Google Classroom Feedback Loops

(2) Webinar Using Private Comments in Google Classroom 2024 08 11 16 13 GMT 5 – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjDPRz83WSE

Transcript:
(00:02) well hello everybody we are going to be talking about Google classroom today which of course I love Google Classroom a lot of great features you know sometimes less is more one of the things I like about Google Classroom is it doesn’t have 50,000 things to confuse you and just kind of being straightforward allows me to deliver content and still and be able to interact with students but that doesn’t make it interesting what makes it interesting is what you choose to do with it and honestly it’s designed pretty much to be very
(00:34) traditional and so you really need to put some effort into hacking it a little bit to really take a student centered approach so I’m going to go ahead and open up this dummy class let me make sure I have some people in there not the people I want I’m want to add Christa let me invite her and you won’t be able to see this but I’m going to switch over I’m going to open a incognito window in classro sign in oh wait yeah hold on I thought she was already in this class I should just pick another one let me just pick
(01:21) another class that she’s in I sticker in a lot of them it’s my fake student people no of course not of course not there she’s the teacher but this one people still know Krista but that’s okay I can I ss7 in there okay great so what I want to do is I want to go to classwork and I’m going to create an assignment and I number all my assignments that is my best tip and you don’t reuse any of the numbers ever so second semester I might just start calling it 200s or pick up at 500 I I’ll skip a bunch of numbers even when I go
(02:09) from unit to unit I’ll just skip a bunch of numbers so stays I my first assignment is number 001 and the way numbers alphabetize it really helps if you do three numbers the hashtag separates it so it’s assignment number one instead of number one so when you go search your Google drive or search your Gmail if you search for a number lots of things come up if you do 00005 then assignment number five comes up so this is my best TP so then I’m doing number one number two number three and I get to the end of the semester or
(02:45) not the end semester the end of the unit and maybe I’m on number 22 well then maybe I’ll start with number 50 for unit two I just like Round Up jumped several of them hey what happened to number 23 to 49 don’t worry about it it’s it’s it’s literally just a numbering system that allows me to clearly tell the kids hey we’re working on number seven right now what are you doing you should be on number seven you know what you’re missing numbers 12 15 and 32 it really cuts down the conversation we’re working
(03:16) on the warm-up well a lot of them are called warm-up we’re working on number 15 so warm-up number 15 if you could get on that it help students to focus it so I am going to uh do an assignment so I’m going to write a figurative language paragraph now here’s the thing my husband’s an English teacher he had the students do this and he had them do it in a Google doc and I’m like Sucka you got to open those he had 140 students which means he has to open that up 140 times and then the students have
(03:52) to come back open up the Google Doc and respond to his feedback comments which honest can we be honest it really doesn’t happen so my style of assignment is that we use the private comments in the private comments write a figurative language paragraph I am going to return without a score and give you actionable feedback you must update your response in the private comments you must update your response in the private comments and resubmit the assignment this may require multiple back and forth to
(04:55) show you have made progress on the objective so one of the things that we tend to do is we give students an assignment they do the assignment they turn in the assignment and we give them points and then we move on to the next assignment the problem with that is is its autopsy feedback we give students feedback maybe maybe not they read it as soon as you put a score on it they hyperfocus on the score and they all but ignore your feedback so this is a style of assignment that I love because it guarantees that every single student is
(05:32) going to learn something so my goal here is not for every student to write a perfect figurative language paragraph my goal is for them to show growth so I’m going to have them write their initial response in the private comments and then I’m going to give them some actionable feedback which John Hattie says it’s not really feedback unless it’s actionable we want students to do something with our feedback which also helps keep us from wasting wasting our time if you write a feedback comment and they don’t read it you wasted your
(06:06) time right so none of that I’m not giving them comments that they don’t have to give action on so I’m going to spend a little more time in this assignment sort of because it’s faster than I would a normal assignment more than that I’m just breaking the pattern of turn something in for points no no we’re not turning it in for points we’re turning it in so you can show me that you’ve learned something so I tell them they have to write it in the private comments that’s important some of them
(06:33) will attach it as a Google doc and I’m I’m very stubborn about this like I’m sorry if you could copy and paste this in the private comments because what I’m trying to do is I’m trying to get feedback quickly if I don’t have to open up Google Docs I don’t have to I can do this much faster so I’m gonna read what they wrote give them feedback I’m going to return it to them without a score they’re going then we’re going to come back and like hey I gave you feedback back go ahead and update your
(07:03) response and I’m actually really picky I make them rewrite the whole thing not just update the one little part that they’re addressing they got to give me a full and complete response back that shows that they improve based on my feedback so my other part of that is I give full credit if they respond to my feedback and I’m happy with the growth that they made that’s important then I’m going to going to give them full credit so that helps students who have low self-confidence they why do students
(07:36) choose not to do work it’s a variety of reasons but for some of them they don’t feel like they can be successful why bother I’m not going to get a good score and even if you just take off one point well that just reinforces to them see I told you I couldn’t do it so these are really great activities to help show students you’re there to help them learn right I’m gonna you are gonna you’re going to learn something you’re going to get better I love it when a student responds when a student responds I don’t
(08:05) know you know what that means it means I don’t feel confident so that’s an opportunity for me to give them like okay well can you just copy and paste Google search figurative language copy and paste it you know and and they do that now that’s not acceptable to me that’s just a start I’m getting them to do something rather than nothing because some of our students they do nothing so finding those entry points to help them do something is really a big win like okay now write me one sentence so we’re having a back
(08:36) and forth conversation in the private comments so let me go ahead and I’m going to sign this all right where’ it go that was number one wasn’t it here it is I’m G to copy this and I really need to let me sign in here as number s sign in Google classroom at sorry you’re not seeing me I’m trying to log in as a student I thought my other student was in there um oh jeez it’s this is becoming a disaster apologies friends I’m going to share my screen so you can see what I’m doing and it is giving me a signin
(09:34) challenge because I haven’t used this account in a while of course not so give me two seconds I’m just going to go into the admin panel and we go and I’m gonna and again you can’t see me in my in my admin panel but what I’m doing is I’m just turning off the login challenge so I can log in on this account all right classroom sign in Google Classroom see if I can get this student logged in hey there we go okay so now we are uh got it I should be in this class ah this is what I get I feel like oh I
(10:33) do fake students all the time I have to make fake data for my blog post let me go grab the link to that Google Classroom again okay I’m going to copy the link to the assignment I’m going to double check that this student okay it says this student is invited but they’re not in the class honest to goodness just trying to make my life difficult here friends all right hold on I’m going to copy the class invite link and come back over here we’re g to join the class oh look at that great and here is the assignment that I
(11:19) just posted so this is what the students are going to see this is student view so they’re going to see the directions says in the private comments they’re going to write a figurative language paragraph so I’m going to go over here it’s the second bubble this ad create they’re not going to put anything they’re going to come down here and they’re going to add a comment I don’t know okay now I’m G to come in on my side and you can’t see it because I can only share one screen at a
(11:48) time and I am gonna say darina can you please Google search figurative language paragraph and copy and paste the definition here okay wait first I’m going to have her Market as done like she says she’s done she submitted it I’m going to refresh now I saw this did I not submit it oh because this is Kate be really great if I did it with the same the right student okay Kate you can do this please Google search figurative language paragraph and paste the definition here so I’m going to send that to her and then I’m going to return
(12:53) this without a score let me switch this back apologies I can’t show both at the same time time this one yes right so here my teacher view I can see down here in the private comments zoom in it says Kate said I don’t know I replied back with now this is important let me zoom in on this how I responded I always respond with my initials now why do I respond with my initials if you look over here on the side who it shows you like a little comment preview under their name so I can see AK starts my comment preview I’m
(13:32) going to contrl f and search for AK do you see how my initials light up AK is my initials I’m Alice keer so you want to use your initials those of you who are participating please feel free to put any questions in the chat or just to interrupt me um what kind of things that I can answer for you so when I see my initials I know that I’ve responded so that helps me to make sure that I’m responding quickly to students as I can open up an assignment I can look on this roster on the left hand side and I should see ak ak ak ak I
(14:05) will contrl F find my initials so they light up so the ones that I haven’t responded to really stick out and the other thing I try to do is always use the student name so I’m replying to Kate here so I say oops over here zoom in so I say AK that’s my initials and then I say Kate as often as possible I try to respond with the student’s name a lot of times I’m copying and pasting the same comments but what I’ll do is I’ll go spacebar comma and I’ll put a comment and then I highlight the whole thing and
(14:43) I control C copy so when I paste it to students I have a place to type their name it’s a really you know like I want to acknowledge that they’re a person this isn’t impersonal in Google classroom but rather like I know who I’m talking to we’re having a conversation I’m assigning a conversation not just to write me a figurative language paragraph all right so I’m going to switch back here oops no I’m not I forgot to show you what I needed to do obviously a mess today okay so I have
(15:15) told Kate I’m not happy with this response she said I don’t know I’m like could you like give me something so I’m G to checkbox next to Kate’s name and click return and I’m going to say Kate I am returning without a score now if I was returning to multiple students I wouldn’t use her name I’d make it more generic I’d still use my initials Kate I’m returning without a score please read my feedback update your response and [Music] resubmit I’m going to click return right
(15:56) so now the status of Kate’s assign is Back Being assigned instead of submitted so I’m going to go ahead and stop presenting this is just going to be awkward because I’m going to have to just back and forth multiple times um here’s K okay now I’m back in as Kate Let me refresh okay so you can see over here in this bubble to Kate I gave her some feedback back I returned it without a score and said hey you need to resubmit so I’m going to do a Google search for figurative language paragraph
(16:45) and how to write fig a figurative language see this word is a form of writing that uses words or expressions in a non-literal way to add interest the terms used in figurative language are not to be taken literally in other words it’s a literary device that adds deeper meaning to your essay all right so I’m going to copy that and back to the Google Classroom assignment and I’m going to paste it and then the student would go back and mark it as done now you got to teach them how to do this this is a really
(17:28) great activity as an exit ticket and then that gives you time to respond to everybody and then the next day when they come in responding to your feedback is their warmup it’s a great way to ensure every single student makes progress and there so right now it’s just a copy and paste it’s better than nothing but first I got I don’t know okay so let’s switch back I’m GNA put it in teacher view Okay window and and this one okay no it’s not yes I see okay on the wrong tab there we go now I’m back
(18:14) so now I can see Kate has turned it in again she wants some help thank you Kate for copying and pasting this can you write one sentence about an animal that hears something right I’m giving her a little bit of a prompt so notice what you want to do with your feedback is you want to make it extral you want to give them something to do and you want to be careful not to do the thinking for them but still give them enough that they could do something rather than nothing so I’m going to go ahead and send and I’m going to return it again
(18:59) so it’s like it was submitted now it’s back to being assigned so I explained this to the students and we practice it a few times the trick here is this is an assignment type I do all the time it’s the one thing I do that I make sure every single student makes progress that they make growth that they all learn from my feedback and a lot of times my students who won’t do anything will try these assignments because they know this is structured around me helping them I don’t know or they give me a weak answer
(19:30) they’re going to get full credit so I tell them like look you keep it you keep trying you keep trying you are going to get full credit and I don’t expect Perfection you know there’s only so many times that you can resubmit something to a student before they’re like this is too much I can’t do it you know success breeds success so if I can at least get something I’m like okay full credit for you thanks for trying you made some progress and then on the next time I do one of these I want them to go a little
(19:57) bit further the go it’s a long-term here that over the course of the entire school year I want them to understand how to do these kinds of assignments so at first I’m just looking for any answer that but I never accept the first answer even if their answer is amazing like it’s just super good those are almost harder because then you’re like okay the whole point of this is to do a feedback loop right they submit I give them feedback they resubmit and maybe we do that a couple of times is for every
(20:26) single student learn something and moves farther when I took English as a senior my teacher was super nice but I I honestly didn’t learn anything in that class I think several of the students their skills weren’t as good as mine so whenever I would write a paper or do whatever my assignment is I’d type it up and print out and I would never check it like I didn’t look it over I didn’t edit anything and my teacher Not only would give me full credit she’d give me extra credit and I felt really demotivated to
(20:55) to move further or to even try because I’m going to get extra credit even if I basically poop on the paper at the level that I’m at like my base level gets me extra credit so why would I try harder why would I do something else so the idea of this assignment is every student has to move from where they’re at they’re going to move and then they get full credit so my students who submit something amazing well if they submit something amazing then they already knew how to do it then this assignment was
(21:24) busy work because they didn’t need to do this I can see they already knew what it was so how am I going to help them take a step forward I’m like okay this is good now can you rewrite this with a semicolon can you write it in the style of Shakespeare give them some sort of a challenge to go further but they have to demonstrate that they’ve learned something from your feedback that’s the style of the assignment so I’ve submitted that back to Kate and I am going to this one I think it’s this
(22:01) one yeah we’re going to come back to Kate here okay if I refresh we can see that this is assigned that they have not submitted uh because I returned it to them even though they submitted it two times and I’m going to show you that here in a second so I said can you write one sentence about an animal that hear something so a raccoon hears the track can lid it’s not a great sentence but it’s better than nothing okay all right so we’re going to submit we’re going to Mark as done so we’re going to work with
(22:40) students this is how this process works you got to Mark as done honestly it doesn’t matter if they Market is done because I can see the private comments anyway but it alerts me that they want you to give them some feedback so you’re like hey you got a market is done so I know that you want me to you know hey keer it’s your turn all right cool so I’m going to stop presenting and I’m going to once again awkwardly switch Windows oh like this one okay great and then I got to find my spot okay here we go Kate has a raccoon
(23:14) here’s a trash can lid I’m like super K oops always start my comments with AK always start my comments with AK okay Super K thank you for this sentence paragraph has a minimum of three sentences you did one sentence that was sensory about sound can you make another sentence that is and by the way you could use Mo Mo’s a great way to add on to he that they can hear your voice and not necess necessarily rely on reading it part of their challenge might be that they aren’t at grade level for reading
(24:04) so Moes a really great tool that you can uh record your feedback and paste it in there I’ll demonstrate that can you make it I’m a math teacher I don’t really I don’t know why I keep using this figurative language example I’m not really good at it can you make another sentence that is about feeling touch and write your third sentence about smell figurative language doesn’t match the definition they put in there I thought it was like I smell something I hear something whatever I whatever figurative language
(24:50) is smell touch here I would do a math example but you don’t want to see it all right please update the full paragraph including your first sentence and then now we have these bold italics underlines so can you make another sentence underline feeling touch bold smell wait smell bold okay right so I can go in and underline and I can bold including the first sentence write me a paragraph with three sentences please resubmit okay hit send now if you come up and you find the student’s name right below it it says turned in and next to
(25:56) it it says see history so when I see history I can see they turned it in I returned it they turned it in I returned it they turned it in I’m going to return it without a score put it back to not being submitted so again I’m going to click on the student’s name I’m going to see the history and I can see all those times that they back and forth now I have an add-on that takes a screenshot where I can submit the screenshot so I’m going to take a partial screenshot with my Chrome extension and this particular Chrome
(26:32) extension copies it to their clipboard I use this a lot so here is the screenshot of our back and forth so when I do give them their score I might show hey we had this back and fourth or you didn’t so when they didn’t give me like you know what you only submitted this once and the directions were you need to do it until I get at least a basic response for you something that is acceptable I’m do in there okay let’s switch back to our friend Kate here um there we go okay nope that’s me here’s Kate great right so I love
(27:19) this because you can see the whole conversation right in there so we’re going to come down here right a raccoon hears the trash can lid the next one’s feeling touch I try to touch the raccoon it felt wet it smelled like butter I don’t know s now is that a great paragraph no it’s not a great paragraph but it’s better than I don’t know it’s better than I don’t know they made some progress rather than none these are my favorite types of assignments I don’t have to open up Google Docs we’re back and forth
(28:07) having a conversation I get to use their name let me come back over here I’m going share my teacher screen this one I’m GNA go ahead and use the mo Chrome extension so up here I have this Chrome extension for moot sign in okay great I guess I haven’t used it in a while I’m going to click to record has so many they’re always adding new features it’s very cool so I’m gonna record hi Kate I really appreciate that you got me a figurative language paragraph you know figurative language is about being
(28:59) flowery with your words like it smelled like butter that’s a really great one you’re using your senses you’re saying it smelled like butter so it’s It’s Not Butter so that’s a really good example you got at least three sentences and you said I don’t know now look at this you you’ve got a decent start to this so good job you get full credit I look forward to seeing how you continue to write better figurative language paragraphs let’s do this all all right so I’m going to just
(29:30) copy that link thank you Kate I’m gonna submit and now Kate didn’t turn it in that’s okay because I I can still see the conversation I can give her points enter and I can still return it with full credit even if she did or didn’t turn it in and I love mode has so many great uh options here it’s a really great tool so there you go that is kind of my example of I having this back and forth conversation where I use the private comments as the assignment right is there any questions that I can
(30:15) answer I’ll turn off the recording here in a second if you want to ask with the recording off okay stop the recording