats-all of which certainly inspire students to want to use them, but they aren't essential for storytelling.

4. Take it slowly: Don't place too much emphasis on the quality of writing done at home at first. The initial stories that students write will be brief. Think of this as a snowball that starts out as little flakes of snow.

5. Be flexible with the pace: The rate of stories that students bring to class is unpredictable. I've found that they come in flurries, as friends of the last storyteller want their turn. Then there are dry patches, especially near holidays or special events when the children are thinking about other things. During this time, I step back in as the storyteller.

6. Give direction: I usually support the student storyteller/narrator by encouraging a louder, clearer voice or helping to manage the actors, encouraging the audience to contribute sound effects, or even helping a student flesh out a story. Doing this only serves to further encourage the literacy skills you want to develop.

7. Connect with other classes: If you have confident student storytellers-and you will-you can then link up with a kindergarten class and send the students to share their stories there. This is now regularly happening at my school. The students love seeing their old kindergarten teachers, and the younger students are inspired by the first graders' creativity. My first graders grow in confidence as role models and understand that writing a story is a rewarding process of community sharing.

Honestly, this connection can be made with any grade. In a previous article, I detailed how my fourth-grade students were Young Storytellers working independently in a first-grade class.

8. Capture the moment: Get permission to take pictures and films of the stories, and share them on any platforms that parents see. We use Seesaw to share stories and classwork. At my teacher-parent conferences, parents praised this activity and asked how to support writing at home.

Storytelling benefits literacy and language acquisition

Engaging with storytelling is especially crucial for first grade, because it's important for students to see literacy as a fun-filled, imagination-packed act of communication. It also acts as a counter-balance to the hard work of learning how to read and the dominance of prescribed and factual forms in the writing curriculum. Additionally, I've found that storytelling can also help students acquire English.

Storytelling develops communication and presentation skills that are often neglected. With continued practice, the growth in students' oral and emotional confidence is incredible. One of my shyest students has been a regular storyteller in kindergarten, amazing us all. Students can find their voices in the real world by using that most powerful of gifts they bring to you: their imaginations. Lastly, as a teacher, you get to tell and be told stories, and see your students progress. It's truly one of the best parts of the school day!

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Students in kindergarten through second grade can develop the ability to share original stories, strengthening their literacy skills.

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Social-Emotional learning is so important and encouraging children how to express themselves can be difficult, especially if they're on the shy side. Using the puppets is a great way for the students to pretend the puppet is them for a bit and allow them to tell the teacher how they're feeling. This is a great way to open up dialogue on how the student can feel better if they are feeling angry or sad. It can also be a great way for the student to come up with ideas on how to make the puppet feel better!

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How Puppets Can Help Kids Express Emotions

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Using simple strategies acted out by puppets, students learn social and emotional skills that help them calm themselves, identify their feelings, and connect with others.

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This is very important! Technology is becoming utilized so much in the classroom, which is great because students need to understand that it can be a great tool in learning. However, it is also important to stay safe while learning and they also need to be taught how they can do this. The students need to know that they should report it if something feels off while using technology and they need to know who they need to report to to get this conflict solved.

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Many apps used in schools compromise student data. Here's one way schools and districts can develop a comprehensive plan to keep that information safe.

Many school districts have seen an explosion in the number of apps and websites that teachers use with students in classrooms. Although digital tools can enhance learning, the expansion in technology has resulted in an increased number of cyber attacks and privacy breaches. Districts have the power and responsibility to promote student safety by ensuring the protection of student data privacy.

According to the Student Privacy Primer from the Student Privacy Compass, "Student data privacy refers to the responsible, ethical, and equitable collection, use, sharing, and protection of student data." This data includes personally identifiable information such as a student's name, date of birth, Social Security number, and email address.

Although there are certainly edtech companies that perform due diligence when it comes to protecting data, others do not use best practices. A recent report from the nonprofit Internet Safety Labs found that 96 percent of apps used regularly in K-12 schools have data-sharing practices that "are not adequately safe for children."

Many of those apps shared children's personal information with third-party marketers, often without the knowledge or consent of schools. There have also been some recent instances of edtech company data breaches that have shown those companies are not taking the safety precautions they claim to be taking, such as encrypting student information. It is imperative that districts take steps to protect student information.

6 steps to build a culture of student data privacy

1. Identify a point person. As districts begin to think about student privacy, the first step is to identify someone who can become the primary contact on student data privacy questions and decisions. This might be someone at the district office level (such as a director of technology or tech coach), or it might be someone at the school level (such as an assistant principal or instructional coach). This person can also provide teachers with guidance and best practices.

2. Develop a communication strategy. It is essential to create a plan that effectively communicates the district's data privacy policies and procedures to all stakeholders (for instance, educators, parents, and students). Clearly communicating the plan at each step of the process will help build the relationships necessary to create an environment in which student data privacy is prioritized. If you need help getting started, check out the Student Privacy Communications Toolkit from the Student Privacy Compass.

3. Identify websites and apps being used in the district. Start with the apps that your district is paying for or encouraging teachers to use. Reach out to curriculum specialists, coaches, and anyone else that regularly provides professional development to teachers. I recommend starting with a small batch (10-20) of the most commonly used apps as you first start to develop procedures. Later, as you fine-tune your approval process, you might decide to utilize outside services to identify additional apps that are being used in the classroom.

For example, our district uses GoGuardian, which operates as an extension on student Chromebooks and monitors their browsing activity. The GoGuardian Director Overview dashboard shows us which apps, extensions, and websites are being used the most by our students. Another tool you can use is the LearnPlatform Inventory Dashboard. This is a browser extension pushed out to district devices that populates a dashboard showing all the edtech tools that teachers and students in your district are using.

4. Develop an understanding of pertinent laws and regulations. To effectively address student data privacy, the technology point person will need to be familiar with related legal requirements. One important federal law is the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), which requires schools to protect the privacy of student education records.

Another federal law that applies here is the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). COPPA requires operators of commercial websites and online services to obtain consent from parents before collecting personal information from children under the age of 13. While this rule applies to companies, not schools, it is still important to understand because schools can give consent on a parent's behalf.

Depending on your state, you might also need to do some research about state laws that govern data privacy; plenty of resources exist to help you get started with FERPA, COPPA, and additional state laws.

5. Vet apps for compliance with laws and data privacy. Each app should go through a standardized vetting procedure. I would strongly recommend putting a team together to perform this vetting so that you get diverse perspectives and input from a variety of stakeholders.

Two things you will want to look at closely for each app will be the Terms of Service (TOS) and the Privacy Policy. Some pieces of information you will want to look for are the kind of data they are collecting and how they are securing that data.

Reviewing the TOS and Privacy Policies can feel overwhelming, especially when you are first getting started. Fortunately, the U.S. Department of Education released guidance to help with this evaluation process.

Another helpful (and free) resource is the Common Sense Privacy Program. Common Sense evaluates the privacy policies of individual apps and scores them in 10 different areas, including Data Collection, Data Sharing, and Data Security.

6. Create a list of approved apps to share with teachers. An important part of creating a culture of student data privacy is getting teachers on board, as they are the people making daily decisions about which apps to use with their students. One way you can help them make safe choices is to create a list of approved apps that have been vetted by a person (or group of people) trained to read through Privacy Policies and Terms of Service notices. With so many apps out there to choose from, teachers often have a choice between two that do similar things. A list can help them choose the app that does a better job of protecting data while still allowing them to use technology to enhance learning for students.

For teachers who would like to learn more about student data privacy, provide some resources. Here are two free training courses:

Creating a culture of student data privacy is challenging, but it is worth the effort to protect our students. Remember that you don't have to do everything all at once. Take that first step and be a privacy leader!

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Many apps used in schools compromise student data. Here's one way schools and districts can develop a comprehensive plan to keep that information safe. Many school districts have seen an explosion in the number of apps and websites that teachers use with students in classrooms. Although digital tools can enhance learning, the expansion in technology has resulted in an increased number of cyber attacks and privacy breaches.

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This seems like a great way to identify how a student writes and help them to get better at it. They can learn how compose a paragraph or multiple paragraphs. It can also be used to get their point across without writing too much unnecessary information!

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Penny Kittle shares a lesson plan that uses very short mentor texts to foster students' love of writing and confidence in their work.

Jens Magnusson / Ikon Images

In many classrooms, students labor over writing. They groan when we give assignments. They procrastinate. They lack confidence. Where's the joy? We know it matters. Joy suspends time. When students have it, they will work past the bell.
What is this author doing to make this book so good? I can't stop reading it! How can I replicate those craft moves to give my writing this kind of life and power? Does the author do this in all his books?
We teachers have the power to ignite joy as a regular practice through the study of authors' craft moves. Students will discover the potential of intentionally arranging sentences (in a list, perhaps), or in shaping an image (to show a creepy setting or define a character), or in creating authentic dialogue. Studying passages from great books not only hones writing skills but also generates curiosity.

The answer to these questions lies in the frequent study and imitation of micro mentor texts.

A micro mentor text is a few sentences, a paragraph, or a scene. It is short enough to analyze with students in a mini-lesson but packed with writer's craft that we can teach students how to identify and imitate. The power of this practice lies in its simplicity and its infinite variations. It's a simple idea that I've used with great success in my teaching and literacy coaching, grade two to college, for decades. My students, however, do most of the work, collecting passages to study during independent reading and book clubs. When we unite our students' reading with the study of the writer's craft, we save time and inspire wise young writers.

There is never enough time in teaching, but one important and lasting understanding is that books hold lessons for writers. Let's help our students learn how to discover them.

A few tools and techniques can change your entire approach to teaching writing. I'll share a sample micro mentor text lesson.

BEGIN: Excite your students about the selected text
Three different kids. One mission in common: ESCAPE. Three young people will go on harrowing journeys in search of refuge. All will face unimaginable dangers-from drownings to bombings to betrayals. But for each of them, there is always hope of tomorrow. And although Josef, Isabel, and Mahmoud are separated by continents and decades, surprising connections will tie their stories together in the end.
I begin with a book talk, holding up Refugee, by Alan Gratz. I summarize the story in a few sentences from the author's website:

"This book," I tell students, "has won so many awards, I can't list them all. It not only was voted Best Fiction for Young Adults in 2018, but also became a New York Times best seller." I end this book talk, as I do all book talks, with these words: "If this sounds like a book you might want to read next, add it to your list at the back of your writer's notebook."

We must support the ongoing reading lives of all our students. Daily book talks remind students of all the great books available to them.

NOTICE: Passage study engages students through peer discussion
It was like they were invisible. Josef and his sister followed their mother through the crowd at the Lehrter Bahnhof, Berlin's main railway station. Josef and Ruth each carried a suitcase, and their mother carried two more-one for herself, and one for Josef's father. No porters rushed to help them with their bags. No station agents stopped to ask if they needed help finding their train. The bright yellow Star of David armbands the Landaus wore were like magical talismans that made them disappear. Yet no one bumped into them, Joseph noticed. All the station attendants and other passengers gave them a wide berth, flowing around them like water around a stone. The people chose not to see them.
In the following short passage from Refugee, Gratz establishes the setting with artful intention. I encourage students to talk with a partner, not only about what is happening here, but also about what Gratz is doing to create this moment, sentence by sentence.

The claim "like they were invisible" is supported by details of what that means.

The repetition of "no porters, no station agents" to show what was not happening but should have been happening.

The use of a simile ("like magical talismans... like water around a stone") to help the reader imagine what the crowd is seeing and how it is moving.

I wander the room and take notes on what students notice. Below are a few observations that I heard when conducting this passage study:

When we come back together as a class, I share students' observations and add them to an anchor chart (an ongoing, cumulative list) of craft moves we notice. Each book, we soon learn, is a treasure chest of craft moves.

IMITATE: Teacher modeling helps students visualize the use of craft moves in writing
The cement wall was cold against my head and neck and my legs crossed, uncrossed, stretched, and bunched up. I pulled my long blond hair back into a ponytail. I waited. I hated this part. More than the cold lima beans on my plate at dinner or scraping wax off of our hardwood floors at home, I hated this choosing teams thing. Just once, I wanted to be captain.
We pull out our writing notebooks, and I model how I might imitate Gratz's craft moves based on my own topic. My goal is to encourage students to use their observations as they write. I say, "I imagine myself at morning basketball practice in the gym of my middle school. There was only one team at the school, so my best friend and I tried out for the boys' team. I want to describe that setting for readers." I write a few sentences (either on the board or under a document camera, depending on what tools are available) and explain that I'm focusing on details that describe, inspired by Gratz's writing.

THEIR TURN: Drafting and sharing their own written work boosts students' confidence

I ask students to choose their own topics and try imitating Gratz as I continue writing. They do. Pencils fly. Some students go back to the passage to look at it more closely, and then continue writing. Other students read what I'm writing before continuing.
No girls were chosen to be captains in the morning scrimmage. No coach stepped up to make it fair.
I imitate a sentence pattern from the passage. I return to the passage and highlight the "no" sentences, and then I write my own sentences:

Students work in pairs, sharing their creations for a minute or two as I listen in. Sometimes we share our writing as a class. Student confidence blossoms. After all, they are standing next to the craft of expert authors, so they write with confidence. When students share, they discover the many ways that craft moves can be made across experiences and experiments from all the writers in the room. All things seem possible.

PRACTICE: Students learn How to read like writers independently

When students enter independent reading, I see 25 heads bent over 25 books. No matter the novel or nonfiction book each student has chosen, intentional craft moves are at work in it. We read like writers. As I confer with students, I hear what they've noticed.

In book clubs, students share passages they've collected to spur discussion. But they share more than passages. They share the joy of discovery. One student says to another, "Where did you find that?" and suddenly they begin to study the passage together.

This is teacher joy-when we watch students learning from each other. We need more of it. As Decoteau J. Irby says in The Blog of Harvard Education Publishing, "Joy at school and in learning is a foundation from which students gain the confidence that academic struggle is temporary and worthwhile." Let's bring joy back to the teaching of writing. It's there-right there-in the books we love.

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Teaching the Writer's Craft With Micro Mentor Texts

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Penny Kittle shares a lesson plan that uses very short mentor texts to foster students' love of writing and confidence in their work. Jens Magnusson / Ikon Images In many classrooms, students labor over writing. They groan when we give assignments. They procrastinate. They lack confidence. Where's the joy?

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I think this is an awesome way to get children to be more involved in learning. In today's education, not all children are able to sit for a long period of time while learning. Even if they are able to sit for that period of time, they may not be able to focus, wondering when they'll be able to get up. So, I feel that if children are able to move around while learning, they would learn more than if they were forced to sit in a chair for 40 minutes.

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I thought this had some great ideas on how to end lessons. For example, the "traffic light method," where they have to write something they learned on green, something they're still thinking about on yellow, and something they're still trying to understand on red. I also really liked "making the classroom a beach," where they bounce a beach ball around and ask questions like "what did you learn in today's lesson" or "what was the most challenging part!" These would be great ways to understand what has students stumped and what we may need to spend more time on in class.

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When you've got a few minutes left before the period ends, it's only normal to wonder: Do my students really understand what we covered? Do they remember what we started with, as well as what we just discussed?

While cleaning up and going over homework assignments often take up those final moments of class time, effective closing activities allow you to make better use of them by checking for understanding, correcting misunderstandings, and putting a little fun into the process to motivate your students to make sense of what they've just learned.

Closing activities don't need to happen every day, and they don't always require lots of advanced planning. They can occur at the end of a chapter, or even at the end of a large learning unit, and can also take various forms-incorporating movement, technology, and even components of social and emotional learning to build a stronger classroom community.

Here are 10 creative and fun closing activities we sourced from experienced teachers that you can try in your classroom.

1. Two-Dollar Summary: Ask students to write a two-dollar (or more) summary of the lesson they've just learned. Each word they use is worth 10 cents. For extra scaffolding, ask students to include specific words in their statement. For a twist on this, ask students to explain something as if they were teaching it to a first grade student. This will also push them to simplify complex ideas for themselves and therefore understand them better.

For a different spin on this, try educator Sarah Frisby Cook's "six-word summary" of the most important idea or concept. On Facebook, Cook told Edutopia that because students are limited in word choice, "they really have to think about what is most crucial to say."

6. Video Journals: Educator John Thomas uses the free app ChatterPix to get students creating and sharing video journals describing what they've learned. Because this can take a little time to create, this strategy might be best suited as a wrap-up activity at the end of a unit. The videos are playful and fun, and can easily be posted to classroom platforms like Seesaw.

8. Quiz the Next Class: Nikki Cobb-Struzynski gets her students to use the free platform Kahoot! to come up with quiz questions and multiple choice answers to give to their peers studying the same material in other classes. Recent research suggests that generating good questions promotes deeper engagement with content and improves retention. When a person formulates a question, "One has to reflect what one has learned and how an appropriate knowledge question can be inferred from this knowledge," University of Kassel researcher Mirjam Ebersbach told Edutopia.

9. Make Your Classroom a Beach: This activity will get students out of their seats and sharing with the whole class. Educator Eman Bekheet told Edutopia that she writes reflective questions on a beach ball using dry erase markers. Questions might include things like: "What is one thing you learned during today's lesson?" or "What was challenging about today's lesson?"

As the ball bounces around the room, you can come up with a mechanism for deciding which question they have to answer out loud-such as the question their left thumb is touching, or the very first question they see. Use the responses to generate further discussion about the day's lesson.

The Human Bar Graph is another twist that gets students moving. Label points along a line drawn on the floor or across a wall that show different levels of mastery: I'm confused, I'm okay, I got this. Ask students to stand where they feel most comfortable. This exercise requires a certain level of vulnerability, so it's best to try it once you built some trust with students.

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Instead of cleaning up or going over homework assignments, try these creative activities that can help students make sense of new material-and have fun in the process.