Social and emotional learning (SEL) is at the core of learning and development. Research suggests teaching social emotional learning activities to develop life skills significantly improves behavior, attitudes, employment, classroom management, and academic achievement. Consistent SEL practice results in productive habits that positively shape academic performance and student’s mental health. From early childhood to middle school to high school, it’s important to make time in the school day to teach students SEL skills such as positive self-talk, active listening, practicing mindfulness, and more.

Foster a love of learning in every student with Nearpod. Teachers can sign up for free below to access activities or social emotional development and create interactive lessons!

Nearpod’s 21st Century Readiness Curriculum Program

The benefits of SEL development can be applied to any grade and subject, but not every teacher is an SEL expert or has time to become one. Nearpod’s 21st Century Readiness Program includes over 400 SEL lessons, activities, and videos built on CASEL’s five core competencies: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making. Each resource helps develop knowledge and skills related to one of the CASEL competencies, pushing students to learn, apply, and reflect during the learning experience. This supplemental SEL program includes lifelong learning strategies for goal setting, time management, and growth mindset lessons for persisting, thinking flexibly, and more.

Nearpod’s 21st Century Readiness Program provides an easy way to integrate SEL practices like positive interactions, gratitude, and reflective moments into daily learning to help create safe, inclusive, and effective classroom environments.

Administrators can schedule a call with an expert to explore Nearpod’s 21st Century Readiness Program and unlock the full power of Nearpod for schools and districts.

7 Social Emotional Learning (SEL) activities to use in your classroom

1. Facilitate positive classroom interactions

Collaborate Board activities bring limitless possibilities to instruction. The interactive discussion board facilitates positive interactions among classmates by increasing student engagement, crowdsourcing ideas, and delivering formative feedback. Bringing an interactive discussion board to your Nearpod lessons fosters the development of social emotional learning skills and builds on core competencies such as self-awareness, social awareness, and relationship skills. These are easy SEL activities you can integrate into your daily instruction.

Students truly feel part of the conversation with Collaborate Board, which helps teachers foster classroom culture. A classroom culture of respect, happiness, security, and challenge is foundational to engaging and effective learning. Students need to feel open to honest communication about their progress for improved teaching and learning. As students participate in various SEL activities, such as Collaborate Boards that are focused on fostering open communication, teachers intentionally build effective classroom culture. Students can feel comfortable sharing thoughts and challenges and see hurdles as opportunities to learn.

Check out some of our ready-made Collaborate Board activities developed specifically for building classroom culture:

• Scattergories: Letter S
• If You Could Fly
• Find Something: All About You

You can check in on how students are feeling by creating a Nearpod activity. Check-ins drive opportunities to build routines and create a comfortable learning environment. This can help teachers guide a rich dialogue among classmates. Students build an increased capacity to interact with others in a way that shows compassion and understanding.

2. Encourage self-reflection through drawing

Using drawing activities for self-portraits, scribble art, or providing a journaling opportunity for students to express their feelings supports self-reflection for students. Have students practice responsible decision-making, specifically analyzing situations, by completing a Draw It activity on Nearpod to share a challenge they are facing. Reflective Draw It activities help students understand their strengths and areas for growth.

Creating art is a practice of communication and empathy, a growth mindset, and self-reflection. The SEL Through Art series, part of Nearpod’s 21st Century Readiness Program, explores the connection between art and SEL skills. This powerful medium elicits social and emotional learning experiences by helping students explore more about themselves and their life experiences.

3. Create moments of gratitude

Use Nearpod’s Drag & Drop interactive feature in your lessons to engage and connect students with social emotional learning in the classroom. Match feeling words, descriptions, and corresponding facial expressions to talk about resolving conflict and identifying different emotions. Students can discuss the importance of recognizing the good in their lives and expressing gratitude regularly. For instance, Nearpod’s interactive features, such as Collaborate Board, Open-Ended Question, and Poll, are the perfect way to start or end your day with an expression and acknowledgment of gratitude. Use Drag & Drop to create easy SEL activities for your lesson plans, like this one!

4. Collect meaningful student feedback

Creating opportunities for student voice in the classroom is key to building a positive school culture and gathering meaningful student feedback. To increase student talk, provide ample opportunities for engaging interaction through activities like Think-Pair-Share questions and Open-Ended Questions. When using Nearpod’s Open-Ended Question feature, make sure audio recording is enabled to give students multiple ways to engage in student voice. Nearpod’s formative assessment features, like Polls, empower educators to provide multiple ways for students to share valuable information personally. Include a Poll at the beginning or end of your lesson to gather student feedback, collect a formative assessment of emotions, or provide a reflective moment.

Additionally, utilize the Collaborate Board feature for a quick check-in at the beginning of class, asking simple questions to engage student thinking, build background knowledge, or gauge the overall mood of the classroom. Use what you’ve learned from gathering student feedback to help inform future classroom procedures or learning changes.

5. Brain Breaks!

Exclusive to Nearpod’s 21st Century Readiness Program, Brain Breaks videos regulate the energy and focus of your classroom. Research suggests providing a quick break helps refresh the mind and makes it easier for students to focus on important tasks. Our videos help students break the patterns of fatigue, frustration, and lack of focus, and we made it easy for teachers to launch a video at any time throughout the day.

Choose between Calming or Energizing videos depending on the needs of your classroom at any moment. Use calming Brain Breaks as social and emotional learning activities to help students relax, settle their minds, and become refocused on the task.

Use energizing Brain Breaks to provide needed movement and increase the blood flow to the brain. An energizing activity helps reduce stress and anxiety and improves students’ ability to focus.

6. Choose from Nearpod’s premade activities

Choose from over 100 premade SEL activities using Nearpod’s interactive features like Draw It, Time to Climb, and Drag & Drop to incorporate into lessons, or as a bell ringer, an exit ticket, for extra practice, or homework. Nearpod’s social-emotional learning activities are built on the five core competencies: self-awareness, self-management, responsible decision-making, relationship skills, and social awareness. Students use information from their own experiences and values to guide their thinking and learn from others. These are easy SEL activities you can integrate into your daily instruction.

7. Collecting real-time insights

Real-time insight into students’ learning is vital for developing SEL. This immediate feedback allows educators to address emotional and social challenges as they arise, helping students to better manage their emotions. By closely monitoring progress and providing timely support, teachers can foster a nurturing environment where students feel understood and supported.

With Nearpod, real-time insights into student thinking allow teachers to adapt their instruction. Add an Open-Ended Question, Draw It, or Collaborate Board to a lesson on the fly with Quick Launch when you see an opportunity to engage in SEL-integrated instruction intentionally.

These engagement tools ensure students have low-stakes ways to share their thinking. As a result, this simple way to gather real-time insight gives students a voice in the moment while providing you with important feedback.

Teach SEL with Nearpod

Nearpod’s social emotional learning curriculum provides instruction, reflection, and practice opportunities around CASEL-aligned social and emotional learning competencies: self-awareness, self-management, responsible decision-making, relationship skills, and social awareness.

By implementing SEL programs, educators can show students how to manage their emotions effectively through social and emotional skills. For young children, developing these skills enhances their abilities to understand and interact with others. It’s essential that schools prioritize SEL to ensure children learn the necessary competencies for overall well-being and success.

When SEL curriculum practices are thoughtfully selected and used authentically, they have greater power to be effective. View your role as an educator through the lens of the five core competencies of SEL to enhance your teaching and enrich your classroom environment. Nearpod’s 21st Century Readiness Program easily incorporates SEL in the classroom, helping educators meet students’ social and emotional learning needs.

New to Nearpod? Make sure you’re signed up to access these lessons and activities!

Teachers can sign up for free below to access and create interactive lessons. Administrators can schedule a call with an expert to explore Nearpod’s 21st Century Readiness Program and unlock the full power of Nearpod for schools and districts.

Click here to learn more about Nearpod’s 21st Century Readiness Curriculum Program

References

CASEL.org. Social Emotional Learning competencies. (2022).

Durlak, J. A., Weissberg, R. P., Dymnicki, A. B., Taylor, R. D. & Schellinger, K. B. (2011). The impact of enhancing students’ social and emotional learning: A meta-analysis of school-based universal interventions. Child Development, 82(1): 405–432.

Immordino-Yang, Mary Helen, et al. “Rest Is Not Idleness: Implications of the Brain’s Default Mode for Human Development and Education.” Perspectives on Psychological Science, vol. 7, no. 4, July 2012, pp. 352–64. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691612447308.

Jessica Clarke

Jessica Clarke is the Curriculum Manager at Nearpod.

The post 7 Social Emotional Learning (SEL) activities to use in the classroom appeared first on Nearpod Blog.

Digital wellness for students refers to how media and technology affect their mental, physical, social, and emotional health. Multimedia is an ever-present part of students’ and our own daily lives, whether we are consuming or creating it. In today’s digital landscape, there’s a firehose of information presented via audio, text, images, and videos from different channels, platforms, and technologies. Still, we can be creators and sharers of such sticky content day in and day out. Such engagement can have a toll on our well-being, physically (e.g., eye strain and impacts on sleep) or socially and emotionally (e.g., social comparison).

The many nuances of our always-on world require us to be vigilant about understanding the opportunities as well as the pitfalls of such technology use and digital interactions. This past winter, the CDC released a report that shared startling statistics for teen girls, stating that nearly 3 in 5 teen girls (57%) said they felt “persistently sad or hopeless”‚—double that of boys. For years, many studies have looked at how social media, in particular, has affected the confidence and overall health of our youth.

On March 30, 2023, Common Sense released their research on Teens and Mental Health: How Girls Really Feel About Social Media, which included the following key finding:

“Among all girls surveyed, nearly four in 10 (38%) report symptoms of depression, and among these girls, social media has an outsize impact—for better and for worse.”

Digital wellness requires adults and kids alike to consider how to use technology to support their overall health. Developmentally, many kids are not ready to handle the barrage of information and interactions, so schools and homes need to work together to teach kids digital citizenship and media literacy skills so that they develop healthy habits of mind they can lean on. Woven throughout all disciplines is the need for social and emotional skills in order to succeed not only in school but in life. Digital health and wellness and SEL go hand in hand, so kids learn to use critical thinking skills when interacting online.

New to Nearpod? Sign up for free to access these digital citizenship lessons!

Teachers can sign up for free below to access and create interactive lessons. Administrators can schedule a call with an expert to explore Nearpod’s 21st Century Readiness Program and unlock the full power of Nearpod for schools and districts.

Why should we infuse SEL skills with the use of technology?

It might be common for teachers and schools to teach either SEL or digital citizenship. Yet the two complement each other in addressing digital health and wellness. While digital citizenship and SEL aren’t interchangeable, infusing digital citizenship into social emotional learning instruction can help you be more responsive to the demands and opportunities that technology brings into your students’ lives on a daily basis.

Nearpod and Common Sense Education’s SEL in Digital Life collection brings both of these content areas together to highlight the specific SEL skills that students will need to navigate the challenges of digital life while building skills in SEL competencies such as self-awareness, self-management, responsible decision making, relationship skills, and social awareness. By combining SEL and digital citizenship, young people will have concrete ways to apply the skills to scenarios in their everyday lives.

Nearpod and Common Sense’s SEL in Digital Life lesson collection

SEL in Digital Life is a collection of educational resources developed by Common Sense Education and included in Nearpod’s 21st Century Readiness Program. The lesson collection is designed to address the unique ways in which technology impacts the social and emotional well-being of students. Common Sense Education is the leading nonprofit that helps kids, families, and educators thrive in a digital age. Their trusted name in education speaks to the quality of materials designed for teachers, students, and their families. Common Sense Education is a long-time partner of Nearpod and offers a Digital Citizenship and Social Emotional Learning Curriculum in Nearpod’s 21st Century Readiness Program for elementary, middle school, and high school.

This collaborative collection of 20 lessons in social emotional learning and digital literacy curriculum highlights how to build essential digital and tech habits and skills in a developmentally-appropriate manner to nurture lifelong learning. Such conversations must happen early and often, even before kids are on personal devices participating in our connected world. And then, the examples should reflect real-world, authentic dilemmas. These are quick and short activities and can be embedded into your existing lesson plans or used during homeroom, advisory, etc. The activities are rooted in digital life dilemmas to encourage discussion about and reflection on character strength, including communication, compassion, courage, empathy, gratitude, humility, perseverance, self-control, and teamwork.

Nearpod’s 21st Century Readiness Program focuses on non-core academic subjects critical for student success in and beyond the classroom. Get these interactive resources to embed digital citizenship, social-emotional learning, financial literacy, and college and career readiness into any classroom.

Why should a teacher use these lessons?

Regardless of how much or how little media and tech might play a role in your classroom, they do play a prominent role in our children’s lives. From television to streaming to texting to the internet to apps, kids are consuming and creating. And their tech habits outside of the classroom can affect what happens (or doesn’t happen) in your classroom.

We understand teachers are strapped for time and are constantly tasked with “one more thing” to do in the classroom. These lessons are quick and easy to implement and will help build student engagement and create a stronger classroom culture. The SEL in Digital Life activities will help establish a positive learning environment that supports students academically, socially, and emotionally.

We know technology enhances student learning. Still, if students are not prepared to use it safely and responsibly through digital citizenship behaviors, it could negatively impact their learning environment. Our lessons help you proactively address some of the factors that contribute negatively to your classroom, which include digital distractions, responsible use, and digital drama.

View all of Common Sense Education’s SEL in Digital Life materials below!

What is covered in these lessons?

CASEL framework

The SEL in Digital Life collection follows the CASEL framework for social-emotional learning. Each SEL in Digital Life lesson was designed to focus on one of the five competencies outlined in this framework:

• Self-Awareness: Focus on helping students reflect on their relationship with media and technology
• Self-Management: Focus on developing students’ executive functioning skills to manage their use of technology
• Responsible Decision-Making: Focus on how students should evaluate the opportunities and potential risks of using technology
• Relationship Skills: Focus on helping students develop prosocial behaviors that are conducive to positive online experiences
• Social Awareness: Focus on helping students identify varying degrees of online meanness and strategies to de-escalate online conflicts

Lessons organized by grade levels

The collection is organized by grade bands, so each lesson addresses an SEL competency at a developmentally appropriate level. The activities range from whole group, small group, and individual, all through a real-world lens.

Here are some examples of lessons we recommend exploring:

• Use Your Heart When You’re Online for grades K-2 focuses on relationship skills. Students relate to one of the animated characters in the song Pause & Think Online to explore further the ways in which they can be kind and respectful when communicating online.

• My Feeling When Using Technology for grades K-2 ties to self-awareness and digital wellbeing. Students learn to define their feelings and emotions as a way to illustrate the many ups and downs of technology use.

• How Can You Be an Online Superhero for grades 3-5 ties to responsible decision-making. Students evaluate a series of scenarios to determine which are ways to be a super digital citizen. Such concrete examples support students when they face their own quandaries.

• My Media Balance for grades 3-5 has students practice self-management when it comes to the many choices they make daily around the media they watch and use.

• Dealing with Digital Drama for grades 6-8 is timely and highlights social awareness. Students react to digital drama scenarios by trying to empathize with the various players and their perspectives.

• Who Are You on Social Media? for grades 9-12 also ties self-awareness. This lesson explores how we present different sides of ourselves online through our curated posts. Students reflect on the benefits and drawbacks of such curation and how they can share the most positive online presence.

Start using the SEL in Digital Life lesson collection

Like salt and pepper, SEL and digital citizenship — affectionately known as #digcit — work together to make sure that kids are prepared to handle the challenges they will face in the digital world. These healthy habits of mind will serve students well in school, in future jobs, and in life. Such digital well-being is a cornerstone to successfully navigating our digital world in a proactive and positive manner. We all want our kids to be balanced, happy, and confident, so do dive into Nearpod’s SEL in Digital Life collection to find more quality and engaging resources for your classroom.

Teachers can sign up for free below to access and create interactive lessons. Administrators can schedule a call with an expert to explore Nearpod’s 21st Century Readiness Program and unlock the full power of Nearpod for schools and districts.

Darri Stephens

Darri Stephens is a dedicated LX (learning experience) designer, passionate about creating quality content and programs for kids, families, and educators. With MAs in Education from both Harvard and Stanford, and work experience at best-in-class ed tech organizations including Wonder Workshop, Nickelodeon, and Common Sense Education, she is steeped in the design thinking process and committed to agile and iterative project management, which has resulted in multi-award-winning programs and products.

The post Social emotional learning lessons for students’ digital wellness appeared first on Nearpod Blog.

What is the importance of student teacher relationships?

Teachers who support their students in their learning environment can positively impact their social and academic outcomes, which is important for the long-term trajectory of school and eventually employment. Research consistently underscores the pivotal role of building strong relationships in the classroom. As the teacher in your classroom, you have the capability to set the precedence with expectations. If you form a positive teacher student relationship and have high expectations, your classroom will follow suit and become a positive and supportive space with motivational learners.

The association between academic improvement and a positive teacher student relationship is students’ motivation and desire to learn. When students demonstrate a genuine connection with their teachers, it paves the way for a positive learning environment where growth flourishes effortlessly. Students who perceive their relationship with their teacher as positive, warm, and close are motivated to be more engaged in school and to improve their academic achievement. Whether you teach elementary, middle, or high school, fostering meaningful connections between teachers and students goes beyond mere academic progress—it’s a cornerstone for student achievement.

New to Nearpod? Teachers can sign up for a free Nearpod account below to access these resources, interactive activities, and engaging lessons. Administrators can schedule a call with an expert to unlock the full power of Nearpod for schools and districts.

7 Ways to build a positive student teacher relationship

There isn’t a one-size-fits-all when it comes to building relationships with our students. Every student has a unique story. Therefore, every student deserves a unique relationship with you. Let’s look at how you can begin to build those unique relationships.

1. Say hello and goodbye every single day

This may seem like common sense, but it’s easy to forget how far a simple greeting can go for students. Make this a special part of the day. Consider making this unique for each student or class period with handshakes, dances, and gestures.

2. Call home for good behavior more often than bad

Set a goal aside every week to pick a handful of students, record their names in a notebook or digitally with a kind memo, and call home on Fridays to tell their parents It will take 10 minutes, but the impact is everlasting. Those students will come to school on Monday filled with contagious giddiness and gratitude!

3. Student letters and questionnaires

Allow students to complete a first day of class questionnaire to get to know them better. Read through the responses and save them to reference later. Surprise them with a sweet treat or spark a conversation about their interests! This will also help teachers better understand their students’ interests outside of academics, which is key to building meaningful relationships with them.

Build your own survey on Nearpod by including different types of activities and assessments into a lesson and assigning it to students. Use a Collaborate Board to have all students participate in a discussion together. You can also use Open-Ended Questions and Polls to dive deeper into questions. Additionally, Nearpod has premade icebreaker activities and surveys you can share to boost student teacher relationships.

4. Let students inside your world

When exploring how to build positive relationships with students, consider taking students on a Virtual Reality (VR) Field Trip to anywhere in the world. One idea is to visit places you’ve been or where you’re from. Provide them with content about your culture and your interests. Who knows!? Maybe you have a few things in common!

5. Believe they will do great things

Give them content with high academic student engagement and rigor and when they need your support, be there – genuinely and wholeheartedly believe they can do it. Use Nearpod Post-Session Reports to keep track of student progress. This is essential to maintaining a strong relationship with your students.

6. Be authentic and have fun!

Students will LOVE to see the fun side of you and laugh with you. Make time for fun learning moments in your classroom that you and your students will truly enjoy.

You can teach with a Flocabulary lesson. Want to sing along? Dance? Do it! Also, Nearpod’s Time to Climb gamified learning activity is a student favorite. I’m sure it will be a lesson they won’t forget!

7. Listen and validate their feelings

Take moments to discuss their issues and emotions, which helps students feel safe in your classroom. Check in with their social and emotional wellness, frequently – who knows, you may be the only one that has. Prioritize social emotional learning activities and discussions when planning for class time. Share Nearpod’s SEL premade lessons and activities with students or use it as inspiration to create your own.

Positive teacher student relationship matter

Each of these suggestions can be small actions that create a tremendously large and effective bridge to bond your student relationships. Consider creating goals for yourself quarterly or weekly to ensure you are making a conscious effort to reach all your students. Not only does it enhance student academic performance, but it also cultivates a sense of belonging wherein students feel valued and supported.

When students feel their teacher is a caring person, then the classroom becomes a supportive and happier place for everyone. Building positive relationships with students is an all-around winning plan that creates an environment where real learning can take place. Challenge yourself to be authentic with your students and genuinely create meaningful relationships with them. I guarantee you won’t regret it!

New to Nearpod? Teachers can sign up for a free Nearpod account below to access these resources, interactive activities, and engaging lessons. Administrators can schedule a call with an expert to unlock the full power of Nearpod for schools and districts.

Interested in reading more about this topic? Check out this blog post: 7 Social Emotional Learning (SEL) activities to use in your classroom

Katie Micallef

Katie is a Personalized Learning Leader in Volusia County Schools. She helps teachers incorporate educational technology into their curriculum. She believes that students deserve an instructional practice that resonates with their daily lives, and that includes the utilization of technology. She is on a mission to promote the endless benefits that edtech can have on 21st century instructional practices.

The post 7 Ways to build a positive student teacher relationship appeared first on Nearpod Blog.

Why is art education important?

Through artistic expression, students learn to communicate ideas, explore diverse perspectives, and develop problem-solving skills. Art also enhances fine motor skills, spatial awareness, and attention to detail. Moreover, it provides a unique avenue for self-discovery and self-expression, boosting students’ confidence and sense of identity. In a broader context, art education contributes to a well-rounded education, preparing students for a future that demands innovation, adaptability, and a deep appreciation for diverse forms of expression.

Use Nearpod to teach art through technology

Nearpod is an interactive education platform supporting educators to create lessons that go beyond traditional methods of teaching and learning. Teachers can seamlessly integrate multimedia—including images, videos, 3D models, and virtual reality (VR) experiences—into learning. Nearpod offers interactive features and gamified activities that can captivate students’ attention while providing teachers with real-time information that helps them gauge student understanding and make adjustments to instruction. With Nearpod, teachers can tailor lessons to individual student needs, accommodating different learning styles and pace.

Foster a love of learning in every student with Nearpod. Teachers can sign up for free below to access and create interactive lessons. Administrators can schedule a call with an expert to unlock the full power of Nearpod for schools and districts.

17 Ideas for teaching art instruction effectively

Engaging media and assessments

1. Create virtual art galleries

Create a virtual art gallery featuring a particular artist, culture, or work from an art movement like Impressionism or Surrealism, or showcasing art, artifacts, and architecture from different artists, cultures, and time periods. Creating a slideshow makes it possible to bring together images from different museums, historical sites, and cultural institutions around the world into one place. When you present images together, it provides opportunities for discussion—such as comparing and contrasting styles, or determining what makes an artwork, artifact, or architecture from a particular time period or artist.

Add art images on a slide or use Slideshows, and consider enabling Live to Student-Paced mode to imitate the experience of wandering through a museum, ending with an Open-Ended Question or Collaborate Board where students can share their observations and questions.

2. Incorporate Virtual Reality (VR) Field Trips

VR Field Trips can be an excellent tool for enhancing art instruction by providing students with immersive experiences and exposure to various art forms, styles, and cultural contexts.

Choose virtual field trips that align with your art curriculum. Look for experiences that showcase diverse art forms, historical periods, famous artists, or cultural influences. Consider virtual field trips to locations that inspire art, such as landscapes, architectural wonders, or places significant to art movements. This could include exploring street art in urban areas or visiting scenic locations.

Include reflection prompts or discussion points during and after the virtual field trip. Encourage students to share their thoughts, observations, and feelings about the artworks or locations they experienced. Use collaborative features in Nearpod to facilitate group discussions or collaborative projects related to the virtual field trip. This encourages peer interaction and shared learning experiences.

3. Use technology for drawing

Incorporating technology into art instruction can be a fantastic way to provide students with new tools for creative expression. Remind students that while they’re using digital tools, they should still apply traditional art principles like composition, color theory, and perspective. These principles are fundamental to creating visually appealing artwork.

Consider connecting digital drawing with other subjects and assigning projects that mimic real-world scenarios. This could include creating digital illustrations for a fictional book cover, designing digital posters, or even collaborating on digital murals. Teach students about responsible digital citizenship such as respecting copyright laws. By integrating technology into the art curriculum, you not only prepare students for the digital age but also open up new possibilities for creative expression and exploration. Adjust your approach based on the available technology resources and the specific needs and preferences of your students.

The Draw It activity enables students to create on a virtual canvas with drawings, text, images, and video. You can upload a background image, customize your background with the options in the Draw It toolbar, or have students draw on a blank background.

Interdisciplinary learning

Integrating lessons from various content areas and pairing them with teacher-generated art creation prompts can offer a rich and multidimensional learning experience. This strategy not only combines different subjects but also encourages students to draw connections between various disciplines. It also promotes a holistic understanding of topics while enhancing students’ critical thinking skills as they express themselves through art in response to varied educational content. Keep reading to explore more art teacher tips for interdisciplinary learning.

4. Art creation prompts from lesson material

Develop art creation prompts that are inspired by the themes, topics, or events from language arts and social studies lessons. Consider using a Nearpod lesson, like this one about The Civil Rights Movement from our Social Studies Program. Students watch the lessons and respond visually using the art creation prompt and their choice of media. There are a number of Nearpod virtual field trips highlighting the National Parks system. In addition to providing information and images from the parks, each lesson prompts students to create their own poster about the park. These field trips could be partnered with information about National Parks Service posters created by Works Progress Administration artists as part of The New Deal.

5. Collaborative artwork

Collaborative art projects can be a creative and engaging way for students to work together on artistic endeavors, even in a virtual or blended learning environment. First, clearly outline the goals and objectives of the collaborative art project. Help students select the theme, concept, or artistic skills for them to explore and develop through their collaboration.  Offer clear instructions and guidelines for the project. Work with students to determine individual roles and responsibilities, the timeline for completion, and any specific requirements or constraints.

Use Collaborate Board to create a shared space where students can contribute their ideas, sketches, or digital art elements. Integrate reflective components into the project, such as individual or group reflections on the collaborative process, challenges faced, and lessons learned. This promotes metacognition and enhances the learning experience.

Integrate writing and art

Integrating writing into art class provides students with a well-rounded artistic experience, encouraging them to express themselves both visually and verbally. It also promotes literacy skills, critical thinking, and a deeper engagement with the world of art.

Nearpod’s formative assessment and activities, such as Open-Ended Questions, Draw It, and Collaborate Board, provide students options for sharing written ideas in long form and short response. Teachers can enhance writing prompts by adding reference media such as PDFs, web content, images, videos, or audio files to Nearpod activities. Web content, videos, and audio files can provide access to art outside the classification of two-dimensional works.

Here are some ways to use writing for teaching art education.

6. Create writing prompts to help them reflect on their art

Reflective writing encourages students to think critically about their own artwork or art in general. Questions could address their creative process, challenges faced, and decisions made. Consider using Nearpod’s Collaborate Board to make it an open discussion, or use Open-Ended Questions for individual student work.

7. Encourage visual analysis

Practice visual analysis by sharing an image of an artwork and prompting students to create written observations of art elements, composition, subject matter, etc. Sharing images of two or three artworks can extend analysis into compare and contrast. This can be done seamlessly through a Nearpod lesson by adding the images as reference media on an Open-Ended Question.

8. Use art to draw inspiration for a writing exercise

In lesson plans for art teachers, use artistic images and other media as prompts for creative writing exercises. Students can write short stories, poems, or descriptive passages inspired by the visual elements of an artwork. Consider doing this on a Nearpod activity with Open-Ended Questions or Draw It and include a reference media of the artwork, or have students join a VR Field Trip at an art gallery to choose their own inspiration.

9. Leverage writing prompts to connect art and personal experiences

Add writing prompts to a lesson that encourage students to connect art concepts to their personal experiences. This could involve exploring emotions, memories, or cultural influences in relation to their art. This is especially helpful for new teachers learning how to teach an art class, as it always helps students connect with these emotional aspects in their work.

10. Foster collaboration with group writing projects

For example, students could collectively write a narrative inspired by a particular artwork or create a story that unfolds through a series of artworks.

Use Nearpod’s premade activities, lessons, and videos

Nearpod’s Library has hundreds of lessons, activities, and videos to choose from for ​​teaching art. Time devoted to art instruction may only be 30-45 minutes per day, so we have activities, videos, and mini-lessons you can use during this time frame. Also, all resources in the Nearpod Library can be edited by the teacher, so if you find a lesson that requires more time, you can edit the lesson to include your preferred slides and activities.

Use the search bar by typing in specific topics, themes, or keywords, resulting in a broader range of resources. For example, type “Renaissance” but don’t use the subject filters, that way you can access all of the resources. If you want to focus solely on art instruction, type in “Art” and filter the subject by “Other.” Feel free to set additional filters to search by grade level, source, partner, or standards.

Keep reading to explore examples of resources you can find! You can also click below to start exploring even more resources for your art education lesson plans.

11. Art history lessons

Nearpod has tons of lessons you can use to teach about art history. We recommend typing the topic into the search bar to find the right lesson for your classroom needs. Explore lessons about historical art periods, famous artists, and cultural art around the world.

Here are some examples:

• Famous Visual Artists – Vincent van Gogh (grades K-5): In this lesson for teaching art to elementary students, they explore Vincent van Gogh and his art and analyze key features and characteristics of van Gogh’s work.
• Islamic Art (grades 6-12): In this lesson, students will learn about the characteristics and uniqueness of Islamic art.
• What Is the Renaissance? (grades 9-higher ed): In this video from Socratica, students learn a quick definition of “renaissance” and where the term originates.

12. Lessons on the elements of art

We also have ready-to-use K-12 lessons to teach about the elements of art. Add these lessons to your library to use them as is, or customize them to fit your teaching methods and students’ needs.

Nearpod’s fine arts lessons and activities cover the elements such as color, value, shape, lines, and more. Here are some examples:

• Elementary: Elements of Art – Color: In this lesson, students explore color in art. They recognize and describe different colors, including primary, secondary, complementary, warm, and cool.
• Secondary: Elements of Art – Space: In this lesson, students explore space in art. They define and recognize positive and negative space, as well as ways to create the illusion of space.
• Time to Climb – Shape (grades 6-12): In this fine arts activity, students review their understanding of the shape in art using Nearpod’s interactive quiz game, Time to Climb.
• Matching Pairs – Basic Elements of Art (grades 6-12): In this 6-12 Matching Pairs activity on the visual elements of art, students match terms with descriptions.

If you’d prefer to use videos, check out our Interactive Video lessons from KQED and Paint it Kids.

13. Social and emotional learning (SEL) art lessons

In today’s world, teaching social-emotional skills (SEL) is vital for students’ overall well-being. Art serves as a unique medium for self-expression and reflection, enabling individuals to explore complex emotions and develop resilience. By blending art with SEL activities, we empower young minds to navigate their emotions, foster healthy relationships, and thrive in an ever-changing world.

Nearpod’s 21st Century Readiness Program offers a collection of 35 resources filled with videos, activities, and lessons that leverage art to teach core SEL competencies. Here are some lessons from the collection to start teaching SEL through art:

• Creating a Portrait (grades K-2): In this SEL Draw It activity, students practice creating a portrait by thinking of their friends’ attributes and creating a portrait of them.
• Mindful Drawing (grades 3-5): In this SEL Draw It activity, students create mindful drawings while building social and emotional learning skills, such as reflection and communication.
• How to Draw Your Feelings + Painting Emotions (grades 6-8): In this video from Thirsty for Art, students participate in an art therapy activity. They learn how to draw their feelings and paint their emotions using mediums like oil pastels and watercolor paints.

Discussions and debates

14. Have class discussions

Enhance collaborative learning and facilitate meaningful conversations among students through class discussion. This can be sprinkled throughout a lesson to enhance student engagement and encourage opinion-sharing related to art pieces or concepts covered. Employ the waterfall technique to structure discussions sequentially.

Kick off discussion by watching a relevant video about a specific art topic together as a class. Consider using the Nearpod Library to find a video with embedded questions and discussion prompts. Next, encourage diverse perspectives by hearing from all students using tools like Collaborate Board. Collaborate Board allows all students to share their thoughts through text and multimedia and interact with their peers’ responses by liking or commenting. Given the visual nature of art, encourage students to respond not only verbally but also visually. They can create sketches, diagrams, or visual representations to complement their discussions. Actively moderate discussions by guiding interpretation, encouraging expression of viewpoints, and facilitating peer responses to ensure a comprehensive exchange of ideas.

15. Kick off classroom debates

Utilize structured debate by assigning students various perspectives or interpretations of artworks or art movements, prompting them to defend their positions during discussions. Integrate reflection opportunities through Open-Ended Questions and Draw It, allowing students to individually reflect on the discussion by summarizing key points, identifying areas of agreement or disagreement, and considering the impact of the discussion on their understanding of the art topic.

Personalize learning

16. Create step-by-step tutorials

Encourage independent learning for both early finishers and students at different skill levels using tutorials. Consider creating step-by-step art tutorials using Nearpod’s Student-Paced mode. If you’re a new educator learning how to teach art, this will be especially helpful to store for future classes.

Here are some art teacher tips for building an engaging and effective tutorial:

• Provide a clear and engaging title for your tutorial. Write an introduction that outlines the art technique or project students will be learning.
• Create individual slides for each step of the tutorial. Include clear instructions, images, and videos demonstrating the specific art technique or project.
• Add practice activities or mini-projects after certain steps to ensure students are applying what they’ve learned. This could involve creating a small artwork or practicing the technique.
• Incorporate interactive elements like a quiz to reinforce learning, or reflection questions for explaining what the student created. This can help assess understanding and keep students engaged.
• Include links to additional resources, references, or external websites that can further enhance students’ understanding.

17. Use flexible learning paths

Implement choice boards with various types of content and activities. This provides students with options to explore different aspects of art based on their interests and preferences. With Nearpod’s Student-Paced codes, you can create various lessons and list the codes on a board, and then have students select which activity they want to complete.

Start teaching art with Nearpod

Incorporating Nearpod into art education brings a dynamic and interactive dimension to the classroom. By leveraging Nearpod’s features, art teachers can not only enhance their instructional methods but also ignite a passion for creativity in their students. The integration of technology and art through Nearpod opens new possibilities for engagement, collaboration, and meaningful learning experiences. As the education landscape continues to evolve, art teachers can embrace these tools to inspire the artists of tomorrow.

Foster a love of learning in every student with Nearpod. Teachers can sign up for free below to access and create interactive lessons. Administrators can schedule a call with an expert to unlock the full power of Nearpod for schools and districts.

Dr. Amanda Linn

Prior to becoming a District Strategy Consultant for Nearpod, Amanda taught art in rural and urban school districts. She has also worked with teacher leaders and school leadership teams. Several of her former students have become art teachers- a fact that fills her with immense pride and joy.

The post 17 Ideas for teaching art instruction effectively appeared first on Nearpod Blog.

SEL can help all young people and adults thrive personally and academically, develop and maintain positive relationships, become lifelong learners, and contribute to a more caring, just world.

CASEL.org

Despite recent backlash, states and schools continue to adopt SEL policies and programs; in fact, all 50 states now address SEL in some manner within their frameworks or standards, according to EdWeek. While SEL should begin early—as Robert Fulghum wrote, “Everything I need to know … I learned in kindergarten”—such skills and attitudes need to be practiced throughout school and beyond into adulthood. But how does one weave SEL activities for high school into the curriculum?

How to make social emotional learning engaging for high school students

It can also be hard to find time during the day to teach social emotional learning in high schools. Plus, high schoolers can be a tough audience to reach and engage as they constantly strive to become more and more independent. So, SEL activities for high schoolers must be authentic and relevant to their everyday lives. High schoolers will want to see the direct connections to their real world, whether that be inside or outside of school. They will want the elbow space to express themselves, at times assert themselves, and challenge the “norm” as they form their own perspectives on the world around them. Social and emotional learning can provide high school students with the skills and attitudes to support goal setting, a growth mindset, grit, critical thinking, and healthy relationships.

Nearpod’s 21st Century Readiness Program

Nearpod’s 21st Century Readiness Program provides an easy way to integrate SEL practices like positive interactions, gratitude, and reflective moments into daily learning to help create safe, inclusive, and effective classroom environments. It has over 400 lessons, videos, and activities, including high school SEL activities.

This program equips students with the skills and knowledge for success in and beyond the classroom. It includes premade quality lessons that follow scope and sequence for topics related to social emotional learning, digital citizenship, college and career readiness, and financial literacy.

If you don’t have access to the program, you can still use Nearpod’s interactive features for free to weave SEL skills across the curriculum. These tools promote active learning strategies, which in turn promote social and emotional wellness within and among students. These SEL activities for high school students, plus the interactive tools, provide you with many ways to support your instruction.

New to Nearpod? Teachers can sign up for a free Nearpod account below to access these resources, interactive activities, and engaging lessons. Administrators can schedule a call with an expert to unlock the full power of Nearpod for schools and districts.

8 Engaging social emotional learning (SEL) activities for high school

1. Ask questions

In fact, ask lots of questions! High schoolers often are figuring out their place and purpose in the world. They are forming their opinions and looking at society from different perspectives. To help gauge students’ moods, check out activities like Share Your Mood. In this Collaborate Board activity, students “like” a color based on their feelings and share how they feel. They can comment on posts as well. Start each morning with a quick check-in to assess their readiness to learn.

Consider using Nearpod’s Poll to identify commonalities and differences in their perspectives on a current event to kick off meaningful morning discussions. These social emotional check-ins for high school students provide a moment for reflection, which is key for students of all ages—but especially powerful for high schoolers who are seeking to form their identities and assert themselves as unique individuals.

2. Encourage an exchange of ideas

P21 emphasizes that the 4Cs—critical thinking, collaboration, communication, and creativity—are the core skill sets needed in today’s society and workforce. Nearpod’s Collaborate Boards encourage just that, as students can share their thoughts and opinions on a shared platform, using care in how they express and word their ideas. They can build off of one another with a “Yes, and …” mindset. At its core, Collaborate Boards build teamwork. Such a tool helps develop competencies around self-awareness, social awareness, and relationship building. Explore more ways Nearpod supports the 4Cs here.

Here are some social emotional learning activities for high school you can use:

• Build community using Check-Ins with Collaborate Board
• Connect with students using Conversation Starters 
• For exchanging English Language Arts ideas, use All About Fictional Characters
• For collaborating and discussing social studies topics, use Running for President

3. Make space for doodling

It may sound obvious, but self-expression is especially important for high schoolers. They need platforms and tools to share and hone their voice. When encouraged to doodle, learners are empowered with yet another (non-verbal) way to share their ideas. Even the smallest doodle is a form of art, and such creative expression supports reflection, empathy building, and self-awareness. Nearpod’s interactive Draw It tool permits learners to sketch out their ideas or work through a problem as a means of expression.

Imagine a high schooler making visual notes or mapping out their ideas. In turn, visual learners will appreciate seeing ideas expressed in another medium, helping to ease communication between individuals.

Here are some activities you can use:

• Mindful Drawing: In this 9-12 SEL Draw It activity from Nearpod’s 21st Century Readiness Program, students will create mindful drawings while building social and emotional learning skills, such as reflection and communication.
• Sequence of Events: Students will use Draw It to sequence a series of events using a graphic organizer.
• Making Connections: Use Draw It to brainstorm characteristics, synonyms, attributes, or applications for a word using a graphic organizer.
• Argument from Evidence: Students can use an argument from an evidence chart to complete an activity.

4. Promote trial and error

Use Nearpod’s Drag & Drop tool to encourage your students to try, try again. They can drag and drop labels, sort categories, and sequence events to check their understanding of a particular concept. These activities can be quick checks for understanding, helping learners test their skills while reinforcing concepts across the curriculum. Trial and error also encourages a growth mindset and the notion that hard work pays off! Perseverance, determination, and grit are skills that SEL promotes and that have far-reaching effects beyond the four walls of a classroom.

Consider using some of these social emotional learning activities for high school:

• Emotions & Communication: In this 9-12 SEL Drag & Drop social awareness activity from Nearpod’s 21st Century Readiness Program, students recognize the importance of clear communication by learning the difference between factual and emotional statements.
• Identifying Congruent Triangles: In this 9-12 Math Drag and Drop activity, students use triangle congruence theorems to identify congruent triangles.
• Photosynthesis & Cellular Respiration: In this 9-12 Science activity, students will practice identifying the reactants and products of photosynthesis and demonstrate how they compare to those of cellular respiration with a Draw It activity.

5. Ask “Why?” 5 times

When it comes to problem-solving, design thinking takes a human-centered approach. In the empathy phase of need-finding, one is encouraged to ask “Why?” five times. Why? Well, it’s not to drive another crazy with a five-year-old’s style of persistent questioning. Rather, it is to drill down to understanding that nugget of need—one that is unique, identifiable, and core to an individual. Through Nearpod’s Open-Ended Questions, you can challenge your students to use higher-order thinking to analyze, evaluate, reflect, and create. Such critical thinking skills underscore social and emotional learning for high schoolers. Practice these skills using our digital wellness lessons in partnership with Common Sense.

6. Provide continuous feedback

With Nearpod’s real-time data, you will have group and individual data at your fingertips. Use this data to monitor your students’ progress. This is essential to social emotional learning curriculum in high school. You can lean on these insights to provide immediate support to keep students from cementing bad habits. Consider using small-group work, peer-to-peer learning, and mini-conferences to keep the instruction individualized as needed. To personalize feedback even more, you can use Nearpod’s Interactive Videos or turn on audio submissions to facilitate an exchange when you’re not face-to-face.

7. Journal

Make time in morning meetings or advisory groups for students to journal. You can use Neapod’s Open-Ended Questions to add a prompt for students to respond to. You may want to offer a few options to promote “voice and choice” on daily or weekly reflection prompts. Students can reflect on their growth with SEL lessons for high school, like Reflecting on Decisions (From Nearpod’s 21st Century Readiness Program), while looking forward to future goals with FLO: Mindfulness & Meditation. Journaling is a way to encourage individuals to hone their writing voice too. Challenge their perspectives and let them share their opinions (which may change daily) and express themselves as they find their work through the day or week.

8. Take brain breaks

Last, but not least, find ways for your high schoolers to take brain breaks, relax their minds, and invigorate their bodies. Nearpod offers Brain Breaks videos (available to educators with access to the 21st Century Readiness Program), which research shows help students ease feelings of stress and refocus on a task. Choose between calming or energizing videos depending on the student’s or classroom’s mood. Pepper 3- to 5-minute breaks after every half hour or so of instruction. When teaching social emotional learning for high school students, such breaks can reduce feelings of being overwhelmed and provide moments for reflection and introflection. True brain breaks are not merely a pause but a way for the mind to internalize what was just learned.

Start using Nearpod for building social and emotional learning skills

While high school SEL can be taught via individual lesson plans, during dedicated periods, these skills are best addressed and reinforced across the curriculum. Choose from over 100 premade SEL activities that use Nearpod’s interactive features such as Polling, Draw It, Open-Ended Questions, and Drag & Drop. These meaningful social emotional learning activities for high school can be utilized as a bell ringer, an exit ticket, for extra practice, or as homework. Help your students embrace and own their social and emotional learning journeys in high school so that they continue healthy habits of mind to find success inside and outside of the classroom.

New to Nearpod? Make sure you’re signed up to access these lessons and activities!

Teachers can sign up for free below to access and create interactive lessons. Administrators can schedule a call with an expert to explore Nearpod’s 21st Century Readiness Program and unlock the full power of Nearpod for schools and districts.

Click here to learn more about Nearpod’s 21st Century Readiness Curriculum Program

Darri Stephens

Darri Stephens is a dedicated LX (learning experience) designer, passionate about creating quality content and programs for kids, families, and educators. With MAs in Education from both Harvard and Stanford, and work experience at best-in-class ed tech organizations including Wonder Workshop, Nickelodeon, and Common Sense Education, she is steeped in the design thinking process and committed to agile and iterative project management, which has resulted in multi-award-winning programs and products.

The post 8 Engaging social emotional learning (SEL) activities for high school appeared first on Nearpod Blog.

Why is it important to have an equitable classroom?

Prioritizing equity in the classroom enables educators to create an inclusive environment, celebrating each student’s uniqueness and removing barriers to their academic success. This commitment actively addresses and eliminates systemic inequalities, fostering a sense of belonging in students, which enhances their overall learning experience. Embracing diversity and achieving equity cultivates a positive atmosphere where all students can thrive academically, socially, and emotionally. An equitable classroom is the foundation for a just and compassionate society, empowering students to navigate challenges, discover their potential, and contribute meaningfully in and outside the classroom. It’s also important for school leaders to focus on inclusion and equity to improve school climate and boost a positive culture.

Use Nearpod to create equitable learning opportunities for all students

At Nearpod, we understand the importance of fostering an equitable classroom environment where every student can succeed and be celebrated for their uniqueness. We also recognize that teachers may find this task daunting, given the numerous requirements they already face. Nearpod helps facilitate inclusive classrooms, allowing teachers to hear from every student. Leveraging technology tools like Nearpod, educators can create an equitable learning environment that amplifies student voice, narrows the opportunity gap, and ensures universal access to opportunities.

New to Nearpod? Teachers can sign up for free below to access the resources in this post and create their own interactive lessons. Administrators can schedule a call with an expert to unlock the full power of Nearpod for schools and districts.

7 Steps to promote equity in the classroom

1. Lay the foundation

The first step towards equity is creating the environment in which it lives, and in this case, it’s your classroom. Establish a foundation of inclusion and respect for diversity that shapes your interactions with others. Educators can start by fostering open communication by teaching equity, why it’s important, and acknowledging individual differences. Implementing inclusive teaching practices, such as culturally responsive teaching, sets the tone for an environment that values every student. It also entails creating a safe space where students feel comfortable expressing their unique identities.

Building meaningful relationships with students is crucial, creating a safe space where they feel seen, heard, and understood. This involves taking the time to know each student on a personal level and understanding their backgrounds, interests, and challenges. It’s important to continue to nurture these relationships throughout the school year. Using Nearpod’s formative assessment tools, you can ask students various thoughtful questions about themselves. Teachers get insight into their responses in real-time, allowing you to interact with them in the moment while still hearing from everyone. Consider using Polls, Open-Ended Questions, Draw It, or a community-building favorite, Collaborate Board.

2. Empower critical thinking

As their teacher, we have limited control over the content they are exposed to through their classroom textbook or state-provided resources; however, we do possess the ability to help our students analyze biases and gaps. With critical thinking, we are allowing our students to actively participate in their learning process rather than be passive, which supports a culturally equitable classroom environment. Students share their deep reasonings and understandings with classmates to bridge cultural horizons and ensure all perspectives are heeded.

3. Culturally responsive pedagogy

Responsiveness and relevance tie to the emotional part of learning. Consider the following questions during instruction:

• How much do they care about what they’re learning?
• How invested are they?

We all work harder and learn deeper when we have a passion and relevance for what we’re learning. Allow students to see themselves in history through trials, tribulations, and, most importantly, triumphs. Each stage is bridging the gap and creating an equitable and inclusive environment for all students to learn.

You can practice culturally responsive pedagogy and equity in learning with Nearpod’s lessons and interactive features. Nearpod’s lesson library includes free quality lessons you can use to create an inclusive and engaging learning experience. Use the search bar and filters to find resources that fit your classroom needs, or start off by exploring the Promoting Inclusion and Perspective Analysis lesson folders!

4. Provide community involvement

Incorporating family and community knowledge enhances the student’s learning experience. With basic knowledge of career paths and clusters, students can start to piece together the purpose behind their learning. Unfortunately, identifying career paths early on is either inaccessible or not a priority for some. Many students only have exposure to careers that exist in their immediate community; this way, increasing inequity. The more we can incorporate the community and family into our classrooms through guest speakers, career days, field trips, etc., the more we can provide equal access for all our students.

Consider using Nearpod’s Virtual Reality (VR) Field Trips to take students anywhere in the world. Explore colleges and universities using lessons from The College Tour or various career pathways through virtual career tours.

5. Plan with purpose

Planning your lessons to promote an equitable classroom can seem like an intimidating task. But with the help of social and emotional learning activities, it doesn’t have to be. Students respond differently to different types of content, whether due to culture, socialization, or learning preference. With intentional planning, we can ensure that every student’s needs are valued and objectively met.

Think about delivering different forms of content through learning stations. At each station, provide students with a range of materials for their learning styles. For example, students can rotate between stations that involve:

• Playing an educational game, like Time to Climb or Matching Pairs with timers
• Reading an article, which can be embedded into your Nearpod lesson by adding web content
• Taking a VR Field Trip and answering an Open-Ended Question about what they saw and felt
• Express themselves through creating art using a Draw It activity

6. Empower through student voice

We often have constraints on what we teach, but the how is an area where we have more flexibility. Empowering students with a voice and choice in their learning process is crucial. Recognizing that a student’s sense of belonging is key to promoting deeper learning and creating equity in the classroom. Listening to them and making decisions based on their feedback becomes a pivotal lever.

Conduct a Poll for your students to understand how they want to learn and prove their understanding of the content. By doing this, we are allowing our students to have a voice, highlighting their individualities, and showing them that their thoughts and preferences are important. They are gaining confidence and conviction in their wants. They’re empowered to take ownership of their learning.

7. Use positive and inclusive language

Incorporating positive and inclusive language is a powerful way to enhance the learning experience for all students. Recognize that children process content more effectively when their cultures and languages are integrated into the curriculum. Traditional instruction may not resonate with every student, so it becomes our responsibility to cater to diverse learning needs. Encourage social conversations among students and foster collaborative work to cultivate a strong sense of community in the classroom. Examples of inclusive language include using gender-neutral terms, acknowledging diverse cultural backgrounds, and affirming the unique strengths of each student. It’s important to make this a shared language to encourage students to do the same, which builds a sense of mutual respect, empathy, and understanding.

Start using Nearpod for teaching and creating equity in the classroom

As educators, we can influence personal growth and positively value differences in our classroom through equity in the classroom strategies. We can create a space where our students come to every day feeling valued and having access to the same learning resources and support despite their differences. These differences are actually something that should be celebrated. We also have the power to surrender our power and allow our students to have ownership of their learning. Together, we can move further into creating equitable classrooms.

New to Nearpod? Teachers can sign up for free below to access the resources in this post and create their own interactive lessons. Administrators can schedule a call with an expert to unlock the full power of Nearpod for schools and districts.

Katie Micallef

Katie is a Personalized Learning Leader in Volusia County Schools. She helps teachers incorporate educational technology into their curriculum. She believes that students deserve an instructional practice that resonates with their daily lives, and that includes the utilization of technology. She is on a mission to promote the endless benefits that edtech can have on 21st century instructional practices.

The post 7 Steps to promote equity in the classroom appeared first on Nearpod Blog.

For educators and students engaging in racial equity and social justice

Our features and content offerings support CRP. Collaborate Boards and Polls invite students to express themselves to their teachers and peers, elevating student voice and fostering connections. Our Racial Justice collection features free lessons that aid in antiracist teaching with rich historical content and social and emotional skill-building to ensure safe and productive discussions.

New to Nearpod? Teachers can sign up for free to access standards-aligned resources from this blog post and create their own interactive lessons. Administrators can schedule a call with an expert to unlock the full power of Nearpod for schools and districts.

What resources do we have for you?

Our Racial Equity & Social Justice collection contains 100+ free lessons, activities, and videos to support antiracist teaching and learning from the Nearpod team and our trusted partners like Teaching Tolerance, iCivics, Common Sense Education, and Flocabulary.

In the folder, you’ll find lessons on:

Biographies on the lives and contributions of Black Americans

Media-based activities to build critical thinking and reflection skills

American history & civics topics to give context for today

SEL skills to help students engage in compassionate and productive conversations

Professional development workshops to empower teachers in this challenging work

5 Teaching tips and resources for racial equity and social justice

Teachers are dealing with a lot (as if they weren’t already!). And now, while many schools are prioritizing racial equity in education, there isn’t a designated time in the day to teach it. Here are some implementation guidelines that foster a safe learning environment, no matter your schedule.

1. Establish classroom norms and common vocabulary

For learning to occur, students must feel respected, included, and connected. To establish a welcoming environment, set norms with your students. These will help you approach sensitive and difficult topics together. Examples of norms might include: “First we seek to understand, and then to be understood,” and “We are learning to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.” Encourage student participation by using a Collaborate Board to crowdsource and vote on classroom norms. You can also use Nearpod’s Developing Empathy, Following Classroom Rules, and Building Class and School Community lessons to establish guidelines and build skills for engaging in discussions. 

A shared language is also important. Develop a common vocabulary and add to it over time. This might mean defining words like “accountability,” “allyship,” and “equity,” as well as acronyms like POC and BIPOC. Add a Matching Pairs activity to provide an opportunity for students to practice and review key vocabulary before engaging in class discussion.

2. Tie racial justice to core subject areas

Racial justice affects all of us. Below are some tips for incorporating racial equity topics and themes into your instruction across academic subjects.

English Langauge Arts (ELA)

As you read fiction and nonfiction, ask students to consider whose story is being told and whose is silenced. What is the historical context for the work, and how does that context play a role in the text? Who is the intended audience for the story, and how does that shape the telling of it? Center texts and voices from diverse cultures and backgrounds. Integrate Black authors into classroom instruction with Nearpod’s lessons on Langston Hughes and Maya Angelou. Lessons on James Weldon Johnson and Rosa Parks provide opportunities for students to practice reading comprehension skills while learning about Black historical figures.

Social Studies

In studying any event or period in history, consider whose perspective is being centered. Are there any racial or ethnic groups that are left out of the story? Use one of our Flocabulary Topic Spark lessons, like Katherine Johnson, to feature diverse perspectives, hidden figures, and leaders and activists in the ongoing fight for racial justice. Use iCivics lessons to help your students understand how political and social systems function and change, which is a key context for learning about Civil Rights struggles.

Science

Teach students about the contributions of Black inventors and scientists. Use our lesson on George Washington Carver as a starting point. Consider the ways in which science and technology have sometimes supported racism, such as the false belief that race is a real genetic difference among humans or facial recognition technology that tends to misidentify people of color. Then, discuss how advances in science, technology, and engineering can help when advancing racial equity. For example, in what ways have cell phones with video capabilities helped advance social causes? What new inventions can students imagine that would help further this progress? 

Math

As your students explore data and statistics, discuss the real-world applications that pertain to racial equity. What data exists or would be needed to quantify the problems that stem from racial inequality today? How can they analyze this data to better understand a situation, and how can they use mathematics to help represent these issues? Use our STEM by the Numbers lesson to analyze racial representation in STEM fields through the lens of data analysis. You can also bring your students’ lived experiences into the classroom. Look to the local news for charts, graphs, and other data and ask students to answer questions based on them.

Elementary

Elementary students are not too young to learn about topics like race, diversity, and respect. Research shows that when parents and teachers avoid these topics, children come to their own conclusions based on the world around them, which often promotes racist ideas in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. We have lessons specifically designed for elementary students, like Discovering My Identity and Different Types of Families, that use vocabulary and examples that are relevant and appropriate but do not oversimplify the central concepts. 

3. Use multimedia for culturally relevant teaching

We process new information by relating it to our own experiences and interests. By including diverse perspectives, cultures, and narratives in your instruction, you help ensure all students have access to the connections needed to process information effectively and meaningfully. You can use Nearpod’s multimedia, such as virtual reality, video, and web content, to integrate culturally relevant content into your classroom instruction.  

“Culture, it turns out, is the way that every brain makes sense of the world.”

Zaretta Hammond in Culturally Responsive Teaching & The Brain

In Culturally Responsive Teaching & The Brain, Hammond describes three levels of culture: surface culture, shallow culture, and deep culture. Surface culture is observable and includes elements of culture, such as food, art, and holidays. Using Virtual Reality (VR) Field Trips, you can transport students anywhere around the world to explore surface culture hands-on.

However, it is also important to discuss what aspects of culture are not visible in a VR image. Specifically, analyze whether the media includes shallow culture, which is unspoken rules, like types of non-verbal communication. Does the media include deep culture, which are the assumptions that control our worldview, including ethics and spirituality? To integrate deeper levels of culture, consider using primary source media, like video interviews and podcasts, and including SEL topics, like perspective-taking and appreciating diversity. We recommend exploring our Perspective Analysis lessons. These quick activities are centered around one piece of media designed to build critical thinking and reflection skills.

4. Build community with collaborative activities 

If you have dedicated time each week for homeroom, study hall, or advisory, you can integrate racial equity and social justice discussions and continue the conversation all year. Using Nearpod’s interactive features, you can provide all students with the opportunity to voice their thoughts and discuss difficult topics productively. Encourage participation by hiding student names and share out student responses to keep the conversation going outside of devices. Get creative and design activities that meet your classroom needs.

If you’re looking for inspiration, you can check out the examples below!

Use a poll for a quick temperature check of the room.

Launch a Collaborate Board for students to make their thinking visible.

Share out student responses from a Draw It to promote further discussion.

Add a Time to Climb into your lesson to bring the class together in a gamified learning experience.

Some prep work for teachers

Many teachers will be having difficult conversations about race, racism, and bias for the first time, right alongside their students. And it’s not going to be easy. Many resources are available at the intersection of race, culture, and education. Here are a few tools for self-learning from Nearpod and organizations, authors, and educators we trust as experts in the field. 

Nearpod and Flocabulary

• Access Flocabulary’s Racial Equity & Justice Education Resource Guide, where you’ll find more than 40 lessons and helpful implementation tips to support you in bringing racial equity and social justice themes into your instruction.

Additional teaching resources

• Reflect on your identity with this exercise from Teaching Tolerance and understand your identity and the identity of your students as the lens through which learning takes place. Consider the racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds that make up your classroom. Teaching Tolerance is a great resource for educators, and we recommend exploring the website. 

• Read Zaretta Hammond’s book Culturally Responsive Teaching & The Brain, an accessible dive into the science of how the brain learns best and how educators can support their students’ achievement.

• Read Chris Emdin’s book For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood… and the Rest of Y’all Too. Dr. Emdin is known for passionate, thoughtful presentations about his research areas, so check out recordings of his speaking engagements, too! 

• Watch the Teach Your Heart Out Town Hall — A Conversation on Racial Justice for an honest discussion among educators on their own experiences of racism in the classroom and concrete examples of how educators can work together to combat racism in their day-to-day work. 

• Use social media to connect with and learn from your peers. Follow the #EduColor hashtag, used to facilitate “intersectional discussions of race and education.”

Let’s learn from one another!

What have you learned on your antiracist teaching journey? What are you eager to learn more about? We want to hear from you. Do you have a new implementation suggestion or a different perspective to share about one of our recommendations? Please contact us at contentalert@nearpod.com and let us know! It’s important that we have dialogues to grow, consider new perspectives, and take action in support of racial equity and teaching social justice so we can ensure the best for students. We also encourage you to engage with peers on these important topics.

New to Nearpod? Teachers can sign up for free to access standards-aligned resources from this blog post and create their own interactive lessons. Administrators can schedule a call with an expert to unlock the full power of Nearpod for schools and districts.

Nearpod Team

Nearpod’s award-winning platform is used by thousands of schools around the globe, transforming classroom engagement.

nearpod.com/

The post 5 Teaching tips and resources for racial equity & social justice appeared first on Nearpod Blog.

How to create interactive goal setting activities for students

Any activity or lesson can be made interactive with Nearpod for free. For example, you can select activities and lessons from our Goal Setting lesson folder. Filter by grade level, subject, or standards to find an activity fit for you and your students. If you’re searching for New Year resolution templates, you can search the lesson folder for an activity that aligns with your students’ grade level. Additionally, you can create your own interactive activities to make any Nearpod lesson fun and engaging for students. With Nearpod, you can access interactive formative assessments that include gamification, drag and drop, drawing, matching, and collaborative discussion, which will enhance classroom learning for all students.

New to Nearpod? Make sure you’re signed up to access these lessons and activities!

Teachers can sign up for free below to access and create interactive lessons. Administrators can schedule a call with an expert to unlock the full power of Nearpod.

5 Engaging goal setting activities for any classroom

1. Establish resolutions and reflections

January is the perfect time of year for students to reflect on the first half of the school year and set specific goals for the new year. These activities and lessons are perfect for teaching your students about setting SMART goals. Do this as a class activity or in Student-Paced mode for independent reflection.

Use these goals setting activities for resolutions and reflections:

• Reflections and Resolutions (Activity: Grades K-12): In this SEL activity, students practice self-management by reflecting on past experiences to create SMART resolutions for the new school year. This lesson can be used to infuse social and emotional learning into classroom schedules easily. There are 3 versions of this activity for the following set of grade levels: Grades K-2, 3-5, and 6-12.

• Goal Setting (Activity: Grades 3-8): In this life skills activity, students will review their understanding of goal setting using Nearpod’s interactive quiz game, Time to Climb. There are 2 versions of this activity for the following set of grade levels: Grades 3-5 and 6-8.

• Smart Goals (Video: Grades 3-6): In this fun and educational video from Lynn Hefele, students learn how to create SMART goals using specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely language.

• SEL: Growth Mindset (Activity: Grades 6-8): In this life skills activity, students will review their understanding of growth mindset using Nearpod’s interactive quiz game, Time to Climb.

• New Year’s Resolutions for Students (Video: Grades 9-12, Higher Ed): In this video from Socratica, students learn how to make achievable new year’s resolutions and complete them.

2. Practice a growth mindset

There is no successful goal setting without a growth mindset. Encourage students to adopt a growth mindset for the new school year to motivate themselves to accomplish their personal and academic goals. You can also use these activities during different times of the year when they need a little extra courage. Use these effective goal setting activities for the new year, test prep season, or before they go on holiday or summer break to reinforce these teachings.

Motivate students with these growth mindset lessons and activities:

• Growth Mindset (Lesson: Grade 3-8): In this Life Skills lesson, students will learn about the opportunity to learn from failure. Your students will be able to acknowledge failure as a positive process and learning opportunity.

• Growth Mindset (Video: Grades 4-12): What if we thought of failure as an opportunity for growth? In this video, students learn about growth mindset. A host explains how a growth mindset reframes mistakes as a sign of potential. Students consider how this can impact their own lives.

• SEL: Growth Mindset (Activity: Grades 6-8): In this 6-8 life skills activity, students will review their understanding of growth mindset using Nearpod’s interactive quiz game, Time to Climb.

• Survey: Growth Mindset (Activity: Grades 6-12): Want to learn more about your students? Use this survey to get to know your students and learn more about how they feel about your subject area!

3. Inspire students with social and emotional habits

Are your students not sure what type of goals they want to set for themselves? Give them some realistic goals they can accomplish in the new year. Whether it’s reading more, exercising frequently, managing their time better, or cultivating healthy social and emotional habits, you can provide your students with the resources they need to kick off a new goal they’re passionate about.

Before kicking off goal setting activities, share some of these lessons with your students to inspire them:

• Mantras (Video: Grades 3-8): Want to feel calmer or more confident? In this one-minute video, students will learn about mantras. A host will explain how mantras can help you focus and manage stress, and students will consider how they can use mantras in their own lives.

• Let’s Breathe Out (Lesson: Grades 6-8): In this Social Emotional Learning lesson, middle school students students will learn about the concept of mindfulness and how to cultivate it within themselves.

• Exercise and Fitness (Lesson: Grades 6-8): In this CCP Life Skills lesson, students will learn how to maintain an active and healthy lifestyle. They will examine how to calculate BMI, calorie intake, and the physical benefits of exercise.

• Daily Routines and Time Management (Lesson: Grades 6-12): Students learn to organize their daily schedules and manage their time to achieve their goals, specifically long term and short term goals.

• How to Love Reading (Video: Grades 9-12, Higher Ed): In this interactive video from Socratica, high school students learn about how to love reading.

4. Encourage healthy technology and media habits

Now more than ever, it’s important to empower students to think critically and participate responsibly in the digital world through digital citizenship skills. Use the beginning of the year to reinforce digital literacy skills students use daily. These habits can also serve as goal setting ideas they can use in the new year. For example, they can set a goal not to check social media in the first 15 minutes they wake up or to shut off their phones one hour before they go to sleep.

Use these lessons to encourage healthy digital citizenship habits in the new year:

• Digital Citizenship & Responsibility (Activity: Grades 6-8): In this 6-8 activity, students will review what it means to be a good digital citizen and how to take responsibility on social media with Nearpod’s interactive quiz game, Time to Climb.

• Social Media Addiction (Video: Grades 6-12): Is social media designed to be addicting? In this one-minute video, students learn about social media addiction. A host explains how social media is designed to be addicting, and students consider whether social media should be regulated.

• Social Media Behaviors and Cyber Bullying (Lesson: Grades 6-12): Students learn the importance of responsible use of online platforms and how to spot and stop cyberbullying.

5. Celebrate with themed slide templates for your lessons!

This January, use one of our two seasonal templates for Google Slides! With a Nearpod Gold, Platinum, or School account, you can access our Google-Slides Add On to embed interactive Nearpod slides and activities within Google Slides. Perfect for creating January or back to school activities for your classroom!

Learn more about our Google Slides integration here. However, please note these slide templates can still be accessed for free.

Uploading PowerPoint or Google Slides into Nearpod to create your lessons? Download the slide templates as a .ppt, make a copy in Google Slides, and upload your festive lesson to Nearpod.

Click the links below to download your favorite New Year template! If you’re interested in slides for back to school, explore all of our slide templates here.

Start using these interactive activities and lessons

These goal setting activities will help you and your students ring in the year smoothly and confidently! You can reinforce the skills taught in these activities year-round with your students. If you’re new to Nearpod, ensure you’re signed up for a free account. You can access all of the lessons, activities, and videos in this blog post by clicking below to sign up!

Teachers can sign up for free below to access and create interactive lessons. Administrators can schedule a call with an expert to unlock the full power of Nearpod.

Carol Chinea

Carol Chinea is a Marketing Associate at Nearpod.

The post 5 Engaging goal setting activities for any classroom appeared first on Nearpod Blog.

The 4Cs in education are collaboration, communication, creation, and critical thinking, which represent the knowledge, skills, and expertise students need today to prepare for tomorrow’s workforce. The Partnership for 21st Century Learning (P21) claims that with the influx of technology and trends in our global economy, students need more interpersonal and intrapersonal skills to achieve professional and personal success. In its Frameworks for 21st Century Learning, P21 describes how the 4Cs of 21st-century skills are foundational for learning and innovation and are skills that everyone needs to practice and hone throughout schooling. These skills are not independent — they are entwined with one another when promoting progress in the classroom.

What is the importance of 4Cs in education?

The 4Cs approach to teaching and learning focuses on whole child education and makes it easier for a school to establish a positive school culture and build a common community among its stakeholders: students, families, and teachers. Most educators will not be surprised by this perspective, as whole child education has been a constant thread in schools for decades. In whole child education, teachers seek to support not just the academic but also the emotional and social skills of individual children. Since the days of Dewey, educators have sought to support children’s overall well-being while inciting their curiosity to become lifelong learners. In addition to a mastery of key subjects, P21 wove in interdisciplinary themes such as global awareness and civic literacy as part of their framework. But it was their learning and innovation skills that have taken hold. Many educators now lean on this idea of the 4Cs in constructing their curriculum and daily activities. Many have even personalized the 4Cs in education by adding a fifth, sixth, or seventh C—whether that C stands for Community, Citizenship, or Character.

Teaching the 4Cs with technology tools: Nearpod

When it comes to technology, nowadays, students can find an answer with a click of a button. The clout of memorization has lost its hold, as students are now challenged to apply their newfound knowledge and expand upon it—not just recite it. Educational trends have shifted, especially with the influx of digital technologies, and classrooms must step up to prepare students to be effective and engaging contributors. Start teaching the 4Cs with technology using Nearpod. Platforms like Nearpod support educators in providing rich content while also challenging students to analyze, apply, evaluate, and create through active learning strategies and formative assessment, all to drive student engagement. Nearpod encourages students and teachers alike to take a personalized approach to education by leveraging the 4Cs in education through working with the whole class, small groups, and individuals. Students are more actively engaged in learning when presented with media-rich content and interactive functionality. Plus, educators receive real-time assessment data from their classrooms, enabling them to pivot and be more responsive in their teaching methods.

New to Nearpod? Teachers can sign up for free below to access these resources, interactive activities, and engaging lessons.

Nearpod’s 21st Century Readiness Curriculum Program

Nearpod’s 21st Century Readiness Program includes over 400 SEL lessons, activities, and videos built on CASEL’s five core competencies: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making.

Provide educators with an easy way to integrate SEL practices like positive interactions, gratitude, and reflective moments into daily learning to help create safe, inclusive, and effective classroom environments. Administrators can schedule a call with an expert to explore Nearpod’s 21st Century Readiness Program and unlock the full power of Nearpod for schools and districts.

How to implement the 4Cs in education to teach 21st-century skills

1. Collaboration

From the early days of kindergarten, kids learn the importance of cooperation, which is fundamental to the notion of collaboration, which is when two or more people work together towards a common goal. Good collaboration takes trust and respect to work together, be heard, and make decisions. Traditionally, educators promote collaboration with active learning strategies such as think-pair-share or jigsaw. They build small group work into lesson activities so that students learn and practice such participation and team-building skills.

Nearpod’s Collaborate Board makes it easy for students to share their thinking, comment on their posts, and build upon each other’s ideas in real time. Whether in person or working remotely, students can connect with one another via the interactive board, and teachers can monitor and review all perspectives. Nearpod provides a safe space for such collaboration to occur, and educators can foster such an exchange of ideas in a productive manner.

See Collaborate Board in action through these science lessons about infectious diseases. Use this lesson in high school classrooms to deconstruct sophisticated ideas about transmission and outbreaks of communicable diseases to share in their own words via a Collaborate Board.

Here are some tips from this blog post sharing ways to create collaborative learning experiences in the classroom:

• Make collaborative classroom discussions part of every lesson
• Keep feedback at the center of classroom discussions
• Make collaborative learning visible
• Collaborate and contribute in multiple formats
• Build community and social emotional skills

2. Communication

Part and parcel of collaboration are strong communication skills. Today’s communication skills are more nuanced depending on whether communication is happening in person, in writing, or virtually online. There has been more of a focus on the 21st-century literacy skills of speaking and listening since we have more dynamic communication channels these days. From the science of reading to digital literacy and media literacy, students are schooled in ways to be not only effective but respectful communicators. Teachers strive to promote creative expression so students can find their own voice while appreciating others’. 

Nearpod promotes class discussions within the pre-made lessons to spark meaningful conversations. Polls can be used to initiate discussions. Open-ended questions invite diverse perspective taking for 4Cs education. Students can practice articulating and conveying their ideas, whether they seek to inform, instruct, motivate, or persuade others. Nearpod’s formative interactive assessments, which can be embedded into videos and slides, open up avenues of exchanges, whether in person or through written responses. Students can practice listening effectively and exercise flexibility to promote dialogue, which can occur 24/7 and not just within the hours of a school day.

3. Creativity

Creativity has finally clawed its way to the top of Bloom’s Taxonomy. The apex of higher-order thinking now culminates in creating something new via self-expression. Many teachers strive to take a cross-curricular approach to designing their learning objectives so that students can better digest and make connections with new knowledge; they can then find application in their real world and build upon their own skill sets. Improv and design thinking have long embraced the notion of “Yes, and …” to encourage risk-taking and innovation.

Regarding creativity, Nearpod celebrates all learning styles and provides various ways for students to read, watch, and interact with content. Teachers can add multimedia to their lessons, and in turn, students can use interactive tools like Collaborate Board to brainstorm ideas and respond to or build upon the lesson content. The Draw It tool provides a digital whiteboard for students to draw, type, and add images to communicate and refine their ideas and responses. For instance, when learning about Ancient Greece, students can dive into an article, watch a video, or take a Virtual Reality (VR) Field Trip related to architecture and then be challenged to map out a blueprint, or to draw their own interpretation of or enhance a famous relic. Students are able to “show what they know” in original ways in real time.

“Designing a City Zoo,” a 3-lesson experience built in partnership with Freckle, teaches elementary students about whole-number quotients through problem-solving. The lessons for grade 3 invite students to ask their own questions and to answer them creatively with tools such as Drag and Drop and Draw It:

• Designing a City Zoo: Part 1 
• Designing a City Zoo: Part 2 
• Designing a City Zoo: Part 3 

4. Critical thinking

Lastly, but underlining all tasks, is the importance of critical thinking skills. This focus on decision making and problem solving goes beyond mere mathematics by promoting high-order thinking across key subject areas. Critical thinking requires the ability to interpret, analyze, and evaluate information (facts and otherwise!) to refute arguments, make judgments, and think through solutions. Such logic skills also include developing a true willingness to listen to and consider others’ ideas. This iterative mindset is crucial in an ever-changing world that negates one-and-done solutions. Critical thinking skills are key to the other Cs in helping students become thoughtful questioners (communication), helpful participants (collaboration), and transformational contributors (creativity).

Nearpod lessons are built with scaffolded interactive activities designed to help students build toward higher-order critical thinking. Learning objectives are designed to have students analyze, evaluate, explain, problem-solve, and more, which are all components of critical thinking. Teachers can add reflective questions into their lessons, as such systematic thinking behooves us all regarding future personal and professional challenges.

Additionally, specific Nearpod features and content types are designed to encourage critical thinking, such as PhET simulations for math and science instruction.

5. Combining all 4Cs

Teachers and educators alike have common goals for preparing students today for success tomorrow. The 4Cs in education—collaboration, communication, creativity, and critical thinking—have played a vital role over the last two decades and will continue to do so. Nearpod continues to prepare students for the 21st century by providing an all-in-one platform with interactive lessons, gamified learning, and formative assessments to challenge students’ 4Cs education. Our Corinth high school science lessons incorporate the 4Cs. In the Integumentary System lesson, students can individually explore a 3D model of this system before synthesizing complex information in order to answer a series of questions collaboratively.

Start teaching the 4Cs with Nearpod

We challenge educators daily to design learning experiences that build students into confident and curious learners (two other valuable Cs!). 21st-century learning should look and feel different than a more traditional classroom we might be familiar with and the landscape will continue to evolve so that students develop the knowledge and skills they need. Plus, Nearpod provides professional development to continue improving educators’ skills regarding the 4Cs. These real-world skills of collaboration, communication, creativity, and critical thinking are ever-important as we all seek to be lifelong learners.

New to Nearpod? Make sure you’re signed up to access these lessons and activities!

Teachers can sign up for free below to access and create interactive lessons. Administrators can schedule a call with an expert to explore Nearpod’s 21st Century Readiness Program and unlock the full power of Nearpod for schools and districts.

Darri Stephens

Darri Stephens is a dedicated LX (learning experience) designer, passionate about creating quality content and programs for kids, families, and educators. With MAs in Education from both Harvard and Stanford, and work experience at best-in-class ed tech organizations including Wonder Workshop, Nickelodeon, and Common Sense Education, she is steeped in the design thinking process and committed to agile and iterative project management, which has resulted in multi-award-winning programs and products.

The post How to implement the 4Cs in education to teach 21st-century skills appeared first on Nearpod Blog.

As educators and parents grow increasingly concerned about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on students, “learning loss” has become the center of many conversations. Often, the discourse implies that educators should focus on precisely measuring and monitoring the amount of knowledge and skill lost to the pandemic. But this narrow view of the issue may miss the true scope of the problem. This unprecedented period of loss goes far beyond lost learning—milestones missed, loss of normalcy, and lives lost.

This is why, at Nearpod, we’ve reframed the issue around what we should do moving forward: How can educators create an environment where both learning and whole child needs are maximized?

The problem of learning loss is: It’s not the only problem

To address this question, we must confront a reality that the pandemic has only exacerbated; COVID-19 has compounded existing inequalities. As a result, learning loss (as well as other losses) is predicted to affect Black and Latinx students disproportionately. This has the potential to impact educational outcomes for years to come. Therefore, any solutions must be culturally responsive and equity-based. 

There won’t be one simple answer; overcoming the impact of this period of loss will take innovative solutions and a dedication to students’ social and emotional needs, as well as their academic ones.

In these efforts, we know that teachers will be critical, which is why at Nearpod, we build tools and content that equip and empower teachers to address the unique and diverse needs of their students. 

The collective results of over 20 studies clearly support the efficacy of using Nearpod to improve learning outcomes and facilitate a classroom community where students feel a sense of belonging and emotional safety, which is more critical than ever.

Unlock the full instructional power of Nearpod with the unlimited access, collaboration, integrations, and support your teachers need.

4 Strategies to overcome learning loss and build social emotional learning skills

Below, we outline four research-backed, equity-minded strategies teachers can use to maximize whole-child benefits in the wake of unfinished learning.

1. Foster strong relationships in the classroom

Relationships are a core tenet of a culturally responsive classroom, and they are crucial to addressing learning loss. Students need to trust and feel safe in their classroom community in order to be comfortable with the vulnerability that learning entails. Consistent social and emotional learning activities practice results in productive habits that shape student learning and life experiences.

Using Nearpod makes it more likely for students to identify themselves as members of the learning community. This is accomplished through authentic interactions with their teachers, as well as strengthened peer interactions.⁽ⁱ⁾

Here are three Nearpod strategies to help foster a sense of community in your classroom and build social emotional learning skills:

• Post an anonymous Collaborate Board to check in with all your students at the beginning or end of class.
• Whether you’re in-person or remote, try our Ice Breaker Mini-Lesson for K-5 or 6-12 so students can get to know their peers.  
• Use our Gratitude Jar or Helpful Habits SEL activities which are a part of *Nearpod’s 21st Century Readiness Program.

*Nearpod’s 21st Century Readiness Program provides an easy way to integrate SEL practices like positive interactions, gratitude, and reflective moments into daily learning to help create safe, inclusive, and effective classroom environments.

2. Facilitate authentic and relevant experiences for students

For students to learn most effectively, they need to see themselves reflected in their curriculum; this is especially true for BIPOC students, who are often underrepresented in the curriculum. This is a tenet of both culturally responsive pedagogy and trauma-informed teaching. Not only do these methodologies help students feel a sense of belonging, but they also can increase critical thinking skills and contribute to gains in reading comprehension and mathematical thinking. 

Nearpod lessons and videos are designed to be culturally relevant and inclusive of all learners, which is one of the core reasons research shows Nearpod provides more effective learning opportunities for students.⁽ⁱ⁾ Here are three examples: 

• Nearpod Original Interactive Videos feature inclusive casts, work against stereotypes, and reflect the diverse backgrounds of K-12 learners.
• The Racial Justice lessons are a curated collection of our best resources for anti-racist education.   
• The Virtual Reality experience and lessons help bring the world into your classroom and can help make students the experts in their own cultures and backgrounds.

3. Deepen the use of regular formative assessments 

Before you can solve a problem, you need to identify it. That said, experts warn against jumping to standardized tests too quickly. Instead, they encourage teachers to incorporate creative and less formal checks for understanding into instruction. Learning loss is difficult to quantify holistically, but formative assessments provide in-the-moment glimpses of student thinking and pinpoint where understanding breaks down. At the same time, lowering the stakes on assessments allows teachers to build the positive learning environment that is crucial for students to thrive. 

Nearpod offers countless ways to incorporate formative assessments into instruction, supporting more effective and informed instruction.⁽ⁱ⁾ Below are some examples:

• Poll, Draw It, and Collaborate Board were designed to ensure students had low-stakes ways to share their thinking.
• Time to Climb gamifies the quiz experience, engaging students in a fun and quick assessment that provides important insights to teachers.
• On the Lesson Library, you can find thousands of lessons with formative assessment activities and dynamic media already built-in.

• Nearpod activities include 2,000+ quick and easy-to-implement checks for understanding using some of our best-loved engagement tools.
• With Interactive Videos, you can embed multiple-choice or open-ended questions in any video or choose one of the 5,000+ pre-made interactive videos from the Nearpod Video Library.

4. Adapt instruction frequently

In a classroom of diverse students with a range of identities and abilities, flexibility is of the utmost importance. Add to this the inequitable impacts of unfinished learning, and it’s clear teachers will need to be more adaptable than ever before. They may find an unexpected need to re-teach material from the previous year or to re-teach material to only a segment of students without making those students feel alienated or put on the spot. 

Real-time insights into student thinking allow teachers to more frequently and effectively adapt their instruction. Here are three Nearpod ways teachers can adapt instruction to fit student needs:   

• When students are struggling, it can help to see information presented in a different way. With the Whiteboard feature, teachers can model for students at any point in a live lesson, launching a virtual whiteboard for all students to see.

• Teachers can’t always anticipate when they’ll need a quick check for understanding. Using Quick Launch, teachers can bring up an Open-Ended Question, Draw It, or Collaborate on Board at any point, on the fly.

• Sometimes, a quick review of prior knowledge can go a long way. With the Nearpod Activity Library, it’s easier than ever to find and launch a short review before jumping into new content. 

Start using these Nearpod strategies for overcoming learning gaps

Unlock the full instructional power of Nearpod with the unlimited access, collaboration, integrations, and support your teachers need.

References

Below are the efficacy studies about Nearpod that support the conclusions presented in this blog:

1. Audi, D., & Gouia-Zarrad, R. (2013). A New Dimension to Teaching Mathematics Using iPads. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 103, 51–54. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.10.306
2. Bessel, A. G., & Kloosterman, V. I. (2017). Nearpod Platform Program Evaluation: Polk County Public Schools, (June).
3. Delacruz, S. (2014). Using Nearpod in elementary guided reading groups. TechTrends, 58(5), 62–69. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-014-0787-9
4. Mattei, M. D. ., & Ennis, E. (2014). Continuous, Real-Time Assessment of Every Student’S Progress in the Flipped Higher Education Classroom Using Nearpod. Journal of Learning in Higher Education, 10(1), 1–7. 
5. Ryan, B. (2017). Near Peers : Harnessing the power of the populous to enhance the learning environment, 2(1), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.22554/ijtel.v2i1.16
6. Chapman, T., Reid, J. R., O’Conner, E. E., & O ’Conner, E. E. (2017). Anonymity and Electronics: Adapting Preparation for Radiology Resident Examination. Academic Radiology, 24(6), 657–663. 
7. Lai, C.-L., Hwang, G.-J., Tu, Y.-H., Gwo-Jen Hwang, B., Yi-Hsuan Tu, B., Hwang, G.-J., & Tu, Y.-H. (2018). The effects of computer-supported self-regulation in science inquiry on learning outcomes, learning processes, and self-efficacy. Educational Technology Research and Development, 1–30. 
8. https://nearpod.com/l/case-studies/hendry-county-research/ 

Rebekah Bergman

Rebekah Bergman is the Senior Director for Content Development at Nearpod.

The post 4 Ways to overcome learning loss and build social emotional skills appeared first on Nearpod Blog.