Creating Seesaw Activity Templates

Creating Seesaw Activity Templates

Get the Seesaw Activity featured in this post here.  Discover, use and adapt new Activities as I share them here.

I’ve been a Seesaw user for years.  It’s always been a great communication tool, but since the introduction of Seesaw Activities, my uses for Seesaw have exploded. It’s my favourite exit ticket.  All I have to do is to create an Activity, put the screen showing all of the student names on the interactive whiteboard, and refresh every couple of minutes.  Then, it’s just a matter of asking, “Johnny, where’s your post please?”  When they know that they don’t go out to recess until it is done – it happens!

Seesaw Activities haven’t really been used at my school until now.  Several of my colleagues are now using Activities that I’ve created, or that can be found in the Seesaw Library (one of my favourite additions to Seesaw ever!)  Every week, we have a whole-school Word of the Week.  This same word is introduced across Reception (That’s South Australian for ‘kinder’ or ‘prep’ or whatever you want to call the first year of school) to Year 12 (senior year). How we expose the students in our own class to the Word of the Week is up to us, and we modify it to suit the year level.

I’m going to tell you a secret here – I haven’t been very good at remembering to do the Word of the Week every week. I’m new to this school you see, and I’m new to working in the public sector after working in Catholic Education for 15 years. So, there’s been a lot of things to get used to, and I haven’t been able to do everything all at once.  But, it’s been almost two terms now, and I’m feeling more settled – so I felt that it was time for Word of the Week to make a new, improved reappearance.

I decided that introducing it in Homegroup would suit my Year 5/6s. They’re in the habit of coming in each morning and pulling out their computers to check emails, find new assigned Seesaw activities and do Mathletics.  Every Tuesday morning is now Word of the Week morning.  For the next term, my students will be investigating the relevant Word of the Week, and writing about it on this Seesaw Activity template – created by me!

How did I create this template? How long did it take me to create this template?  Well, that’s pretty easy really.  I created it in PowerPoint, and it took me approximately five minutes.  PowerPoint is my favourite tool for creating items such as this, because I don’t have to worry about any pesky picture/ shape formatting that is problematic in something such as Word or Google Docs.  I inserted a rounded rectangle by using Insert – Shapes- Rounded Rectangle.  Insert – Text Box gives me the text (using the text box built into the shape puts the text into the middle of the rectangle – something I didn’t want in this case). All I did then was to copy and paste, rearrange the size a little, edit the text and change colours because it makes me smile.

To make it into Activity Template form, I took a screenshot using the Snipping Tool feature of my computer, and saved as a .jpg.

What I like about this particular Activity is that it uses the brand new upgraded features of Seesaw.  It is so awesome to have extra tools such as a highlighter to use – and the ability to insert photos has just about changed my students’ lives.  I kid you not – they were so excited!

Is it just me – or did this student go above and beyond by making her text labels the same colours as my rounded rectangles?  Sometimes in life, it’s the little things!

I’m just getting started with sharing Seesaw Activities with the Seesaw library. I was pretty chuffed when this activity was featured this week in the weekly Seesaw Activity email.  It’s nice to know that other teachers are benefitting from my work, just as I benefit from theirs. My motto in teaching – work smarter not harder!

 

Independence with OneNote

Independence with OneNote

We have a mix of several ongoing projects/ extended learning activities in our Village as well as shorter term activities.  We also, like any class, have learners who finish the shorter activities quickly.  There’s always something to do, but sometimes our learners get confused about what priority they should place on activities, or they just want to have a bit of agency over their learning and choose what they do and when.

So, we came up with the Independence List.  We have tried several designs over the last two years, but this is our current working model.

As you can see, the activities are down the left hand side.  Any that MUST be completed by Friday afternoon of that week are highlighted in green.

Student names run across the top.  You’ll notice that Harrison’s name is green – this means that he has currently completed everything, and he can have free time to work on a project of his choice.  (Most learners have been choosing Hour of Code activities lately).

Independence List Codes

  • Green – activity is complete and checked by an educator.
  • Yellow – student has been working on an activity, but not yet complete.
  • Red – activity has not been begun.
  • M – activity is marked by an educator, and feedback is available (usually in their OneNote page).
  • A – student was absent and does not have to do this activity.

What we love about this current model is that we’ve put it into the Content Library in the Class OneNote.  This means that learners can view the Independence List whenever and wherever they are (including at home with their parents).  But, because we’ve placed it into the Content Library, only educators can edit the list (no sneaky checking off activities that aren’t really up to standard!)

We’ve created a Section called Independence, and we create a new page for every week.  This way, when we get to assessment time, and we need to check boxes in report cards about items such as ‘organisation’, ‘manages time well’ etc, we have instant documented evidence.

We have also built in designated ‘Independence Blocks’ into our weekly planning.  This gives everyone a chance to work on their activities.  I did an informal survey of students a while ago, and they all agreed that Independence is great, and they used their time in a variety of ways.  Here are some of them below.

  • Start at the top, and work on a task until complete before moving onto the next one.
  • Do what I’m feeling the most excited about first, but keep watch on what has to be finished by Friday.
  • Do what I don’t enjoy as much first so I get it over with.
  • Set myself 15 minutes on an activity and then switch to something else so I don’t get bored.
  • Get everything done to what I think is a pass, then go back and try and improve.

Our learners with additional needs thrive off the Independence List.  It is clear, easy to read, and the colour codes are simple to understand.  Planning difficulties can be managed by reminding these learners to focus on the highlighted tasks.

The Independence List in the Content Library of Class OneNote has been a game-changer for us, because we don’t have learners constantly asking us, “What do I do now?”  They can always find out for themselves as it is always available to them!  Also, a simple question from an educator of, “How’s your Independence List looking?” is guaranteed to get a chatty child right back on task!

Link to my OneNote containing an Independence List that you can edit for your own students can be found here. 

 

OneNote: Tables, tables, everywhere!

OneNote: Tables, tables, everywhere!

OneNote has transformed the way in which I operate my classroom, but tables have transformed the way in which I use OneNote. Below are my top reasons why you should incorporate more tables into your OneNotes.

  1. Tables are quick and easy to create.

In the OneNote ribbon, click on the ‘Insert’ tab and then select the size table that you need.  More columns and rows can easily be added under the ‘Table’ tab.

You’ll notice that my tables have alternating colours in them – this is to make scanning easier for learners with tracking difficulties – they don’t lose their place when they have clear colours to guide them.

  1. Tables are logical and become familiar to students – which means easy to use.

My learners enjoy consistency and knowing what the expectations are. They like knowing where to find information, and where to put answers. This is especially important for learners with extra needs. More about catering to learners with additional needs can be found in my blog post here. https://educationblog.microsoft.com/2017/09/5-easy-adaptations-learners-extra-needs/

  1. Tables make finding student responses (or lack of them) simple to identify.

I used to have to sift through information to find student responses. I experimented with having students highlight their answers with the highlighting tool or using a different colour font, but they often forgot. Marking was inefficient and painful. Once I switched to using tables with places for answers, I streamlined marking. Also, students can quickly and easily see where they are up to, and find it easy to come back to missed questions later.

Adding an extra column, inserting checkboxes and naming the column ‘Complete’ or ‘Finished’ takes just a few seconds, but gives learners a whole lot of satisfaction as they complete sections.  To read about more uses for checkboxes, read here. https://blogs.office.com/en-us/2017/06/05/the-humble-checkbox/?eu=true

  1. Tables break items into manageable chunks.

Some of the learners in my Village have planning difficulties. This means that they can struggle to break a large task or assignment into smaller, more manageable chunks (or parts for you non-Aussies). When I break tasks down for students regularly, they are eventually able to do this for themselves. Learners also feel less overwhelmed, and are more likely to be able to start their work, rather then just sitting and staring blankly at an empty screen.

  1. Tables prevent sync errors in the collaboration space.

The collaboration space is one of the best features of OneNote, but syncing errors did my head in initially. Students get very excited when they see other learners sharing their ideas in real time, but this can quickly turn to dismay when multiple pages begin to appear. I solved this problem with… You guessed it! Tables!

Assigning each learner or group of learners to a row or a box means that everyone can collaborate at the same time, but students don’t try and write in the same space, which creates sync errors. Not to mention, it makes everything look so much more organised and easy to read!

Here’s a recent piece of work created by one of my learners.  Look at how she’s colour coded her table to match her graph.  It makes my heart sing!

 

So there you have it! Quick, simple, saves time, and logical. Tables should be the best friend of every OneNote Educator!

 

Fakebooking it

Fakebooking it

History is one of my favourite subjects – it always has been ever since a high school teacher made trenches out of tables in class and pretended to machine gun us with his metre ruler to demonstrate trench warfare in WWI.

But, by the end of the Semester, my learners and I were getting a bit drained.  According to the Australian Curriculum for Year 5, we still needed to look at a significant person who helped to shape an Australian colony.  Colony influencers if you will.  This sparked an idea.  Who would my learners consider as influencers?  Most of them were people that had a heavy social media presence. Then, I found a wonderful free educational tool called Fakebook.

So here’s what we did.  I gave them a list of ‘colony influencers’ and then they conducted research, which could then be turned into posts as though their influencer was living in modern times.  It’s a pretty cool website to use.  Posts are written, and then you can make their ‘friends’ comment.  Pictures, links and videos can all be inserted.

The friends list and hobby list can also be updated.  It has a neat search feature which finds photos linked to the name of the person that you enter, which is usually pretty accurate – it can be changed as necessary though.

Fakebook, being a teaching tool even came with an assessment rubric, which I tweaked to suit the project.  My learners and I had a lot of fun with this tool, as while they were learning history, and working on timelines, they also got to show off their senses of humour. (Such as Lord Sydney throwing a party when Sydney got named after him, as announced by Governor Arthur Philip on his Fakebook account!

Two of the complete Fakebook posts made by my learners can be found here.

Caroline Chisholm and Governor Arthur Phillip.

We were also able to have quite a few thought provoking discussions about social media, cyber safety, and keeping safe online.

A couple of tips:

  • Make sure that learners write their posts and comments somewhere else first, such as in OneNote or on Word.  Then they can copy and paste them directly.  Fakebook won’t save a page until five posts have been created, so this was the best way to ensure that work in progress wasn’t lost.
  • A unique URL is created for each Fakebook page.  Learners need to copy and paste this somewhere safe to make sure that they can return to the page again, and more importantly – so it can be assessed!
  • The page will be password protected so that only authorised people can edit the page.  Again, make sure this password is put somewhere safe!

I’ll definitely use Fakebook again in the future.  It was fun, different, and had my learners re-enthused about doing research and turning facts into something that related more to their own lives.  I wonder if there is a fake Twitter or Instagram out there?

 

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