Thanks to the blog Socrative Garden and someone in our DLC (I'm sorry I forgot who it was...so I can't give you credit!) I decided to use Socrative as a backchannel in my classroom. The first time I tried it, I used it during lecture mode. I was walking my students through the timeline of the Vietnam War. Students could use the backchannel to ask questions, make comments, etc. and I would periodically stop and address the common threads that emerged. As usual I was surprised by their insight, but also in what they didn't know or were curious about. With such a wide range of learners, it is a constant struggle to really get inside their brain and understand their understanding. The backchannel was like a visual of their thought process. I was able to correct a student who though when I was saying "Agent Orange" that I was saying "Asian Orange." (I was amused by that one). But also I was able to provide some acceleration to some of my more advanced learners...who had the opportunity to ask more advanced questions. Often they answered each other's questions which of course made me happy! I highly recommend this practice and plan to continue to use it. Check out the picture below from my report afterwards. Their grammar is terrible (which curdles my teacher soul) but it I also want their responses to be quick and informal, so I'll live with it.
Directions to set up: set up a "room" in Socrative. Have students log in to your room. Once they are in, select "quick question" and then "short answer." I really stressed the necessity for productive questioning and responses...middle schoolers are prone to the nonsense. I feel like they were so much more awake during notes with this process. The picture doesn't show it, but students used emojis in a lot of their responses...I'm not sure how I feel about the emojis yet...thoughts?
No comments:
Post a Comment