Give Great Feedback (Without Going Crazy)!

I honestly don't know how high school English teachers do it. For years, I have struggled to keep up with the writing output of my fourth graders so that I can give them the high quality feedback they need so they can improve. I must say, however, that once again, technology makes this process SO much easier. Today I'm going to share some high-tech (and low-tech) ways to give great writing feedback without having to give up all of your nights and weekends.

Get your class to use Google Docs

I can't say enough good things about using Google Docs with my students this year. We use it for drafting and publishing, and the students share their docs with me the minute they start working on a new piece of writing. A few reasons why I love it: 

1. I can keep tabs on my students. We all have those kids who look like they're working but really aren't. Or those who just struggle to get ideas down. In the past, when I used notebooks, it might take me a couple of days to realize that a student was struggling. Now, I can leave those students' documents open on my laptop and see in real time what's happening in their writing. It makes them and me more effective during our writing block.

2. It's a great source of data. I was working with a student in RtI, and one of the data points I had to collect was how much writing she was able to accomplish during our writing block. Google Docs allow you to go back through a document's revision history so I could see what the writing looked like each day. I could track word counts and changes, and I could even see if she had worked on it at home (where the big changes seemed to happen). All of that information was very helpful and far more than I could have gathered using a notebook.

3. It makes conferring and feedback easier. I can have students ask me questions about their writing, and I can immediately pull it up and see it. I can also track when I've given feedback and which feedback gets used or ignored. It's a great record of my work with students.

Consider a Feedback Add-On

When I went to ISTE this summer, I learned about Kaizena, a tool that integrates with Google Drive and allows you to give feedback in a variety of ways. For example, you can:

• Give audio feedback -- make comments about the paper by talking to the student about his or her writing. It will record your comments and embed them to the document. This would be SO much faster than typing things out.
• Re-use comments -- if you find yourself making the same comment over and over again, you can create the comment once, tag it for easy finding, and use it again later. Talk about a time saver!
• Embed videos -- sometimes students benefit from short movies or examples that teach a particular skill. It's like a personalized mini-lesson.

The problem? As of this writing, the app doesn't work with the iPads. Kaizena creates a link in the first comment and that link directs students to their platform, but links like that aren't clickable through the comments on Google Docs' iPad app. It would be great for a class with 1:1 laptops, but that's not where I'm at. I've heard that an iPad app is in the works, but until then, I'm having to devise my own alternatives. 

Build Your Own Comment Library

Inspired by the concept of Kaizena, I've started to build my own reusable comment library for those comments that apply over and over again. I'm just using a Google Spreadsheet, and I've divided it into the following columns:

1. Tag - a word or phrase to help me find the comment. Examples:

• Capitalization - Proper Nouns
• Run-on sentences
• Then vs. Than

2. Comment - type out the exact text of what you want the comment to say to address a particular skill or issue. Wherever applicable, include a link to an additional resource students can use for more examples of what you're talking about. I tend to include titles of BrainPop videos or links to Vimeo clips (not blocked by my school's webfilters, unlike YouTube). While my students still can't access the links in comments through their iPads, I can let them use one of our classroom laptops to view the particular video. The fact that it's just one comment vs. all of the comments make this option work for us over Kaizena. Here's an example of a comment I gave a student who was confusing "Then and Than" 

• You are confusing two words that sound similar to one another: "then" and "than." The first minute of this video may be helpful to you: http://vimeo.com/103071955 (you do not need to watch the whole thing)

3. Related Standard(s) - This is just one additional way for me to search through my comment library. Plus, if I find myself giving the same comment over and over again, I'll know which standard I may need to revisit in an upcoming lesson.

Why a Comment Library is a Huge Time Saver

My comment library allows me to give more thorough feedback in much more depth. Unlike a checklist or a rubric, I'm offering very specific feedback and suggestions targeted toward exactly what I see in a student's writing. When I notice something happening in the writing, I can highlight it, hit the comment button, and copy & paste the relevant suggestion into the comments section. I can do this quickly and still have time to type some individualized suggestions that may be relevant to the student. It's much more thorough than anything I could ever do on paper.

In addition, my comment library is constantly growing as I find new resources and see different things happen in students' writing. I've only been doing this for about a week, and it's becoming a great tool to help me curate resources and differentiate instruction.

Get Involved

As I mentioned, I've just started building this comment library on Google Drive. If you'd like to see it, you can view it here. If you'd like to get involved as a contributor, you can contact me via email or blog comments and I'll share the document with you so you can edit and add. 

Halloween Fun!

This is off-topic, but I was super excited at the arrival of my Halloween Jamberry nail wraps this week, and I finally tried them out today! 

I love the purple color and the subtle flare of bats flying around. It makes me feel festive without going over the top. I still have some Jamberry samples available to mail out, so if you'd like to try Jamberry nail wraps for yourself, I'd love to share! They're easy and fun, and they come in so many styles that you're sure to find some that you love. You can visit my Jamberry site or email me at eberjams (via gmail) to request a sample. 

Have a great weekend!

Tutorial - Build a Conferring Notebook with Evernote

The week of standardized testing and my sinus infection proved to be an exhausting combination that sapped all of my blogging strength. It's finally the weekend, though, so I'm back. Hooray!!!

Today I want to share a tip for building a conferring notebook for any subject -- especially reader's and writer's workshop.

Perhaps one of my very favorite tools to use for keeping track of things is Evernote. It's a free service that you can use to organize notes, pictures, and web clippings, and it works on any device -- laptops, iPads, smartphones, etc. It also recognizes text in pictures, and can search for that text. In my personal life, that feature comes in handy when I want to snap pictures of the label on a bottle of wine worth trying again or the hair dye color I'll need for doing touchups in a few weeks. But in my classroom, I like to use it for my conferring notebook.

This tutorial will help you get started with setting up your own conferring notebook in Evernote. All you'll need is an email address.

After you register, you'll need to check your email for a confirmation code to complete the registration process, but once you have that, you'll be ready to sign in and get going!

Underneath the elephant trunk in the upper left of the screen is a list of all of your notebooks. When you first get started, you'll have a default notebook that is your user name's notebook. I like to create special notebooks for the different subjects, however, so today I'll build a notebook for Writer's Workshop by clicking the down arrow by "Notebooks" and choosing "New Notebook." I'll give it a name (Writer's Workshop) and save it.

Once the notebook is created, I can make it my default notebook (the first notebook that launches when I open Evernote and the place where new notes get saved). You can do this by hovering your mouse over the notebook's name and clicking on the arrow beside it, then choose properties. You'll know which one is your default because it will have a star beside it. 

The next step is to make a new note. Typically, I create a new note for each student. 

(Note: I'd show you my real conferring notebook on Evernote, but it's got lots of student info in it that obviously can't be shared online. You'd mostly be looking at a blur. I'll revisit this topic as it gets closer to the next school year, though, and share more tips as I clear out this year's class.)

In the actual entries, I'll type the date and a brief note about what we conferred about. It automatically saves as I go, and I can set it to sort my files by the last updated date. This is useful so I can keep track of the kids that I haven't conferred with in a while. I can also take pictures and drag and drop them into notes. This is helpful if I want to take an image of a student's writing or a book he or she is working on reading. You can also send emails to your Evernote account and specify what notebook it should be filed in. 

The real advantage of Evernote is its portability. In the past, I've never really had a notebook system that worked for me. I couldn't keep up with all of my papers and artifacts, or I'd forget to bring it home with me over the weekend to plan instruction for the week ahead. Evernote works on any device and automatically syncs, so I can access my notebook anytime, anywhere. It's perfect for me as I circulate throughout the classroom, because I can use it on my phone or iPad -- items I'm likely to have on or near me anyway. If you're looking for a new system to use next year, I would highly recommend that you give this a try!

What do you use to record your conference notes? Do you use Evernote? Feel free to share your experiences in the comments below!