More destruction of worksheets

Are you going to participate in #noworksheetweek?

In my last post, I wrote about some ideas for eliminating the unnecessary waste we create with worksheets.  I wanted to share some more ideas to help you reduce your consumption of paper and mundane student tasks.

How can you have your students show their learning without paper?

In our class we talked about using GarageBand to have a student record their responses.  Even simple responses to reading can be recorded and given to the teacher for review.  Or to take it a step further, we could use iMovie and the iPad camera to record their responses like an interview.  As a teacher, this is way more fun to grade!  This also gives you the opportunity to talk with the students about public speaking skills, eye contact, posture, etc. expanding the activity to more than a simple formative assessment.

Do you have GAFE?  If you do, using Google Classroom will help you destroy your worksheets!  Scan anything you would normally print, assign it to students, then they turn in their work.  It is all digital and no paper required.  This could present problems when it comes to a lack of devices, but getting creative about how you get students access is the only way.

There are many more ideas and if you have some, please leave a comment.

Until next time, have a great #noworksheetweek

#noworksheetweek

April 13-17th my class will be participating in #noworksheetweek.  Our goal will be to survive our normal instruction, without using paper.  While I have drastically reduced paper consumption in our class this year, to have no worksheets is honestly, a little frightening.

I thought I would share some ideas I have to eliminate the wasteful practice of handing out worksheets, checking them, giving them back and inevitably they end up in the trash (or recycle I hope...):

Formative assessments are a necessary and extremely beneficial part of any instruction.  Simple 2-5 question question quizzes can give a wealth of insight and knowledge about my instruction and the learning of my students.  How do I do that without using paper?  I have a couple ways.  MasteryConnect uses an add-on called "BubbleSheet".  All I have to do is create the questions on a doc or pdf, load them into the system under the correct standard and give my kids the test id.  They log in to either the app or bubblesheet.masteryconnect.com and go.  Data is collected in real time and I can assess my instruction on the spot.

Another tool I plan to use is Plickers.  I create the questions, then show them on the board.  They hold up their answer using one of the provided cards:

   

Then I use my phone to quickly scan their answer and collect my information.  Another nifty part of Plickers is that I can launch a real time results graph that shows the students what everyone else is choosing anonymously.  This allows for instant feedback and for the student to reflect on their answer in the moment.  Not to mention it is pretty cool!

There are of course the old school methods.  I taught my kids A, B, C, and D in sign language and have them hold their choice to their chest.  Or there is always thumbs up or thumbs down.  While I will always continue to use these methods, the techy versions allow me to collect the data rather than trying to simply remember.  We all know we already have more than enough to remember!

These are just two examples, if you have more, feel free to add them to the comments!

This is going to be a challenge for me, but I am not afraid.  If we as teachers don't challenge ourselves, we become stagnant and quickly lose our effectiveness.  Take the challenge and do something really cool!  

I will be posting more ideas up until #noworksheet week, so check back for more!