This school year will go in history, we were faced with unique sets of challenges and opportunities to transform our teaching practice. One of the first hurdles I needed to figure out was how to see the student's work even on the virtual, hybrid model. I wanted to replicate the Hands-On activities we used to do in school and on paper. At the same time, I knew that extense workload could become dull and I rather focus on targeted higher-order practices that I could easily check, give fast feedback, and monitor.
I focused on two areas, for Math simple tasks that allowed students to show step-by-step processes to solve calculations, problems, etc. These slides were delivered through Google Classroom, some were used for guided practice, others for independent.
In reading, I used the same idea to allow kids to interact with pieces of text. They would have to sort Central Ideas vs Interesting or select the main events to create a plot diagram, support inferences, or retell. These slides targeted different TEKS according to the weekly HMH stories, sometimes we did them as guided practice, partner work, or independent. As the year progressed, students were color coding on their own, justifying their choices to show their thinking.
