Getting Organized for #DistanceLearning: Lesson Plan Templates and Hyperlinks

No one knows exactly what school will look like in August yet, but there are a few things that we can do to get organized in the meantime. This series of blog posts called, "Getting Organized for #DistanceLearning" is full of tips that will be useful whether you're teaching online or face to face. So be sure to check back for all the tips in this series! 

Tip #1 was Password Saver

Here is tip #2 . . .

Lesson Plan Templates and Hyperlinks

Blank lesson plan template for writing

Templates

I'm really excited to share with you this efficient way to organize and access lesson plans! Whether we are teaching face to face, online, or a combination of both, creating a lesson plan template for each subject is going to save you time and create a learning routine that is more predictable for kids. Every lesson usually has a similar format – a connection or hook,  a teaching point, some modeling, guided practice, independent practice, and sharing. First, start by creating a blank template in google slides for each subject with at least one slide for each part of the lesson. You can see my blank template for writing above. This will make your lesson planning much quicker. Having a slide that names the teaching point in the same way each time (mine says "Learning Goal" and has the picture of the Pigeon) will help students tune into the teaching point when they know where to look for it. If you use Lucy Calkins Units of Study in any subject, your teaching point is the sticky note! You can see mine on the writing slide. Because the language she uses for her teaching point is usually so wordy, you can see I typed it into the notes section of the slide. That way I can still share her teaching point with fidelity, but I don't have to read it out of the book or have kids worry about a bunch of text on the slide. The sticky note focuses them on the teaching point while I still share the exact language. You can even get started on your lesson planning for the year this summer. If you have a curriculum you follow, you can make a slideshow for each lesson and plug in the teaching point or learning goal right now like in the examples above. Leave the rest blank for now so you can plan it as you go. You can even use the same slides each year and just make adjustments as needed. The big idea will already be there!  I'm using the templates created by Ashley McKenzie called Scandi Mountains. She has a lot of cute designs! If you're looking for some free templates, there are a lot out there. Some of my favorite free templates are from Slides Carnival. 

Hyperdocs

Google doc hyperlink page

How to copy the link from your google slide lesson plan:
share–copy link

How to add the link from your lesson plan to your google doc hyperlink:
highlight the lesson plan number–click on the picture of the link–paste the link–apply

Once you have a bunch of google slides lessons created, you need to be able to get to them quickly and efficiently. That's where hyperdocs come in! A hyperdoc is basically a google doc that holds a bunch of links that are part of a common theme. My school (which will be new for me next year) has a curriculum for reading, writing, and math. I created a google doc with each of those subjects (above), and I added the lesson number in each table. For example, 1.1 is unit 1, lesson 1. When I have a google slide lesson plan created, I link it to the correct lesson number. First click "share" on your google slide lesson plan and copy the link (see example above). Then highlight the lesson plan number on the google doc, click on the picture of the link, and paste the link you copied from the lesson (see the example above). That's it! Your lesson plans are now all in one place.

How to change a link so it automatically make a copy when you click on it:
in the link, delete "edit" (and anything that comes after it)–type in "copy"

I also linked the blank lesson plan template for each subject at the top of my google doc hyperlink page. This saves me time when I am ready to create a new lesson plan. I created the link to automatically make a copy of the blank lesson plan template when I click on it. To do this, just copy the link of the google slide template (see the hyperlinks example again) and change the last part of the url that begins with /edit to the word copy (see the example above), and paste the new link to your google doc hyperlink page. Then when you click on it, it will automatically make a copy of your blank lesson plan template so you can start working on your next lesson plan. Nice and efficient!

I also have my reader's workshop rotation and math groups on google slides, which I linked to my google doc hyperlink page too. I just project the groups and rotations during workshop time, and it's easy to change as needed when it's a google slide. I also linked the standards to my google doc hyperlink page because I often need to refer to them when I am planning. That makes everything I need for my lesson plan in one spot. Perfect!

Bookmarks

Symbaloo bookmark page

Now that everything digital you need to teach your lessons all year is linked on one page, I still have one more shortcut that will make your life easier. Have you ever used Symbaloo? It is a free bookmark tool that is saved in the cloud, so you can access your bookmarks on any device. I have my computer set up so that when I log onto the internet, my symbaloo page (above) automatically pops up and all my bookmarks are automatically at my fingertips. You can choose the color and picture for each bookmark you save. One of the really convenient things about symbaloo is that you can also bookmark a google doc, a google slide, etc. That means I can copy the link to my google doc hyperlink page and create a bookmark that will open that doc for me. (tip: when creating that bookmark, save it as a website instead of embedding it in symbaloo, and it will open the whole doc.) The picture of the target on the picture above is my google doc hyperlink page. That means whether we're teaching face to face or remotely next year, with one click, I'm ready! 

I hope you found this tip for Getting Organized for #DistanceLearning helpful! Check back next week for tips on organizing your google drive. If you haven't seen the other tips in this blog series yet, make sure to go back and check out tip #1: Password Saver. 

0

Who Needs Smartboards When the Whole Class is Engaged?

Ten or fifteen years ago I got my first smartboard in my classroom. It was the coolest technology available at the time, and I would spend hours creating (and selling) my smartboard lessons. The software was not very user friendly, but because it was unlike anything we had available at the time, I gladly put in the extra hours so that I could use it with my students.

Now fast-forward 10 or 15 years, and not much has really changed with the Smartboard. They’ve made improvements and upgrades in the software, but they now charge $129 YEARLY for EVERY TEACHER (which would be over $8000 A YEAR for all the teachers in my school). They’ve also come out with boards that allow more than one touch at a time IF you can afford to drop another $3000 per classroom (at least) for a new board. That's $75,000 JUST for the classroom teachers in my school, not counting the $8000 for the software to run it, of course. I couldn’t believe that they would start charging teachers, one of their biggest customers, an astronomical rate when the education budget was being cut across the country. So a few years ago, we had to take a hard look at whether or not we should continue to funnel money into smartboards.

If we look at best teaching practices today, we see technology used to leverage creativity and discovery. Students are the ones doing the work and using technology as a tool to connect learning in deeper, more meaningful ways. It's no longer the teacher spending hours creating lessons that they present to the class. The students are getting the valuable experience through the process of creation. There are also MANY programs to choose from that are simpler to use than smart notebook software, and they allow more students to be actively engaged. With programs like PearDeck and Nearpod, every student has the ability to interact and give feedback during a presentation. With options like Quizziz and Kahoot, you can quickly gauge the understanding of every student in a fun, interactive way. And with tools such as SeeSaw, students can document their learning process for themselves, their teachers and their parents by capturing their learning in a digital portfolio. A smartboard can't do any of that.

The bottom line is, smartboards are a very expensive presentation tool. Although it is interactive, the one who interacts with it the most tends to be the teacher when only one person at a time can touch it. Even when students are the ones using the smartboard, it's one student at a time while the rest of the class watches. And while it’s handy to be able to touch the board instead of your computer during a lesson, that doesn’t really impact student learning. If we had $75,000 to spend, or even if we just had $8000, I'd rather spend it on more student devices and subscriptions that would give students the opportunity to have more authentic learning interactions where they become active learners.

That doesn't mean that we don't need to present information to the whole class or give explicit instruction sometimes, but I think there are cheaper ways to do that. For example, digital interactive notebooks are a great way to facilitate classroom discussions while still allowing every student a chance to interact and respond to the lesson. I created Observing Weather: A Digital Interactive Science Notebook using google slides (which is free!).  A copy of this digital interactive notebook can be shared with each student and used to start a discussion about weather. There are 6 circle maps included for defining different types of weather. After discussing what students know about the different weather terms listed, they can share their background knowledge by typing words or inserting pictures into the circle map.



There are also 3 different kinds of interactive weather graphs students can use to graph the weather for the week.

A pictograph:


A line plot:



And a bar graph:



As the culminating activity in this digital interactive notebook, students become a meteorologist and create their own weather forecast. I provided a short script for students to use or they can write their own.



They can use the green screen app by Doink to insert a background with a map like the meteorologists on the news, or they can pretend they are reporting on site in the middle of a storm. Here are some examples:

They can also use the app Telestory to create animated backgrounds for their weather forecast:

To create this digital interactive notebook, I created the backgrounds on powerpoint and saved them as jpegs. I inserted each picture as the background image so students don't accidentally delete it.



I made the movable pieces for the pictograph and bar graph by using this cool little trick from Alice Keeler –Google Slides: Make a Draggable Slide. I also used this tip from Nuts and Bolts Speed Training – Powerpoint Animations: Making Objects Appear and Disappear On–Click.

You can also download this Observing Weather: A Digital Interactive Science Notebook here.

I haven't found anything yet from the smartboard lessons that I used to create that I can't recreate in powerpoint or google slides.  And now I can update those lessons by sharing them with students and  including less content so students have the opportunity to do it themselves. Now it's your turn! Ditch those smartboard lessonso and try a digital interactive notebook instead!

2