Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Snow Days - It's No Problem!

Snow Jam 2014
Between snow days, furlough days, and President's Day, my students will have missed 6 consecutive days of school. Not to mention the fact that we are giving the Writing exam in 3 weeks!
Yes! Just 3 short weeks. But I can get by with a little help from my friends. Who are my friends you might ask? They are: Edmodo, Google Drive, Remind101, and Learn Zillion to name a few.

In January our class started using Google Drive during writing workshop. Students shared their writing folder with me and gave me permission to edit their work. I can view their writing "real time" and make comments as they are writing. For several of my students, I can have a virtual writing conference. For others, They will sit beside me and we go over their writing together. They are looking at their work on their iPad and I am looking at it on my laptop/iPad. I can highlight places that I want them to focus on and they can make the necessary changes to their work while I am there.

Not wanting to waste any instructional time, I sent out messages to the students via Edmodo and gave them a writing assignment. I also posted a video from Learn Zillion about using "show don't tell" for them to watch. I usually use the math videos from Learnzillion but they have awesome Language videos as well.  Just to make sure everyone was on board, I sent out a message to the parents on Remind101 telling them to have their child check Edmodo for their writing assignment. Once they completed their assignment I asked them to send me a direct message on Edmodo and I would review their work.

So far, so good. I have already held 5 virtual conferences. Yes, there are some students that may not check their messages. I just might have to make a phone call to those students! Did I mention we only have 3 weeks and I'm feeling the pressure?

The neatest thing just happened.  I clicked to view a student's essay while she just happened to be working on it so were were able to use the chat feature to talk back and forth as she was writing.  Ba Da Ba Ba Ba, I'm Lovin' it!

2 comments:

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