😫 Big classes are a unique challenge
It's an ages-old struggle in the classroom -- managing LOTS of kids in one class.
Desks. Chairs Textbooks. Materials. Those are the logistical challenges.
But that doesn't even cover the challenges of actually teaching all those students. It brings up a ton of questions:
How do I provide feedback to all of those students?
How do I make them feel seen and build relationships?
If students aren’t learning, how do I make sure that I don’t miss it — and how do I respond to it?
How do I respond to behavior issues when there are so many kids?
You’ll find some strategies in today’s newsletter … but I know we have readers that have tips and strategies that work.
Is it you?
Please complete the poll below — just a yes or no answer — and share any tips or strategies.
I’ll share some of the best in an upcoming newsletter. (If you share your name, I’ll give you credit!)
In today’s newsletter, I share some strategies for a unique challenge to large classes — providing student feedback.
We wrestled with this question — “How do you give feedback when you have 100+ students?”
You’ll find our answers in our 💡 Big Idea below — or you can read the entire post here.
If you want more time-saving ideas, check out EfficienTeach — our project with tons of templates, lesson plans, teaching strategies and more to help busy teachers save time. (Yep, it’s free.)
Inside:
🎧 Subscribe to “The Digital Learning Podcast”
👀 DTT Digest: Halloween, AI toolkit, digcit, Canva
💡 The Big Idea: 4 ways to give student feedback faster
🎯 Quick Teaching Strategy: Digital brain dumps
😄 Smile of the day: 1st year admin 😒
👋 How we can help
🎧 Subscribe to “The Digital Learning Podcast”
Did you know I have a podcast? I’m the co-host of The Digital Learning Podcast with Holly Clark!
When does it publish? Weekly
How long is it? About 30 minutes per episode
What do we talk about? Recently, we’ve been unpacking all of the implications of AI in the classroom, but we also tackle all sorts of issues related to blended learning, technology and quality teaching.
🎧 SUBSCRIBE: Find it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
👀 DTT Digest
4 teaching resources worth checking out today
ICYMI 👻 13 free Halloween activities — Get into the spooky spirit with these 13 free Halloween activities for kids! From virtual escape rooms to scavenger hunts, pumpkin carving to secret messages, there’s something for everyone.
ICYMI 🎉 It’s here! Our AI Teacher Toolkit! — This 25 page PDF ebook and includes; 40 AI tools for teachers, AI prompt examples, “By the way” lessons, 5 ways parents can use AI at home and AI lesson plans and units.
💻 Digital Citizenship Week is October 14–18, 2024 — Celebrate Digital Citizenship Week in Your Classroom with tons of resources from Common Sense Education. Resources include Digital Citizenship Week calendars, AI literacy lessons, webinars and more.
🔋 Supercharge Your Canva Projects — This article from Edutopia has lots of pro tips from power users can help you up your Canva game, even if you already use it.
💡 THE BIG IDEA 💡
🏃♂️ 4 ways to give student feedback faster
How do you give feedback when you have 100+ students?
As a high school Spanish teacher, this has been my daily reality for years and years.
We know that feedback is crucial to student development.
But if you’re not careful, it can consume your life. Inefficient feedback processes used on assignments for 100+ students can eat up large chunks of your life — and hours across an entire school year.
What can we do?
In our post — How do I give feedback to 100+ students? — we share some solutions …
⛑️ Triage feedback
It’s like the triage process they use in hospitals after a catastrophe or disaster. Treat injuries in order of severity.
Triage feedback is the same concept. Instead of leaving alllllllllll of the feedback on alllllllll of the student work, you just pick out a few of the most important things.
Chances are, students won’t process and internalize a ton of feedback left on one assignment. Pick out the most important stuff and then move on.
🎯 Targeted whole-group feedback
While grading, you might realize that all of your students seem to need the same feedback.
This might sound obvious, but …
Instead of writing it on (or adding it to) EVERY piece of student work, save yourself that time and just share it with all of them …
verbally in front of the class
in your learning management system
in a handout or instructional materials
… or record a video (below) …
📺 Screencast video feedback
Another way to scale feedback to lots of your students is to record a quick video.
Students can access these instructional videos anytime and anywhere. It’s almost like cloning yourself so you can be wherever your students are whenever.
Tools like ScreenPal, Screencastify, and Loom have great free options to record these videos, and they’re easy. Just share a link to the video with your students once you’ve recorded.
Instructional videos might feel impersonal, but if you record the best version of yourself explaining something, it’ll mean that students have access to that best version — and not a rushed version in class that you’ve given a dozen times during that class.
💡 More practical feedback strategies
Our post — How do I give feedback to 100+ students? — provides several strategies under each of these headings: whole-class feedback, triage feedback, student self feedback, and peer feedback.
Want more time-saving teaching ideas?
This post is part of a bigger project called EfficienTeach (efficienteach.com). The crucial question of EfficienTeach: how can we teacher better AND save time for what matters most?
We brainstormed ideas dozens of ideas — and paired them with templates, teaching resources, lesson plans, and more. And it’s all free.
Check it out: EfficienTeach.com
🎯 QUICK TEACHING STRATEGY 🎯
🧠 Digital “brain dumps” with Socrative
Want to improve your students’ long-term memory?
(Wouldn’t it be great if you didn’t have to re-teach so often?)
Try retrieval practice — something brain science has told us is effective in learning for years and years.
And … a very simple tech tool can help.
Retrieval practice: It’s the simple idea that recalling something from memory strengthens our ability to remember it in the future.
Just asking students to do a “brain dump” of everything they remember can help them better remember in the future, according to research.
Digital brain dumps: Ask students to recall those memories in a simple short response tool like Socrative (socrative.com).
PS: The other tool mentioned in the post, Flipgrid, doesn’t exist anymore … but I’ve always liked Socrative better for these activities.
😄 Smile of the day
A title doesn’t always equal influence …
h/t @teacherskind on Instagram
👋 How we can help
There are even more ways I can support you in the important work you do in education:
Read one of my six books about meaningful teaching with tech.
Take one of our online courses about practical and popular topics in education.
Bring me to your school, district or event to speak. I love working with educators!
