Pedagogy Archives - Dynamic Teaching

May 12, 2020May 5, 2022

Tech Tip Tuesday – Google Hacks for Remote Learning

Interesting times we are living in, aren’t they?

Teachers everywhere are scrambling to provide online content for their students. On top of that, they are preparing for what may be an online start in the fall. In this tech tip, I’m going to show you a Google hack with Slides that you can use to make your presentations more interactive for your students.

Animations Help to Isolate Ideas

I always use animations in my google slides. I feel like doing so helps me emphasize the most important parts of a lesson. It also avoids the “head-down-madly-copying” syndrome. I want students to interact with the content and each other!

So sharing a Google Slide presentation as a lesson is problematic. In edit mode, my presentations are basically just pretty google docs with pictures. In a remote learning environment, I feel like my students lose too much if I just share my slides and tell them it’s the content, I’d rather tell them about The best secondary school English tuition and explain to them how it can help their career.

October 1, 2019October 1, 2019

Tech Tip Tuesday: “Hidden” Tools in Google Docs

Google Docs has grown immensely in functionality since its debut in 2006. The app isn’t just a word processor anymore. In this post, we’ll take a look at three features of google docs that are hidden in plain sight: Voice Typing, the Dictionary, and the Explore tool.

Voice Typing

Do you have students that have a hard time getting their words from their brains onto a google doc because the dexterity to type isn’t there? Or maybe you have a student that is staring at a blank page and “can’t think of what to write.” Or students that are dyslexic or dysgraphic and need support when it comes to writing?

August 17, 2019February 17, 2024

Scaffolding Using Google Classroom

One of the best ways to accelerate student learning is to ensure grade-level work is offered to all students and that students are able to engage in the work with “productive struggle.” It can be challenging to do that when students are several grade levels behind. Scaffolding is one way to support students in taking on the work – as long as the scaffolds are just enough and still allow for productive struggle.

One way to scaffold is to pre-emptively decide how much scaffolding to give to certain students, but that runs the risk of giving too much for a particular assignment.

What if, instead, you use your ability to edit whatever GSuite tool you have used for the assignment once you have assigned the work through Google Classroom?

July 31, 2019August 1, 2019

Back-to-School Community Building and Breaking the Ice

August is upon us and if you haven’t already started thinking about your first few days of school with students, you soon will. A big part of the first few days is building community, setting up routines and procedures, and plain ol’ “getting-to-know-you” type stuff.

Nothing wrong with any of that; in fact, it’s essential. Relationships, community, and routines are crucial to the success of any classroom.

But put yourself in the shoes of a middle-schooler (or high-schooler, for that matter) who has just filled out, for the fourth time, a “Getting to Know You” worksheet or has played “People Bingo” for the third time in one day.

There are better ways 🙂

June 16, 2019August 1, 2019

Alignment: Walking the Talk

Earlier in my career as an educator, I coached my high school’s fastpitch softball team. Then, as now, I believed the best way to make my team successful was to coach them in the skills and knowledge they needed to excel and then I let them go out and play. I was often asked (by parents, never the players) why I didn’t call pitches for my catchers. The answer was simple: It wouldn’t be in alignment with what I believed made my players the most successful.

What Does This Have to Do With Education?

Fast forward a couple of decades: I was invited to attend the SXSWEdu in Austin, TX and am lucky enough to see Will Richardson speak. What he said really stuck with me – so much so that I had to get it all out in a mind map to feel like I was truly understanding.

February 2, 2019August 1, 2019

Less Talk, More Action

Across my Facebook feed yet again came the discussion about taking notes by hand versus on a laptop. Like clockwork, every couple of months, one of my facebook friends shares an article that champions note-taking on paper over note-taking on an electronic device. This time, it was from the Washington Post: Why Smart Kids Shouldn’t Use Laptops in Class. This is not news. We’ve known this for a while and the research is really clear: If you are going to sit passively for 50 minutes and listen to a lecture, your best bet for retaining information is writing out notes on paper by hand.

April 19, 2018August 1, 2019

Giving Every Student a Voice in Your Socratic Circle by Leveraging Digital Tools

Socratic Circles are a great way to engage students in a provocative question. Students are engaged with the topic, encouraged to think about complex topics with a critical eye, and inspired to explore big ideas.

However, Socratic Circles can be a challenge in a classroom with 30 or more students. In a large class, it can be a challenge to ensure all students have a voice. There are time, space, and personality constraints that sometimes mean the conversation is dominated by just a few voices.

A Simple Tool That Can Help

By leveraging digital tools, you can mitigate these constraints and give all of your students a voice. Google Classroom features tools that will ensure all students have the opportunity to explore their own thinking as well as their classmate’s.