HOTSpot - Chris - Layered Learning High Level Questioning and Making Metaphors

Using metaphors and analogies is a standard practice in science class when describing many of the abstract concepts that kids have a hard time understanding. Often times it is the teacher giving the kids the metaphor or analogy for them to memorize which is helpful but doesn’t really help students “own” the connection being made. Starting this lesson with a video representing the non biology related part of the metaphor and asking students guiding questions got my students in the right frame of mind of the connection I wanted them to make. Using EDpuzzle is perfect for this because it pauses the video a key points to ask these questions. I found that adding the questions as comments instead of free response allowed me to choose how I wanted to collect their answers. Using the question feature on Google Classroom worked perfectly for this because I could control if I wanted to keep students’ responses private or them to see each others responses to promote discussion. Following the video, my students then got to show their creative sides by explaining the metaphor and representing it both visually and verbally using Google Slides. Not only could they collaborate in groups on one slide deck, it was easily turned in through Google Classroom. I was able to put all of the students work into a shared class folder for everyone to see and use as a study aide for the assessment. Layering all these simple technologies together really helped turn a “sit and get” lesson into a lesson involving creativity, critical thinking and collaboration. For more layered learning ideas, check out David Freeburg’s website. He is a Google Certified Educator and Director of of Technology and Digital Curriculum in Minnesota.

HOTSpot - Cory - Reading Comprehension Quizzes: “I read, but I just don’t remember!”

Reading comprehension quizzes have always been a challenge in regards to accountability. It is difficult to walk the line between making it too easy for those who did not do the work or too hard for those who did what was asked. Socrative has a student based navigation quiz that allows them to move back and forth through their questions without immediate feedback. What I have found useful is to pair this type of quiz with 30 sec to 1 min of time in the text you asked them to read before they have to turn the quiz in. The students who have read or taken notes on the material tend to find this very helpful and less stressful, while the students who have not read or organized their material are looking for a needle in the haystack. After having given a few this way, it encourages the students to have their texts well read and organized in case they get that minute of precious time.

PowerSchool Pro Progress Feature

I was clicking around in PowerSchool Pro, making sure all of my grades were up to date for this current progress period and I happened upon a nice little feature in the Progress charm that sits on the left side of the main page. PowerSchool Pro quickly and easily allows you to see how students grades have changed from the pervious progress report with a few simple clicks. It even shows you who's grade has gone up or down since the last progress report with corresponding arrows. It is a great, quick check to see how your students are doing with very minimal work involved.

HOTSpot - Sean - Project Management Pace Tracking

Managing productivity and pacing when working on long term projects is difficult. As teachers, it’s our responsibility to provide our students with tools and skills to do this successfully. The tool I use with my students, google spreadsheets, is nothing that’s earth shattering. I used the spreadsheet to help my students create a system / map for them to follow while working on long term projects. I not only talk to them about goal setting and pacing, but also accountability for their time. We discuss the business world, especially consulting, and the need to document and bill for time. This tool has proven to be successful in helping keep students on pace, prevent them from becoming overwhelmed, and give them real time feedback on how effectively they use their time to be productive. Feel free to make a copy (from the link above) and use it for yourself and your students.

HOTSpot - Shona - Sharing Pear Deck Data

Pear Deck can be a really powerful tool for formative assessment, student engagement, and collaboration. But, you can take your Pear Deck lessons to a new level with your students by utilizing the feedback options in a few different ways. And yes, both of these feedback options can be utilized with Google Classroom. Recently, I had a class brainstorming session where students collaborated answers for each slide. In order to be able to share the entire classes feedback, which was optimal for this lesson, I collected the feedback/evidence in a google sheet (shown in the video) and shared the sheet with each person in the class. If you would like to take it further, you can utilize the explore option in sheets to analyze the feedback/data. Please note that multiple choice and free response questions work best for this type of feedback. If you plan on using Pear Deck in a less collaborative manner and you would like to share individual responses with each person, you may do so by using the feedback option and the students will have their own responses in their Google Classroom folder. All question options are accessible to the student via a google doc that outlines personal responses.

HOTSpot - Sean - Rubric Creator

I’ve learned that getting kids involved and invested in what they’ll be graded or judged on is a crazy powerful thing. Five years ago, I committed to implementing a 20% Time project into my Advanced Accounting course. It was a good deal of work to get it up and running, but has been worth every second that I put into it. The passion that students show for a problem that THEY have identified and a solution that THEY have chosen to come up with for that problem is amazing. In this process, THEY also choose the specifics on which they will be graded. I spend ample time talking about project management, goal setting, and the importance of the process instead of just the end result. This process includes an important decision about how they’ll be judged and evaluated...or in their world, graded.


The world of handing over decisions and ownership to students can be overwhelming and daunting...for many reasons. From a logistics side, rubric creation can be tough enough for teachers...let alone students. This is why I love Rubistar, a simple rubric creation tool that not only can teachers use very easily, but they can also put the creation in the hands of students. With this smooth tool, teachers can feel very comfortable turning the “judging” process over to the kids to let them have a voice in how they are graded.

HOTSpot - Mandie - URL Linking

This election year I have shared out many articles for the kids to read. Of course, I hope that their excitement for Government will be enough to keep them accountable but that isn't always the case. I've been looking for other ways to track if they are actually reading what I'm sending and recently was reminded of Google URL Shortener. Google URL Shortener gives you the ability to not only shorten any URL quickly and conveniently, it also allows you to view analytics to see if people are really clicking on the link. The other great thing about Google URL Shortener is the ability to share the short URL through QR Code or simply copying and pasting either in Google Classroom, Twitter, email, or on a Google site. No more need to search for the URL in an email or document because your account is synced with the Google URL Shortener, so you can revisit at any time! Happy shortening!

HOTSpot - Chris - My Simple Show

I was really dreading teaching about the properties of water because it can really be a dry topic (pun intended).  Wanting to change it up and make my students do more of the work to learn the material rather than me just giving it to them via lecture, I thought of having them make their own video cast. A few days before that lesson was coming up I found this awesome web tool called mysimpleshow.com on the Free Technology for Teachers Blog by Richard Byrne. What intrigued me the most about it was how simple it was going to be for my students to use, which meant most of the time was going to be devoted to learning the material and presenting it in a meaningful way. Looking back on this lesson, little time was wasted teaching them how to use the website, and the final products turned out really well. Definitely another tool to keep in my toolbox. Click here to check out some of their end products.

HOTSpot - Chris - Taking Notes on EDpuzzle

Using video can be a powerful piece of anyone's curriculum. Whether it's a video of you or something you grab from YouTube, giving students the ability to watch, rewatch, and pause can make a big impact on students who learn at a different pace than their peers. The problem I found with assigning videos, as I would a textbook reading for content, was that I didn't give my students a way to purposely take notes to record their understanding. EDpuzzle was great at adding questions for formative feedback from the kids about their understanding at the time they were taking in the content, but there was no takeaway for them. With the help of our Literacy Coaches, I realized that this piece of technology offered a whole lot more than what I was using. Using the comment feature of EDpuzzle allowed me to purposely pause my students at key points in the video to take notes, reflect, and record their understanding so that they now had something they could take away.