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Standardize Your Writing Grades with WriQ

Your AIR prep multiple choice questions are written in Edulastic, EdCite, or Google Forms and you are providing quick feedback to students. The auto-grading is helping inform your next areas of study in class, but the writing scores are still dragging you down.

While no auto-grader for writing is perfect, the extension WriQ from Texthelp (the same people who brought us Read&Write!) definitely makes grading those AIR responses faster.

To use, you’ll open the student’s Google Doc. Heads up! You’ll have to open the doc on it’s own – it won’t open through Google Classroom. Once you’ve opened the doc, you’ll select the WriQ extension and it will prompt you to answer a few questions (student’s grade level and type of writing). The extension will automatically identify spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors, as well as provide the student’s time on task (HUGE for me!)

There are several rubrics to choose from, which are similar to the rubrics for the AIR test. You can add custom feedback and add the rubric to the top of the student’s Google Doc.

While I don’t use WriQ for every assessment, I do think it’s incredibly helpful for those AIR responses. It helps both me and the students get acclimated to the online essay grader that grades their EOC responses.

This is a new program, so look forward to a lot of improvements for Fall 2019!

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Read&Write Reads PDFs

Maybe you’ve been using Read&Write since last February. Maybe you’re just picking up steam with Read&Write this school year. But you might have noticed that some PDFs you scan in don’t read with Read&Write. That’s because the optical character recognition (OCR) isn’t just right. But it’s an easy fix! Follow the steps below to get the best results:

  1. When scanning in a document from the school copiers, click “Scan and Send”
  2. On the right-hand side, select “PDF (compact)”
  3. Select OCR (Text Searchable)
  4. Click OK
  5. Now scan the document and send to yourself!

Once you’ve received the email, add the document to your Drive and post it for your students to use! For best use, students should download the PDF Reader extension.

On the students’ end, they will open the PDF in a new window (screenshot below). Then they’ll select “Open With” at the top of the screen and select Read&Write with Google Chrome.

save image

I know that seems like a lot of steps, but once it’s habit I hope it’ll be very easy. Stay tuned here for more information about Read&Write as we plan for District PD on the topic!

Want more help on getting the best results reading a PDF? Check out the link here.

Want help with tech coaches Dan or Molly? Sign up for an appointment!

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Improving Communication with Guardian Summaries

google classroom setup flyer

The  year is underway and you’ve set up your Google Classroom. That’s great! Now it’s time to take it to the next level. While teachers and students have access to Google Classroom, parents do not. Give parents and guardians access to Google Classroom in a few quick steps!

  1. In Google Classroom, select the People tab
  2. Next to each student, add the guardian’s email address. You can find the addresses in TAC
  3. Click Invite

That’s it! Now parents can receive daily or weekly summaries of their student’s work in ALL of their classes! And if a guardian has more than one student, the guardian will receive one email with all of their information. Parents can see their student’s missing work, any upcoming assignments, and the announcements you make. It’s a great way to stay connected!

Check out this flyer you can share with parents to help them get started:

google classroom setup flyer

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Improve Literacy with Read&Write

Have you noticed a little purple puzzle piece decorated with the letters “rw” appear while you are navigating on Google Chrome? That puzzle piece is the Read&Write Google Extension that has been added to all Chromebooks, grades k-12, in the Streetsboro City Schools.

So, what does this extension do? Read&Write is a software created by Texthelp that offers the support that many students need with their reading and writing.  This tool has over 80 features that help student literacy including text-to-speech, a picture dictionary, translators, and various study skill aides.

To learn more about how you can maximize usage of Read&Write in your classroom, click on the following links for resources from Texthelp.

Read&Write Introductory Video

How-To Guide for Students

Read&Write Accommodates Every Learning Style

How To Create A Dynamic Reading Experience

Psst…Math teachers… Don’t feel left out!  Texthelp also has a math program, Equatio. To learn more, click here!

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SlidesCarnival adds Style

slidescarnival

Google has come a long way from the plain white slide format from years ago. But some of the designs lack the panache and wow factor that you may be looking for. Consider using SlidesCarnival to download some fresh templates to brighten up your slide decks. SlidesCarnival is a database of free downloadable templates for both PowerPoint and Google Slides organized by vibe and all named after characters from Shakespeare’s works.

Once you find a template you like, click “Use as Google Slides Theme” and you’re ready to go! To find that template to use again, just click “Import Theme”

Next time you need to dress up your slides, use SlidesCarnival to “but mend the style” (Sonnet 78)

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Kahoot Floods

Kahoot

I often use Kahoot to review with my students. My classes love the game and request that we play to help prepare for our assessments. So when a request came in to use Kahoot to review for an assessment, I was happy to oblige.

In my class of 10 students, suddenly there were 200 people playing this Kahoot. How?

Bots.

A student in my class went to a spam site and inserted the game code, then we were playing with my 10 students and 200 of our closest robots.

But don’t despair, it’s easy to keep bots from playing your games. In your game setup, where you choose to play in Classic Mode or Team Mode, scroll down to turn on “Enable 2-Step Join.” It will require players to answer an additional question before they can join the game. Now you can play without worry!

Kahoot 2 step join

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Growth Mindset | The Power of Believing that You Can Improve

Carol Dweck researches “growth mindset” — the idea that we can grow our brain’s capacity to learn and to solve problems. In this talk, she describes two ways to think about a problem that’s slightly too hard for you to solve. Are you not smart enough to solve it … or have you just not solved it yet? A great introduction to this influential field.

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CommonLit to the rescue!

Student on computer

Teachers of all content areas are striving to find more texts that engage their students, connect to their content, and meet the standards of the end-of-course exams. Enter CommonLit, a free resource that supports literacy in all content areas from grades 3-12.

The site provides texts that are linked by genre, theme, or literary device, paired with novels and other texts, or organized by history-based text set. Each text corresponds to end-of-course-like questions and discussion prompts as well as paired texts and related materials that help promote learning in each classroom.

You can print the resources, but the real power of CommonLit comes from the online data reporting. CommonLit syncs with your Google Classroom, so it takes all of 3 minutes to set up your classes. With each class, teachers can differentiate different texts or assign less engaged readers guided reading questions. Students log in, read the texts, and answer the questions. Teachers grade the extended responses and release the scores, which provides valuable data to support your teaching.

If you find yourself struggling to prepare students for the end-of-course exams, consider trying CommonLit!