Hopefully the students have learnt as much as I have in the last few weeks

Every morning I am woken up by my cat between 5 and 6 am, a time of her choosing, and whilst she cries for attention I am thinking about the dreaded initial registration Zoom. I wonder if the students dread it too. Seeing my ugly face whilst they all want to hide the fact that they’re in bed, pretending they have “network issues”, or the camera doesn’t work. Knowing they are probably in bed means I don’t like to press the subject. They have been pretty good on the whole – probably because they are hoping that we get to keep our holidays if they come to registration.

This is how I started off most of my online maths groups. I wanted to be consistent and I thought I had a plan…..Only really number 1 and number 4a) are consistent with what I am doing three weeks later.

I quickly learnt that if I don’t Zoom at the beginning of every class my students won’t necessarily follow the instructions on google classroom and will be behind, causing me (and them) a load more problems and extra work down the road. I always have to wait for everyone to join the class, but I am understanding, because there is no bell and they are often finishing off things from other classes. I have learnt to tell students at the end of my lesson, to leave, to stop doing maths, even though it is the best subject, and go to their next class.

If I do not move this recurring Zoom meeting to the top of google classroom most students can’t find it, even if it is the one below the assignment for today’s class. If it says we are going to Zoom in the google classroom assignment clearly in capital letters, there’s still always one student who is special.

Or

Or

And then they don’t go onto google chat or catch up at all……

Sometimes there are students like below, who actually get round zoom problems by asking questions through Google Chat, as they were asked to do. And they are coping really well.

So I posted a snip of what we did on the screenshare to Google Chat to help her out.

She was really grateful and I was impressed by her efforts. She probably got more work done by not having to listen to my lecture anyway……

It’s not just technology or effort. Sometimes it’s just my fault.

Binomial Expansion and Quadratics are quite different words, yet I couldn’t manage to upload the correct assignment. It helped me understand the kids a bit more….yet they didn’t question it and they knew that we had been doing quadratics up until that point….so they should take some of the blame.

As I said I am now zooming at the beginning of every lesson just at least to check in with them, and see if they have any problems and questions. Or maybe I stay on zoom and they can flit in and out to ask questions individually whilst they work on written assignments. My teaching method has often gone back to presenting smart notebooks – I am learning to type with a mouse and learning that it is quicker to type numbers and click on other options, such as superscripts and subscripts to present the work better than this:

Strangely most kids when I have polled the class using the thumbs up tool on zoom, have said that the pace of the class was ok, even with my slow drawing and writing.

Putting up solutions can be time consuming too. Taking photos of my own solutions, uploading them via Bluetooth to my computer and then organising them into folders, renaming them, and uploading them to Google classroom. Especially with Zoom running or a generally slow internet connection. My lesson plan has often gone out of the window…

The biggest problem is even though I get all the answers up eventually, I don’t know if they’re really checking them do I? So I ask for questions. I always get some, and if everyone else says nothing I have to trust that they understand. I go through the questions asked. But how? Well, back to my photos, I cut and paste each one and whack it into the smartnotebook presentation so that I can annotate it easily. I think I could do that in Paint, in fact I am just checking…….(still learning)……but I want all these questions and answers in my notebook for next time so, more clicking and organizing.. I do love my snipping tool…..

How can I assess work from the students in an easy way? I thought Kahoot might be fun.

First attempt at Kahoot with S4. Great tool to help me know which areas they understand better than others, or which areas I have taught better than others. The Kahoot results have helped me ‘teach better’.

In my second Kahoot, I took part too……in my desperation to be fastest and get 100% I managed to hit the wrong answer……I finished second. The small consolation was that I was so fast compared with third place that my speed gave me a higher score than his 100% accuracy. Next time I will use an alias……

I am learning new things every day. I have learnt that I don’t know how to stop a student redoing the Kahoot and getting 100% after having seen the answers, or just doing it four times to exhaust all of the outcomes. I suppose I could do it on the spot in class.

This morning, my classes went badly. I got little feedback from most students and I don’t know if they are following, if they are completing the work, if they have finished already, or if they are actually there.

I have decided Classkick is the way forward…..that’s the next thing I must learn….

Though apparently that is not working today…