Teaching math can feel like an uphill battle, with students often coming into the classroom believing that math is dry, hard, or simply not their strong suit. However, math instruction can be a rich experience full of questioning, exploration, and discovery. Despite this potential, math performance across the US remains a growing concern. The 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress reported the largest declines in math scores for grades 4 and 8 since 1990. Often, resources are too focused on standards coverage and content, lacking intentionality about the instructional experience.

Lessons and math tools for teachers

With Nearpod, you can use interactive videos, interactive slide-based lessons, and gamified activities for an engaging instructional experience. This guide will show a few ways to capture that energy and bring it into your math classroom using interactive tools.

According to an ESSA Level II study, CAASPP scores for math achievement demonstrated significant improvements among students who utilized Nearpod. These findings highlight Nearpod’s positive impact on math academic outcomes across different student demographics:

• 8th graders exhibited higher scores
• 6th graders also showed improved scores
• 6th graders with Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) displayed enhanced scores

Foster a love of learning in every student with Nearpod. Teachers can sign up for free below to access these resources, interactive activities, and engaging lessons.

Nearpod Math Program

Nearpod Math, our K-8 supplemental curriculum, helps teachers enhance instruction with intentionally organized content and tools to create engaging math learning experiences for every student. With this program, educators can supplement any math skill or standard and build collaborative, active math classrooms.

Administrators can schedule a call with an expert to explore Nearpod Math and unlock the full power of Nearpod for schools and districts.

Math lesson guide

Nearpod has curated a Math Lesson Guide for Grades K-8 so you can spend less time searching for resources and more time doing what you love: teaching. With ready-to-launch lessons, activities, and videos, these guides can help you remediate key skills, reteach concepts, and even prep for testing time.

Download lesson guide

8 Engaging strategies and lessons for teaching math in any classroom

1. Write about math using Open-Ended Questions

To take math instruction off the page, ask students to explore what their work means. Calculating the solution to a problem is only one aspect of doing math; students also grow as mathematicians by discussing their work. With writing, you can ask your students to access deeper meaning within their work – by analyzing a story question, setting a goal, writing a plan before they solve a problem, discussing the steps they took to solve it, or justifying their answer.

According to McREL, writing can improve students’ grasp of mathematical reasoning and problem-solving, use of evidence and logical processing, and ability to communicate their findings more clearly and effectively. Simply put, writing expands student’s ability to be analytical problem-solvers.

When previewing a challenging question, you can ask students to pause and write a goal or a plan for the question before they begin. You can also use this to bring more dialogue into your classroom. Students need opportunities to share their thinking about math in a safe environment. This strategy allows students who may not want to share out loud to have their voices heard.

After solving a problem, use Nearpod’s interactive Open-Ended Question to prompt students to defend their answer; you may ask them to justify each step or focus on one part of the question to dissect. With the “Share” tool, you can anonymously broadcast any student’s answer and use it to open up a discussion with your students: Do they agree with this student? How was this answer strong, or how could it be improved?

Instead of having to circulate around the room to check each student’s work during math instruction, their plans will arrive on your screen in real time, and you can focus on the students who need you most. You can also attach Reference Media to Nearpod activities such as Draw It, Open-Ended Questions, or Polls to foster independent thinking.

2. Do a warm-up activity using a number talk

Number talks are perfect warm-ups and can be tailored to any grade level. It’s a great strategy to build numeracy and number sense with your students when teaching math. Number talks are short (10-ish minutes) question-based discussions that complement your regular instruction. They can become high-leverage learning moments in your classroom because you ask students to generate solutions and evaluate strategies. You may ask students to find a rule, solve a problem, or analyze a pattern in a number talk. The key is that students independently design and describe their pathways to solve the problem and then collaboratively share and critique their ideas.

To do a number talk with your students, present the class with a problem and ask them to solve the problem mentally, but don’t share their answer. When students have found a solution, they’ll signal to you that they’ve solved it, and if they can find more than one way to solve the problem, they signal that, too.

The “talk” portion of a Number Talk is the most essential: this is where students share out their solutions and evaluate them. It can feel energizing to hear active minds at work, but recording your students’ ideas as they share them aloud can be overwhelming. Nearpod can lean in on numerous ways during Number Talks.

How to conduct Number Talks

Nearpod allows students to share their strategy, whereas, in a traditional number talk, only a handful of students can share their thinking. Also, students can try the problem with low risk while giving the teacher formative data about the strategies. For example, a teacher might use 5 x 25 as the number talk. Then, students can share their strategy to solve the problem using Draw It slides or an Open-Ended activity. The teacher can then showcase strategies and have students explain their thinking orally to the class.

When students want to signal that they’ve found a solution, using a public signal, like raising their hand, can be overwhelming or discouraging to surrounding students. Try giving your students a Poll question on Nearpod asking: “How many solutions can you find to this problem?” You’ll receive instant data about which students have solutions and can pull ideas from across your classroom, even if they have put their hand down.

For the “talk” portion, ask your students to explain their ideas on a Collaborate Board. Collaborate Boards create a public space for all your students to respond to a question, and each student’s response shows up as a virtual post-it note. As the teacher, you can see who wrote which response, but the responses can be set as anonymous for student view. Your students can practice explaining their ideas in writing, have a clean and organized view of everyone’s ideas, and vote for their favorite responses by clicking the heart icon on the post-its they agree with most.

3. Use interactive drawing assessments to teach graphs

Analyzing data is one of the most powerful and important elements of teaching math. Graphs and tables are common in everyday life, and teaching your students to become “fluent” in graphs and tables empowers them to excel in class and make more sense of the world around them. Taking data and turning it into a graph is no small feat, though — and interpreting data from a graph can be even more challenging for students. You can use technology to breathe life into graphing and graph analysis in your classroom using Nearpod’s interactive drawing assessment tool, Draw It.

There are many steps to constructing a graph, and more likely than not, your students come into class with different levels of mastery: some of your students may be ready to plot, while others are still grappling to discern the x-axis from the y-axis. Using the Nearpod Draw It tool, you can quickly monitor each student’s progress. Each student’s work is displayed in your teacher view, and it updates in real-time to show you their work as they progress through a problem. With this data, you can narrate common misconceptions for the whole class and visit individual students for targeted support. With the “share” feature, you can also show-call student work — Nearpod will broadcast an individual student’s graph anonymously to every student’s screen, and your class can discuss (or admire!) their work.

The Draw It tool can also help you deepen how your students analyze data. You can upload any graph as a “background” that students can then draw upon. Ask students to annotate a graph to find the peak, individual data points, or outliers. You may want to show your students a graph missing certain data, like axis labels or a scale, and ask them to fill in the missing information. If your students are learning to construct their own graphs, a popular student activity is to “grade the graph,” create a graph riddled with errors, then ask your students to mark (and correct) as many mistakes as they can find!

4. Model the steps for problem-solving

If you have ever given students a problem to solve on a specific template, it’s important to model the steps to solve the problem. This will help support your students when it’s their turn to problem-solve.

One way to model for students is through Nearpod’s Draw It tool. Make the template or equation into a Draw It slide and have them use the drawing and writing tools to solve the question. You’ll get insight into their responses in real time. Teachers can review the responses on their screens and share them anonymously on students’ devices to discuss the strategies they used. To model examples, use the Live Teacher Annotation* and draw on the slide. Your drawings will show up on students’ screens immediately so they can see and discuss a strategy that might have been missing from your students’ examples.

*Live Teacher Annotation feature is only available for School & District licenses.

5. Teach math vocabulary with Matching Pairs

It’s no secret that math has its own language. Whether your students are learning to find partial products and how many quarts fit inside a gallon or to calculate continuous functions and find derivatives, students are engaging in decoding and internalizing new vocabulary. It can be challenging for students, especially our students who read below grade level or are learning English, and these challenges can compound over time, leaving struggling students behind.

It might feel tedious to dedicate a whole lesson to vocabulary or to ask your students to devote class time to making flashcards when teaching math. The good news is, you don’t have to. Integrate a Matching Paris activity into your lessons instead. Nearpod’s Matching Pairs tool is an interactive and attention-grabbing way to practice math terms. In a Matching Pairs moment, students’ screens fill with tiles that disappear as they correctly match each term with its definition. Students have as many chances as they need until they match each term with its correct definition.

This activity can be meaningful in your classroom in many ways because it’s flexible. You curate the terms and definitions that fit your content. You can cover many terms during a review lesson or only a few keywords for a quick check for understanding. With instant data, you can create targeted support groups and tier your instruction to match your students’ diverse needs.

6. Start (or end) a lesson unit with an educational game

Start the lesson by gathering data about what students remember about the concept to differentiate the instruction for the day. Starting the lesson with an engaging activity will help keep the energy level high throughout the lesson. Using educational games for math instruction helps students learn what’s being taught, builds problem-solving skills, and builds community while learning the lesson’s material.

Students love Nearpod’s educational game, Time to Climb, where students race to see which character gets to the top of a mountain first by answering a series of questions both correctly and quickly to increase their own points to become one of the top three winners of the game. You can also use an educational game to end a lesson unit to see what students have learned.

Drag & Drop is another Nearpod gamification tool teachers can add at the beginning or end of a lesson. Students can categorize, label, and sequence items or images with this activity.

7. Collect data in real-time to assess students throughout the entire lesson

Formative assessment is a valuable tool for teachers. It allows teachers to see what students know and what misconceptions they may have about addressing them immediately. Nearpod collects real-time data efficiently through various activities where the teacher can view all the student responses on one screen. For example, suppose students are creating a multiplication model on a Draw It slide. In that case, the teacher can see what strategies students are using and address any errors a student or group of students might have before moving on. You can also use the Collaborate Board to share student work, which allows students to review, discuss, and critique their peers’ responses.

8. Find premade content that is standards-aligned, engaging, and interactive

Finding reliable and quality resources to use for teaching math can be challenging. It’s important to use standards-aligned resources created by experts while engaging and flexible for students (and teachers!). Nearpod’s Lesson Library has the perfect blend of lesson resources you need. You can explore quality interactive lessons, activities, and videos made by content experts and partners. Teachers can explore the library, download lessons, and modify them, all for free! Use the search bar or filters to find resources that fit your classroom’s needs.

Traditionally, you might think about using Nearpod as a presentation tool. However, you can assign these lessons as student-paced for independent work to provide additional practice opportunities and games and gather formative assessment data. With Live to Student-Paced mode, teachers can toggle between Live and Student-Paced mode for flexible instruction to support differentiating for student needs. This engaging independent activity can allow students to get immediate feedback on activities.

Start teaching math with Nearpod

Digital interactives are a fun way to make your math instruction more dynamic. With these strategies, you can bring energy to your classroom and enhance your student’s mastery of mathematics while gathering meaningful, real-time data. Nearpod is a great tool to increase engagement, discourse, and achievement in your math class. It is easy to take your existing presentations, upload them to Nearpod, and make minor tweaks that allow instant access to your students’ mathematical thinking.

New to Nearpod? Teachers can sign up for free 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.

Click here to learn more about Nearpod Math!

Kate Roscioli

Kate is a Title I Math Specialist in Northern Virginia. She loves supporting teachers in integrating technology in lessons to allow students to authentically engage in mathematics content.

The post 8 Engaging strategies for teaching math in any classroom appeared first on Nearpod Blog.

Effective instructional strategies go beyond those daily teacher-centric tips and tricks. They are those tried-and-true methodologies that help you, as an educator, reach your teaching and learning goals throughout the school year. When it comes to instructional design, teachers infuse their lesson plans with effective instructional strategies. Many such learning strategies are steeped in research from educational psychologists, philosophers, and researchers such as Piaget, Freire, Dewey, and Papert (just to name a few!).

What are the characteristics of effective and efficient instructional tools?

Meaningful learning experiences motivate students to dive deeper, explore further, and make personal connections. When it comes to personalized or individualized learning, technologies such as Nearpod support teachers in tailoring and targeting learning activities for each and every student. Such experiences put the students in the driver’s seat and give them a sense of agency to become lifelong learners.

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.

7 Essential strategies for designing effective instruction

1. Student engagement

Student engagement is one of those ubiquitous phrases that educators use to speak about their goals for teaching and learning. What is student engagement? It’s that rapt attention that teachers strive for—students leaning forward in their seats, participating with thoughtful questions and meaningful dialogue, eyes bright with those epitomized lightbulb moments, jumping over one another with their curiosity piqued.

Children are naturally curious; just think of a toddler’s persistent question, “Why?” Educators try to nurture this sense of curiosity into a pursuit of lifelong learning by designing effective exploratory or experiential instruction. Often teachers strive to provide hands-on activities to literally let kids get their hands dirty in the process of learning. Such kinesthetic and tactile tasks improve muscle memory, increase energy, and nurture cognitive and emotional development.

Another way to support student engagement is ensuring lessons have clear and authentic real-world connections. By showcasing how skills apply to everyday life or with career goals in mind, students are more likely to embrace instances of practice. Constructivist Bruner lauded the process of student-centered discovery, and Papert celebrated constructionism to provide children with meaningful challenges they’d be excited to tackle.

Nearpod offers a treasure chest of interactive activities specifically designed to champion to engage students. From engaging educational games like Time to Climb to Interactive Videos and immersive Draw It activities, Nearpod transforms learning into an exciting journey, challenging and motivating students along the way. Nearpod effectively brings abstract concepts to life, fostering students’ active participation and turning the traditional classroom into a dynamic, student-centered discovery hub.

2. Active learning

Active learning involves all facilities. It underscores that learners aren’t just consuming but creating, making connections, and building upon prior knowledge. It asks that students do the heavy lifting and thinking in a lesson. Piaget claimed students aren’t just “empty vessels” waiting to be filled. Freire warned against the banking method of education in which students are treated as passive receptors, thus limiting their creative and critical thinking.

Active learning transforms students’ educational experiences and improves academic outcomes. For students of all ages, active learning practices lean quite a bit on activities that pull in kinesthetic movements to encourage students to hone multiple learning styles as they digest and retain new information. Such participatory roles promote active learning across the curriculum.

Nearpod creates active learning environments where every student participates, increasing engagement and challenging students through interactive features that puts them at the center of learning. Interactive features, such as Polls, Open-Ended Questions, and Collaborate Boards, can be one of the most effective instructional practices to spark students’ prior knowledge at the beginning of a lesson or for metacognitive reflections to assess what students learned by the end.

3. Collaborative learning

Collaborative learning brings students together in a joint venture to search for understanding or meaning. This framework of effective instruction is a great way to promote a community of learners as well. Students take a more active and participatory role when they’re engaging in peer-to-peer learning. And today’s technologies allow students to “discuss” while leaning in on their preferred learning styles.

VAK (Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic) is a common way educators begin to address where a child’s strengths lie when it comes to processing and retaining new knowledge. With collaborative learning, students develop and lean on one another’s strengths, benefit from their varied perspectives, and challenge each other for problem solving and deconstructing a problem differently.

Collaborative learning and building connections are of paramount importance in creating active learning experiences. Nearpod provides multiple opportunities for teachers and students to collaborate and build connections. Collaborate Board enables students to work together in a shared digital space and share their thoughts via text, images, audio, video, and ever-so-popular GIFs. Teachers can hear from every student by having them use multiple formats to develop their ideas further. This fosters teamwork and cooperation and builds communication skills among students and teachers, creating a collaborative learning environment.

Our digital world (inside and outside of the classroom) challenges how we need to learn and refine our social and interpersonal skills when communicating and collaborating with one another. Nearpod’s interactive lessons and activities prepare students to use technology effectively, safely, and appropriately, all while building positive and empowering school climates. Nearpod’s social and emotional learning (SEL) activities and lessons highlight these core life skills.

4. School culture

A positive classroom and school culture are crucial to creating a welcoming and supportive environment inclusive for all students and their families. It’s helpful to set and share expectations at the beginning of the school year to emphasize what your goals are for your students. Level setting with such shared routines and procedures can help create a cohesive climate.

Invite all stakeholders to have an active role in your classroom. Encourage all stakeholders to model leadership with positive behavior and a can-do attitude or growth mindset. By focusing on forming authentic and caring relationships, you can motivate students on their learning journeys. And don’t forget to celebrate the daily small and big wins! With such dedication, schools can actualize a student-centered vision for all and implement effective instructional strategies.

Nearpod plays a significant role in connecting and building school and classroom culture through its various features and functionalities. Nearpod allows educators to see every student and create active learning experiences where every student participates through:

• Interactive lessons, videos, activities, and formative assessments 
• Dynamic media and gamification activities like Time to Climb
• Collaborate Boards that build connections through class discussions

5. Formative assessment

Formative assessment can help guide an educator on how best to keep each student on a personalized learning path. Such techniques—whether it is a simple thumbs up/thumbs down, a poll, an exit ticket, or a quiz—provide teachers with a plethora of data, allowing them to take a data-driven approach to designing meaningful learning experiences. Teachers can use this intel to monitor students and modify the next steps in instruction.

Does a lesson need to be revisited? Does the content need to be modeled in a different manner? How can you take students from comprehension to mastery? Data can range from active participation to a test score. Educators can look for patterns to best understand how individuals and small groups are progressing against learning objectives and goals. Formative assessment is a continuous process and bolsters designing elements of effective instruction.

With nine types of formative assessment tools within Nearpod, teachers can design interactive lessons that promote engagement and progress.

6. Real-time insights

Today’s technologies allow us to economize gathering student data across the curriculum so we can analyze and glean insights in real-time. Data can be visualized in many ways, making it easier for teachers to digest and act upon the insights effectively.

Teachers can monitor student progress more readily and provide immediate feedback when the child has a question or meets an obstacle. The value of immediate feedback is immense—students feel more self-aware, motivated, and confident. Such constructive feedback can thwart bad habits or misinformation from being further cemented. This feedback cycle encourages students to reflect more on their learning journey and rely on internal and external feedback.

Nearpod empowers teachers to effectively measure student understanding in real-time, enabling them to make instructional decisions at the moment. Having access to real-time insights, teachers can make more informed instructional decisions and visualize learning in various ways to drive instruction.

Nearpod keeps students and the learning process at the forefront of every class through:

• Formative assessments that provide real-time insights to guide instruction
• Post-session reports informing your next lesson
• Tool and content to scaffold instruction and meet students where they are

7. Differentiation

Meeting a child where they often mean a teacher has to be ready to differentiate instruction for lessons, whether that be to modify a particular activity to support a student better or add a layer of complexity to challenge another further. By understanding your students’ diverse learning needs, you can individualize your lesson plans to ensure immediate feedback, varied instances of practice, and increased engagement.

Similarly, schools often face a challenge of amassing and providing a rich diversity of resources for an equally diverse set of students. Educators seek to deliver high-interest resources so kids can go beyond the old adage of amassing knowledge that is a mile wide and an inch deep. Instead, they grow their depth of knowledge and expand their interests. Such resources encourage teachers to design effective instructional strategies and differentiate learning experiences so students have options and various ways to meet learning objectives through different paths and channels.

Nearpod’s quality content library plays a crucial role in supporting differentiation in the classroom. With over 22,000+ standards-based interactive lessons, activities, and videos, Nearpod gives educators the flexibility to meet students where they are in their learning journey. Teachers can easily tailor their instruction by selecting materials catering to different learning styles, abilities, and interests. Whether it’s providing additional challenges for advanced learners or offering extra support for struggling students, this content library lets teachers create personalized and engaging learning experiences that cater to the unique needs of each student.

Design effective instruction with Nearpod

Having these seven essential strategies as habits of mind when engaging in effective instructional planning will result in more dynamic classroom interactions. When it comes to personalized or individualized learning, technologies such as Nearpod support teachers in tailoring and targeting learning activities for each and every student. Nearpod’s all-in-one platform aids and supports teachers and students alike. From interactive lessons and videos to real-time student data, such experiences put the students in the driver’s seat and give them a sense of agency to become lifelong learners.

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.

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 7 Essential strategies for designing effective instruction appeared first on Nearpod Blog.

Can drawing be used as a formative assessment?

Classroom drawings assess students formatively while adding engagement and fun. The interactive nature of drawing lets students expand and reflect on their learning, and drawing gives students another way to express their knowledge and show what they know. Drawing allows students to conceptualize topics and ideas and create visual representations of their thinking (Balunuz, 2019). Formatively assessing a student’s drawing helps get a picture of their knowledge and identifies misconceptions and gaps in knowledge. Based on the drawing assessment feedback, instruction can be adjusted to meet student needs.

Nearpod’s Draw It is a digital whiteboard for students that combines formative drawing assessments with creative interactive activities. This activity enables students to make visual representations of their knowledge. You can use a premade standards-aligned lesson from the Nearpod Lesson Library, upload a background image for the students to annotate, or have the students create their own classroom drawing using a blank background. Results can be analyzed through real-time progress in a Student-Paced or Live Participation lesson or Nearpod’s post-session reports to help form data-driven instructional decisions.

New to Nearpod? Teachers can sign up for free 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.

Why is student creativity important in the classroom?

In addition to providing formative assessment data, drawing assessments bring creativity and energy into the classroom. Drawing can create memorable learning experiences for students, which helps foster motivation and engagement in any classroom. Creativity helps students synthesize information and build new knowledge. Plus, creativity weaves fun into the classroom. Through creativity, students make new connections and form fresh approaches and solutions (Fisher et al., 2004). These new connections and approaches increase motivation while helping prepare students for future careers.

5 ways to use drawing assessments

1. Conceptualize with graphic organizers

Graphic organizers provide creative activities for students to organize knowledge and demonstrate relationships. As a result, students can express complex ideas and relationships, and teachers can formatively assess understanding while identifying areas that need remediation. Research suggests that in addition to being a tool to determine and analyze student thinking and learning, graphic organizers provide a “good alternative to longer, written assessments” (Struble, 2007).

Do you need to assess your students before a summative assessment formatively? An elementary science teacher can review the phases of matter with their students through Venn diagrams. Students can compare and contrast each phase, allowing them to determine which students need additional instruction.

Formative assessment examples can also occur at the beginning of a learning unit. A middle school civics teacher teaching the three branches of government activates students’ prior knowledge through a KWL chart. Through the KWL, teachers can identify what their students already know and address any misconceptions.

Ready to formatively assess your students with graphic organizers? Click below to preview Nearpod’s drawing templates for:

• Cause and effect
• Brainstorming
• Timelines
• KWL
• Venn Diagrams
• Pros and cons

If you already have a graphic organizer you like to use with your students, use Draw It to upload the resource as a background image, and then students can use the quick draw tools to annotate the organizer. Alternatively, adding a blank background to your Draw It slides lets students create their own graphic organizer. As an extra benefit, add the timer to the activity to help set realistic expectations for student completion.

2. Encourage collaboration and discussion among students

As a 21st-century skill, collaboration benefits students by building communication and problem-solving skills. A Harvard research study noted that students learn more when discussing ideas and elaborating on them with their peers (Shen). Through collaboration, students can assess their knowledge, and teachers can monitor student progress. Think-Pair-Share combined with Draw It’s digital whiteboards for students provides a creative formative assessment with collaboration.

To combine Think-Pair-Share with Draw It, provide students with a prompt from the Nearpod Library or upload a resource. Use the timer to allow 1-2 minutes of student reflection time. Then, have students collaborate with a partner to discuss the prompt and possible answers. After partner discussion, have students compose their individual answers on the activity slide. Finally, teachers can share the student responses from the teacher’s view to facilitate class discussion.

3. Reveal and evaluate students’ Depth of Knowledge with multipart questions

Multipart questions provide teachers with formative assessment data to reveal and evaluate a student’s Depth of Knowledge. Providing opportunities for students to respond to various question levels, from recall to extended thinking, multipart responses give teachers formative assessment data. Drawing offers an engaging way to give students multipart and multistep questions.

For example, math students solve a problem using the Draw It tools, and then they add a text box to describe how they solved the problem. Formative assessment examples can also involve students studying animal and plant cells. Students can use this tool to label an uploaded cell template and then add text boxes to explain the function of each part.

To prepare a multipart question, teachers can add a premade lesson from the Lesson Library or upload a background image of a template. Students can use this drawing tool to label the template, and then they can complete their drawing assessment by adding a text box to explain their answers.

4. Combine with dynamic learning experiences such as VR and simulation models

According to research, visual analysis can be used to formatively assess learners (Stanja et al., 2022). By providing students the opportunity to analyze and explain, teachers can formatively assess and guide instructional decisions. Pairing content and activities in Nearpod are a great way to have students make connections and formatively assess student knowledge.

For example, world history students can go on a Nearpod VR Field Trip to the Great Pyramid of Giza. While on the VR Field Trip, students must identify something they learned in class and take a screenshot of that image. On the next slide, the students will upload their screenshots to a Draw It and use the tools to explain why they chose that image. Some formative assessment examples include elementary, middle, and high school students participating in a math or science PhET Interactive Simulation. During the activity, they need to take a screenshot of a solution. On the next slide, the students will upload their screenshots to the blank drawing activity and use the drawing tools to explain how they solved the problem.

To pair content and knowledge in Nearpod, add a VR Field Trip, a PHeT simulation, or a Nearpod 3D to your lesson. During the experience, have the students visually analyze the content. Instructions could include identifying a problem they incorrectly answered during a PHeT simulation or identifying something they learned in class in the VR Field Trip or 3D simulation. On the next slide, have the students upload the screenshot to a blank Draw It and then use the drawing tools to annotate the screenshot explaining their analysis.

5. Use formative assessment examples to do periodic checks for understanding

Fisher and Frey noted it is difficult to know exactly what students are getting out of the lesson without checking for understanding. Checking for understanding also helps students become aware of how to monitor their own knowledge (Fisher & Frey, 2014). Periodic assessment checks allow students to summarize key points, review essential questions, reflect on learning, and synthesize information.

Drawing assessments can also be used for periodic checks for understanding. For example, at the end of class, exit tickets formatively assess what students learned during the lesson, what they will continue to work on, and what questions they still have. At the beginning of class, entry tickets describe what the students learned the day before. This drawing assessment activity allows exit and entry tickets to be easily added to any Nearpod lesson.

One quick way to find premade exit tickets is to search the Nearpod Library. Blank Draw It slides enable students to create their own exit and entry tickets. For in-the-moment checks for understanding, a drawing activity can be added during a Live Participation lesson by clicking the Add Activity button from the Teacher dashboard.

Don’t forget to use Nearpod,an oldie but a goodie! So simple to upload any slideshow, add a few bells and whistles, and engagement increases ten-fold! The bulletin board and draw it features were the favorites! @NISDWernli @NISDElemSS pic.twitter.com/opElNQhFgW

— Stephanie G. (@MsTexasTeacher) October 8, 2022

Get started with drawing assessments using Nearpod

This list of formative assessment examples using Draw It is just the beginning! Whether using premade standards-aligned resources from the Nearpod Library, uploading your own resources, or using a blank slide, Nearpod gives teachers a variety of engaging and fun assessment activities.

With Nearpod, you can create interactive lessons and activities in one place. You can also use our premade standards-aligned resources across all subjects and grade levels.

New to Nearpod? Teachers can sign up for free 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.

References and Further Reading

Bulunuz, N. (2019). Introduction and assessment of a formative assessment strategy applied in middle school science classes: Annotated student drawings. International Journal of Education in Mathematics, Science and Technology (IJEMST), 7(2), 186-196. DOI:10.18404/ijemst.552460

Fisher, D., & Frey, N. (2014). Checking for understanding: Formative assessment techniques for your classroom. ASCD. 

Fisher, R., & Williams, M. (2004). Chapter 1. In Unlocking creativity: Teaching across the Curriculum. essay, David Fulton. 

Shen, D. (n.d.). Pair and share. ablconnect. Retrieved November 30, 2022, from https://ablconnect.harvard.edu/pair-and-share-research 

Stanja, J., Gritz, W., Krugel, J., Hoppe, A., & Dannemann, S. (2022). Formative assessment strategies for students’ conceptions—The potential of learning analytics. British Journal of Educational Technology, 00, 1– 18. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.13288

Struble, J. (2007). Using graphic organizers as formative assessment. Science Scope, 30(5), 69. https://doi.org/https://www.proquest.com/openview/cc423816f32d8ae9c93c3e26089f83f0/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=36017

Liz Pearce

Liz is a District Strategy Consultant for Nearpod. A former educator with 33 years as an elementary and middle school teacher and district technology coach. Liz loves the engaging and interactive abilities of Nearpod.

The post How to use drawing as a formative assessment tool appeared first on Nearpod Blog.

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.

How should a new teacher prepare students for standardized testing?

Whether you’re a new teacher or a veteran, “preparation” for these tests ought to be a yearlong event… basically what you do day in and day out — teaching and learning! By focusing on personalizing instruction, you can promote deeper learning. Through formative and summative assessments, you can better understand your students’ learning gaps and intervene as needed for individuals and small groups over time. Leveraging edtech throughout the years helps to familiarize students with computer literacy. And remember to teach to the whole child and address developing social emotional learning (SEL) skills to help set up students for success. So with an optimistic mindset, we suggest the following tips for preparing students for standardized tests.

Why is standardized testing important?

With such a process in mind, teachers must remember that standardized testing should represent culminating assessments designed to assess how well students have been taught to meet or exceed state standards throughout the year. Schools’ adopted curricula and approved programming should bolster teachers’ artistry in bringing grade-level content and skill sets to life each year. While students’ test scores are not meant to be indicators of a child’s intelligence or capacity to learn, we know that these standardized tests scores can impact federal funding and schools’ rankings within a district and across a state. Ergo, there is pressure around standardized test prep.

How to prepare students for state testing: 5 Standardized test prep tips for new teachers

1. Use engaging lessons and activities to review

Have you heard of the phrase “deeper learning”? According to Stanford University’s Linda Darling-Hammond, fusing content knowledge with real-life situations aids in transferring knowledge rather than memorizing it. Students are better equipped to tackle solving complex problems if they can make an authentic connection to how it is relevant to their interests and their world. With deeper learning, Professor Darling-Hammond says that “students tend to learn more deeply, and they tend to perform better, not only on traditional achievement tests but also on assessments of more complex understanding.”

With Nearpod, you can access a library of 22,000+ high-quality lessons, videos, and activities ready to use for teaching. If you’re interested in exploring premade activities you can use with your students for teaching test prep, download this PDF. You can use these resources to engage elementary, middle, and high school students in reviewing their standardized tests.

Test prep reviews

In the Lesson Library, search for standards-aligned lessons and activities within Nearpod using the search filter. You can filter by grade levels, standards, subjects, and activities. Then, consider duplicating the lesson and use the presentation editor to personalize the content and methodology to appeal to your students’ needs and interests. Ask yourself how you can connect the learning to their daily lives.

Here are some staff picks to choose from to use with your test-taking strategies for elementary students and middle school:

• Text Evidence (Grades 3-5): In this ELA test prep activity, students use text evidence to support an appropriate response. They complete a Draw it practice activity and quiz to measure their understanding of the lesson topic.
• Perimeter, Area & Volume (Grades 3-5): In this math test prep activity, students represent and solve problems related to perimeter and/or area and related to volume. They complete a Time to Climb activity and quiz to measure their understanding of the lesson topic.
• Context Clues (Grades 6-8): In this ELA test prep activity, students use context as a clue to the meaning of a word or phrase. They complete a Time to Climb practice activity and a quiz to measure their understanding of the lesson topic.
• Ratios (Grades 6-8): In this Math test prep activity, students use ratio language to describe a ratio relationship between two quantities. They complete a matching pairs practice activity and a quiz to measure their understanding of the lesson topic.

2. Identify any “holes” using real-time student data

Depending on which infographic, article, or research you dive into, there are various assessment types you, as an educator, could and should be using in the classroom for standardized test prep. Consider varying how you evaluate your students’ progress to ensure they have grasped the new content or skills and have a sound base on which to build. How are the skills being scaffolded over time? Suppose you have a good grasp on what the whole group, small groups, and individuals understand. In that case, you can strategize addressing any “holes” or gaps in comprehension through teacher test prep reviews or remediations. One effective active learning strategy to lean on closer to testing time is creating rotation stations to help refresh and solidify foundational and more complex concepts. You can even employ peer-to-peer learning to add variety to your instructional practice.

Nearpod’s interactive activities include several tools for formative assessment. You could use Polls, Drag and Drop, Draw It, Open-Ended Questions, Time to Climb, and more to assess students’ retention of new knowledge and skills in multiple ways. Interested in learning more about Nearpod’s formative assessment activities?

This variety of strategies allows you to appeal to a wide spectrum of learning styles for teacher led differentation, which will help paint a more complete and accurate picture of students’ progress. Assign an assessment activity to your students during class time, and you’ll see their responses and how they answered the questions on your device in real-time. You can also view post-session reports to see students’ data from the lesson. Lean on the real-time data to inform your next instructional steps and individualize students’ learning paths by following up with varied content from Nearpod’s vast lesson library.

3. Use edtech in a targeted way for standardized test prep

As you weave edtech such as Nearpod into your daily instruction, find ways to emphasize computer and digital literacy for standardized test prep. More and more states are offering online standardized testing, and for teachers and students alike, testing via digital devices can cause extra anxiety.

From keyboarding skills to moving the cursor to select, to scrolling to submit, to changing or revising an answer, students must have familiarity and feel comfortable navigating digital assessments. It is quite a balance to formulate responses while spending cognitive energy to utilize digital tools correctly. Give students regular practice for navigating technology and familiarizing themselves with the devices and their own work habits and styles (especially with the added pressure of timed tests).

By implementing Nearpod in your daily instruction leading up to testing, you can encourage your students to think tech-forward and be early adopters of these creative tools. Familiarize them with how technology can speak to their preferred learning style or aid their learning with assisted technologies.

4. Create sample tests for familiarity

More than likely, standardized testing — whether online or paper-based — are quite different from the quizzes and tests you normally give your students. Find ways to pepper in test questions throughout the year in a similar format so that your students become more familiar with the variety of test-taking strategies and how to best answer multiple-choice questions. You may also want to empower your students by understanding the power of elimination. 

Standardized tests by design include above-grade level questions; students are not expected to ace the exams. However, when children encounter a question they do not know the answer to, they can still employ strategic problem-solving skills to think like a test maker or to make an educated guess. Encourage your students to get down to two choices to have a 50%-50% chance of selecting the correct answer based on what prior knowledge they do have.

See the following diagram to create test questions in Nearpod that mimic your state tests. You should be able to access practice tests online from your state’s test provider to understand better the common verbiage, framing, and layout of such questions. There are many types of standardized tests, so make sure the question structure and answer choices align with yours.

5. Practice a positive mindset

Try to help students mitigate their stress around test taking with some positive mindsets. Together, collaborate on some classroom mantras to post around the room. Practice deep breathing or model how to stimulate pressure points to help students find their center in a moment of stress. Do connect with students’ homes to help encourage early bedtimes for extra sleep and nutritious meals and snacks to keep energy high and consistent. Preparing mentally and physically will help students put their best foot forward during standardized testing.

With Nearpod’s social emotional learning (SEL) activities and lessons on test-taking strategies, teachers of all grade levels can help support students socially and emotionally when preparing for high-stakes assessments. Explore Nearpod’s 21st Century Collection, which includes SEL lessons that encourage goal setting, perseverance, and emotional regulation. These SEL skills will help students succeed through testing days and beyond in life!

Start using Nearpod for teaching test prep

We hope you found these standardized test prep tips helpful! While there is no fast track to sail through standardizing testing each year, there are steps you can take all year long to teach test prep to mitigate anxiety around standardized testing. Consider how you can work within your grade level to team teach or remediate before testing begins. Work with school administrators to pump up school spirit during the long test weeks. Remind your students’ families that these tests are not markers of intelligence or indicators of capabilities but rather a measure of how well the school and educators have supported the children throughout the year.

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.

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 5 Tips for standardized test prep for new teachers appeared first on Nearpod Blog.

Data driven instruction is an educational approach where you assess your students during a lesson, and let the data that you collect become the guide for teaching and learning in your classroom. You can use a variety of formative assessments and checks for understanding specifically designed to monitor student learning. Students get immediate, individualized feedback, while you get information on class-wide trends in misconceptions that you can clear up in real time. Transformational learning happens when teachers not only use data in their planning but also actively collect data during class and use those learning results to inform their instruction. Keep reading to explore tips for using data driven teaching in your classroom.

Why is data driven instruction important?

Using data to drive instruction helps educators prioritize students’ individual needs, and its results are backed by science. A research study from Bertram Opitz on delayed and immediate feedback found that immediate feedback has a significantly larger increase in learning than delayed feedback. Additionally, one group of researchers who conducted a meta-analysis on the effects of feedback on learning went as far as to say that “delaying feedback has a negative impact on learning outcomes,” underlining the power of giving cues at the moment to students.

What tool can I use for data driven instruction?

When using data to inform instruction, I love using digital tools because of how quickly I can gather student input; the more immediate data I have, the better I can guide my students toward success. With so many ways to collect formative assessments, Nearpod is the ideal tool to collect student data and act on it. With nine types of formative assessment tools, you can choose which combination of assessments work best for you and your students.

Nearpod gives you the ability to create interactive slide-based lessons and videos where you can embed assessments and activities to check for student understanding in real time. This makes it even easier to collect data to provide immediate feedback to students. With tools like Polls, Quizzes, Open-Ended Questions, and their gamified quiz called Time to Climb, teachers can easily access their students’ learning data while also keeping them engaged, focused, and participating.

New to Nearpod? Sign up to access formative assessment tools and create interactive lessons!

3 Essential tips for using data driven instruction

1. Planning is key for data based instruction

Data driven instruction in the classroom begins with planning. During planning, teachers design classwork to test student knowledge and create a plan for giving feedback.

Planning for teaching using examples of data driven instruction includes the following:

• Crafting an answer key 
• Labeling the standards aligned to each question
• Deciding what questions you’ll give feedback on and when you’ll give it

Some teachers create tracking tools to help them keep track of student data. Seating charts can often double as trackers. Teachers can write down which questions students are getting wrong. They often use symbols (like stars, circles, squares, etc) to track more nuanced differences like procedural vs. conceptual errors. Another way to structure a tracker is according to standard, skill, or question type with room to record students’ names.

If you’re using Nearpod, explore valuable formative assessment options and select the activities that fit best for the topic, student, and you as the teacher. Also, keep in mind that you automatically have access to students’ responses in real-time. You can also visit all data and insights collected from the lesson in the post-session reports. Allocate time in your lesson for addressing misconceptions at the moment for students.

2. Use formative assessment tools

While writing questions and planning opportunities for feedback are unique to each teacher, it’s important to simplify tracking and responding to student data. Teachers can use checks for understanding to get a more immediate gauge of how an entire class is thinking. These include voting with your hands, turning and talking, using whiteboards, polling, and more. While it’s common to quiz students using handouts or sheets of paper, collecting actionable feedback from each student can be tedious and manual. By using technology, teachers can save time with collecting data and instead focus more on their instruction and connecting with students.

Using Nearpod’s formative assessments like Open-Ended Questions, Multiple-Choice Quizzes, Time to Climb, Draw it, and more interactive activities, student data arrives on your screen in a clean, alphabetical list. You get clear and organized responses in real time so that you can highlight strong responses and address misconceptions. For deeper reflection on using data driven instruction, teachers can print out post-session reports from an individual student or the class as a whole to review data points. This is especially important when prepping for standardized tests. Although learning is more than test scores, identifying areas where students need extra support, can be accomplished through teacher-led differentiation using data.

In my science classroom, I love to use Polls and Open-Ended Questions to gather student hypotheses before we observe a chemical reaction and after each experiment to evaluate the accuracy with which students interpreted their results.

3. Give effective student feedback

What does valuable feedback look like, and how do you use data to drive instruction? The acronym SUGAR can help you make your feedback high-impact and high-quality for students. After analyzing data, use your insights when lesson planning a data driven reteach for your class.

SUGAR stands for:

• Small: Feedback is small when it is something you can deliver quickly and something a student can fix quickly. This allows you to give feedback to as many students as possible.
• Urgent: Urgent feedback addresses the most pressing concerns, avoiding off-topic.
• Generalize: Generalized feedback is transferable and focuses on a pattern of errors as opposed to one error in a specific question. 
• Actionable: The feedback has actionable, clear, and observable steps the student could use to fix the error.
• Return: This ensures that after a teacher gives feedback, they return to follow up with the student to validate or push further.

It’s important to consider students’ social and emotional well-being when providing feedback as well. To encourage learning, we must create an environment that accepts a growth mindset and empowers all students. Not all feedback is executed the same, and your relationship with your students should always be at the center.

Start implementing data driven instruction today

Feedback and using data to drive instruction can transform your classroom. As you give more frequent and meaningful information you give to your students, they’ll become more confident and more in control of their academic journey. Using frequent checks for understanding with your students in any grade level, you can see how cohesive and constructive feedback empowers students to take ownership of their learning.

Through these tips, you’ll be planning using data driven strategies in no time. If you need extra support, Nearpod is always here to help.

New to Nearpod? Sign up to access formative assessment tools and create interactive lessons!

Nearpod Team

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

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The post 3 Essential tips for using data driven instruction appeared first on Nearpod Blog.

Regardless of grade level, every classroom has students with different needs and ability levels. Differentiated instruction is important for students because it recognizes and supports their diverse learning needs and abilities, which can enhance their engagement, motivation, achievement, and overall well-being. Differentiated instruction examples can include using formative assessment to understand students’ needs, provide multiple learning options, and deliver personalized feedback.

Teaching to the “average” works for some students sometimes, but it is rarely enough to support every learner. Although differentiation has become an educational buzzword in the past few years, the idea behind the term is essential in today’s classrooms, especially post-pandemic.

The 2010 National Education Technology Plan (NETP) describes differentiation as follows:

“Instruction that is tailored to the learning preferences of different learners. Learning goals are the same for all students, but the method or approach of instruction varies according to the preferences of each student or what research has found works best for students like them.”

In other words, instruction is based on the needs and preferences of each individual student within their learning environment. While that can certainly be difficult to achieve, it is important to note that differentiated instruction can help increase both student engagement and achievement.

How to use tech to differentiate instruction for students

Using tech to differentiate instruction in the classroom is a practical resource to broaden inclusivity for all learners. One size does not fit all in education. Sometimes curriculums don’t differentiate their instructional materials, catering to the average student while providing leaflets for students needing differentiated tools the most: high achievers, English language learners, Individualized Educational Plan (IEP) students, and those with speech-language concerns. This is where tech tools, like Nearpod, can support.

Nearpod can help teachers differentiate instruction to meet the diverse needs of all learners within their classroom.

New to Nearpod? Teachers can sign up for free 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.

Differentiated instruction examples to maximize student learning

1. Use formative assessment to understand student needs

Nearpod’s formative assessment activities are effective for differentiating instruction. Teachers can send out formative assessment activities such as polls and quizzes, ask open-ended questions, have students submit drawing assessments through Draw It, and even write short notes on the Collaborate Board.

All of these features allow teachers to get instant insight into how their students are doing and address any questions or misconceptions.

For example, Ann Feldmann at Edutopia describes how first-grade teacher Megan Cinfel uses the Draw It to collect formative feedback, which she later uses to differentiate her instruction:

“[She] gathers her students on the rug in a circle, sits with them, and presents new math concepts to all of their iPads simultaneously. She uses the draw feature daily to collect formative data. Students use the pen tool to draw responses and send them back. Teachers immediately see the data and can share student work back to their screens in just a click. This is a powerful way for students to see peer responses and explain their reasoning.”

The daily formative assessment data collected and compared to summative data can give teachers a better view of student mastery. Then, once teachers know where their students are, they can adjust to instruction moving forward and consider micro-intervention. This type of instant formative feedback can be beneficial for quickly understanding each student’s specific and varied needs.

Integrating interactive activities into your lessons can cast a wider net for all the unique gems in class. When lesson planning, here are some differentiated instruction technology examples to consider when using Nearpod:

• Slides and videos for visual learners
• Open-Ended Questions for deep thinkers
• Draw It for artistic students
• Time to Climb for competitive types 
• Drag and Drop for hands-on learners
• Collaborate Board for social collaborators
• Polls for opinionated learners
• Matching Pairs for the ones who see patterns
• Fill-in-the Blanks for those who need context
• VR Field Trips for imaginative minds

2. Provide accessibility options for inclusivity

Differentiation allows for greater inclusivity in the classroom. Technology-based lessons give students better access to concepts than various traditional methods. Nearpod’s inclusivity features support multiple needs, such as:

• Immersive Reader: Enable Microsoft Immersive Reader to include accessibility functions such as text-to-speech, translation, contrast, voice speed, and font size, to name a few examples.
• Closed Caption: Always enable captions for videos. Videos in Nearpod provide closed captions for students to follow along with videos through subtitles if needed.
• Audio Functions: Enable audio responses as an assessment option to help students who prefer this method.

3. Gain insight from student assessments

With every lesson, you get instantaneous assessment feedback to guide and differentiate instruction. Using assessment data, teachers can also plan data-driven instruction for the whole class or small group to differentiate. After students complete Nearpod lessons, teachers can look into Post-session reports and use individual student data to guide the next lessons around student needs. Post-session reports can be organized by correct answers, student names, question types, percentages, and more.

During a Nearpod lesson, you can also toggle between the student and teacher views. The Teacher Dashboard shows you student responses in real-time so you can address misconceptions in the moment. You can even use the Whiteboard feature to model for students!

Nearpod takes differentiated instruction examples for assessments one step further, allowing students to access and see their own reports. Conferencing with and guiding students in creating personal learning goals adds another layer to differentiation in teaching by making students accountable for their own individual learning. You and your students can work collaboratively to make a learning path specifically designed for their learning styles. This creates a norm within the classroom for every student to realize that learning is personal and subjective. Comparing yourself to other students should become a thing of the past.

4. Implement differentiated lessons in your instruction

Once teachers are aware of students’ individual needs based on the formative feedback they receive, they can begin differentiating instruction based on those needs.

Differentiating to individual needs can look incredibly different depending on the grade level, subject area, and student’s needs. But as Ben Johnson of Edutopia describes, “The ideal is to provide equivalent learning activities that cater to the students’ strengths but bring all of the students to the same learning objective.” In other words, teachers should support students on their journey toward the main learning objective of the lesson, but that support might look very different for each student or each group of students. Consider including Nearpod’s lesson library in your differentiated instruction tools.

Lesson Library

Preparing this type of support on the fly can be difficult. That’s why it can be beneficial for teachers to prepare different lesson possibilities for students beforehand.

These lessons can be based on the different learning paths teachers expect their students to need, based on previous experience and their own expertise.

Nearpod’s quality lesson library has thousands of premade standards-aligned lessons, videos, and activities made by content experts and trusted educational publishers.

Lessons you download, create, or edit from Nearpod are immediately saved to your account for future use for years to come. You can organize folders of lessons based on small groups, skills, subjects, etc.

Here are three simple steps to keep your lessons organized by folder:

• Go to “My Lessons” and click on “+Folder”
• Type a name for the folder and click “Create”
• Drag any lesson you want into the folder!

5. Duplicate and edit lessons to address different needs

By preparing a variety of learning paths and differentiated instruction examples, teachers can ensure that whatever needs arise during the course of a lesson, they’ll be ready to meet them. If students need extra practice or remediation, have a Nearpod lesson prepared to share about the topic. If there are students who are ready to move on with additional real-world examples, teachers can have an assignment ready for them too.

By enabling Student-Paced mode, students can work through these lessons on their own or in small groups while the teacher provides individual support and guidance where needed. Easy to use, you can build regular lessons in Nearpod without worrying about pushing struggling learners too hard, while students who are ready to move quicker can continue unhindered. Students log in with a 5-digit code and work through a lesson at their own speed. They have time to work through problems and process answers truly while not feeling rushed or “left behind” for not moving quickly.

In addition to allowing for differentiation, preparing multiple lesson possibilities also means that students can have a choice in the direction their learning takes. Provide students with a choice board that includes various Nearpod lesson codes, or other assignment options, with a description of the objective. This combination of student voice, choice, and differentiation opens up powerful possibilities In addition to allowing for differentiation, preparing multiple lesson possibilities also means that students can have a choice in the direction their learning takes. Provide students with a choice board that includes various Nearpod lesson codes, or other assignment options, with a description of the objective. This combination of student voice, choice, and differentiation opens up powerful possibilities at all grade levels during the learning process at all grade levels.

Start differentiating instruction in your classroom

We’re so excited to see you use these differentiated learning examples! Differentiation becomes second nature in a classroom with the right resources at your disposal. Everyone learns differently, which means teachers need the necessary resources to reach and make an impact on every student inside the classroom. Nearpod’s interactive formative assessments and lessons make learning accessible to all learners in the classroom.

New to Nearpod? Teachers can sign up for free 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.

Angelia Simpson

Angelia Simpson has been a first grade teacher for nine years. With a classroom full of minions, she balances the wonderful line of chaos and learning. Passions include writing, technology, reading, and Corgis.

The post Differentiated instruction examples to maximize student learning appeared first on Nearpod Blog.

What are the benefits of using technology for teaching written expressions?

Some benefits that technology can provide to teaching written expression skills include:

• Speech-to-text features, such as those offered by Google Docs and Microsoft, turn student speech into writing to support those who may struggle with fine motor skills or writing disabilities.
• Text-to-speech features, such as Microsoft’s Immersive Reader, which reads text aloud and provides translation, among other features.
• Proofreading tools that can benefit students who struggle with writing skills including spelling, grammar, and sentence construction.

Use Nearpod for written expression

Several of Nearpod’s activities support written expression assessments. Let’s zoom in on three in particular: Draw It, Open-Ended Question, and Collaborate Board. These activities are open-ended in nature, allowing students to demonstrate their learning beyond a single right or wrong answer. They allow teachers to assess communication, conceptual understanding, and thinking skills. Each of these activities has options that allow teachers to easily scaffold the learning and differentiate to meet a variety of learner needs. This is especially useful when preparing students for standardized tests since it enhances their exam readiness by improving their ability to articulate ideas effectively.

New to Nearpod? Teachers can sign up for free 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.

How to teach student written expression using technology

1. Draw It

Draw It is one of Nearpod’s most popular and versatile interactive activities, giving students the option of expressing their thoughts using text, images, annotation, and highlighting. A Draw It slide can be as simple as a plain white background, allowing students to freely express their thoughts, or teachers can upload a background image or select from Nearpod’s activity library to help students organize their writing.

Draw It provides the ability to share written student expressions anonymously with the class, furthering the learning of the entire class by generating discussion around a student’s writing to provide feedback, make improvements, etc.

Here are some ideas of how you can use Draw It to teach students written expressions across the curriculum:

• English Language Arts (ELA)
  • Upload a selection of text on the slide background and have students highlight the text and write notes to show text evidence of a specific skill.
  • Incorporate Draw It into the prewriting process of a writing assignment by adding backgrounds such as a brainstorming web or essay planner.
  • Upload a PDF as reference media and invite students to reflect on reading selections with open-ended prompts or questions for writing tasks.
• Math
  • Use a blank Draw It slide and have students show the steps they took to solve a math problem.
  • Ask students to use words and/or pictures to explain how they solved math word problems.
• Science
  • Have students compare and contrast two scientific concepts using a Venn Diagram.
  • Use this template to have students explain the parts of the scientific method during an investigation.
• Social Studies
  • Incorporate timelines to have students write about historical events.
  • Include a historical primary source in the background and have students annotate and reflect using the text and highlighter tools.
  • Utilize a cause-effect graphic organizer to think critically about social studies topics.

2. Open-Ended Questions

Nearpod has various formative assessments that encourage student written expression, such as Open-Ended Questions (OEQ). This formative assessment is a great way to encourage reasoning and critical thinking skills as students can type their own responses. Enable audio recording submissions to support different learning needs, such as those who are emerging writers or English learner students. Similar to Draw It, teachers have the option of sharing student responses with the class. Additionally, you can easily add reference media of images, audio, videos, or web content to the question to give students more context. Consider providing differing levels of questions that students can select from based on their individual needs, such as this example from the HPL: The Great Migration lesson.

There are many ways to use the OEQ to support student writing across the curriculum, including embedding them into Interactive Videos to have students reflect on content being presented or using an OEQ at the end of a lesson to summarize learning as an exit ticket.

Here are some additional subject-specific examples of how Open-Ended Questions can be used to support writing instruction:

• English Language Arts (ELA)
  • Make connections to text (Text to Self, Text to Text, Text to World).
  • Respond to text-dependent questions by uploading a PDF text selection as reference media.
  • Have students write an introduction for a narrative writing assignment.
• Math
  • Use an OEQ as a follow-up to solving a math problem to have students use words to explain how they solved it.
  • Use reference media to show a chart/graph and ask students to share one or more conclusions they can draw from the information.
• Science
  • Use OEQs as part of the Claim, Evidence, Reasoning (CER) model.
• Social Studies
  • Link a news article or primary source as reference media and have students reflect on an open-ended prompt.
  • Reflect on the implications of historical events.

2. Collaborate Board

A third great way to encourage student writing in Nearpod is using a Collaborate Board activity. This activity gives students the option to respond to prompts or open-ended questions using text and images. Students can anonymously see the responses of their classmates on a virtual corkboard, making this a great way to give every student a voice before group discussions. The Collaborate Board activity is a great way to provide a shared space where students can learn from each other’s written responses and interact with the responses of other students.

Looking for ways to incorporate written expression activities using Collaborate Boards? They can be used across the curriculum in several ways, such as:

• Use a single Collaborate Board as a parking lot for student questions throughout a lesson.
• Have students define or use new vocabulary words in a sentence to show understanding.
• Use as a prior knowledge check at the start of a unit or lesson by having students share what they already know about a topic.
• Use a Collaborate Board as a follow-up to a poll question. Have students defend their answer choices from the poll and use this activity as a springboard for classroom debate.

Here are some subject-specific ideas for student writing:

• English Language Arts (ELA)
  • Asking and answering questions related to a shared text.
• Math
  • Sharing examples of math in the real world using text or images to help students make connections beyond the classroom.
  • Asking and answering questions as part of a math talk conversation.
• Science
  • Making written observations during a science investigation on a shared space
• Social Studies
  • Have students reflect on why historical events may have happened or what the effects of specific events were. This can be used to facilitate further discussion and practice writing expressions.

4. Immersive Reader

With the strong connection between reading and writing skills, Nearpod’s integration with Microsoft Immersive Reader provides an extra level of support for student writing through assistive technology.

With the Immersive Reader tool, students can access text-to-speech, a picture dictionary, visual supports, and translation features to create a more supportive classroom environment for students who need reading assistance. This can allow students to focus more deeply on the content being taught and leave more energy for written expression to lesson prompts.

Start using Nearpod

Finding creative ways to incorporate student writing into the classroom provides teachers with an opportunity to make student thinking visible. This can help teachers identify and correct misconceptions or lead to deeper conversations around academic content. Using digital tools like Nearpod can provide learners with even more ways to showcase their thoughts in writing, further encouraging all learners to be heard in your classroom. How have you used Nearpod to support teaching written expression to your learners?

New to Nearpod? Teachers can sign up for free 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.

Kim Garcia

Kim is a former elementary school teacher who loves helping educators create authentic, student-centered learning experiences. She is driven by a desire to help students connect with others – within the classroom walls and beyond.

The post How to teach student written expressions using technology appeared first on Nearpod Blog.

Tools like Nearpod can be used by teachers to facilitate this process and allow for the quick and easy collection of formative assessment data. In turn, this data can be used to make a variety of improvements and adjustments to their lessons.

New to Nearpod? Teachers can sign up for free 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.

3 Examples of formative assessments that work

1. Check for student understanding

One of the best ways to get started using formative assessments is to simply check in on how students understand a certain topic.

Teachers can check for students’ abilities and understanding with Nearpod by using Polls, Quizzes, Collaborate Board, Time to Climb, Open-ended questions, and Draw It’s. As soon as students submit their responses, teachers will have an instant snapshot of their student’s understanding of a particular topic.

Teachers are able to capture student thinking from all students within their class, and teachers can even share out student responses with the rest of the class in order to promote discussions and correct misconceptions. This can often be more beneficial than simply calling on a few students to share their responses. Consider using these formative assessment strategies along with a think-pair-share activity.

Jeff Krapels, an English teacher and technology mentor at Northern Valley Regional High School in New Jersey, explains how he uses Nearpod to check in on student understanding while teaching Romeo and Juliet:

“Usually, I will ask students to write down their answers [to discussion questions], and then call on a couple of them to share. Of course, some students will always be eager to participate, and some are more reticent. With Nearpod, though, you have the ability to see every student’s response to the questions you ask, and then the capability to share an individual student’s responses to every student laptop (this is anonymous, so it is up to the teacher if he or she wants to tell the class whose response it is).”

2. Collect student drawings and annotation screenshots

In addition to checking for student understanding through the use of Quizzes, Polls, and Open-ended questions, teachers can also encourage students to submit annotated photos and screenshots through Draw It.

This can be useful in collecting formative assessment data from activities like science labs, graphic organizers, math problems, exit tickets, design challenges, or even during field trips!

Chris Loat and Janice Novakowski, teachers in Richmond School District, explain how they used this idea to support their colleagues across the district. One formative assessment example for elementary comes from using Nearpod in a math class:

“In this Math lesson, students provided their responses [through Nearpod] in two different ways: 1) Students completed the work in their notebook and took a photograph of their response, often circling the answer to highlight it;  2) Other students took a photograph of the hundredths grid and then annotated it on the iPad before submitting it to their teacher.”

3. Use post-session reports as actionable insights

Finally, teachers can use formative assessment data collected through Nearpod to generate reports and create actionable insights. All formative assessment data collected through Quizzes and Polls in Nearpod will automatically be formatted into graphs so teachers can instantly visualize performance and understanding across their class. This data can also be downloaded or exported so teachers can access it later or share it with others.

Educators can use insights from the reports to determine areas where students excel or struggle, identify patterns in learning gaps, tailor their teaching methods to better suit individual or small group needs, and make informed instructional decisions. Additionally, these insights can aid in adjusting curriculum pacing, providing differentiated instruction, offering personalized support, and fostering a more effective and engaging learning environment when assessing students. This is crucial for teaching and learning as it can help improve students’ learning outcomes.

Nick Acton, Primary Apple Specialist Trainer and Apple Curriculum Coordinator at JTRS, explains how this can be beneficial:

“When [students] have finished a quiz, Nearpod will automatically create a report for you. You can access the reports directly through the app and download the data as a PDF overview, a CSV file, as well as reports on individual students. This really helps [teachers] gain a completely comprehensive understanding of [their] class’ ongoing progress.”

Start using these formative assessment examples in your classroom

Nearpod is a beneficial tool to facilitate the collection and use of formative assessment data in the classroom. This use of additional formative assessments strategies can also have major classroom benefits and help lead to increased student engagement and achievement.

New to Nearpod? Teachers can sign up for free 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.

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The post 3 Examples of formative assessments that work appeared first on Nearpod Blog.

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.

How can I make test prep review fun for students?

Utilizing technology in the classroom can support fun ways to prepare students for state testing to create a sense of excitement in any classroom. We must remember that our students are digital natives, and technology is second nature to them and their educational experiences. For many of our students, technology is expected, not an addition to their work at school. Children regularly use technology to communicate, share pictures and videos, and look up information that is pertinent to them. We must use this connection with technology, not fight it.

While it is vital that test prep activities are designed to engage all students, it is equally important that they also address and target standards for individual state testing assessments such as PARCC and CAASPP. Broad summative assessments only inform educators about one point in time. Students need to engage in a multitude of ongoing formative test prep assessments to ensure progress toward content mastery and confidence. Assessment variety should include gamification, categorizing, real-world connections, collaboration, multiple response type quizzes, and opportunities for students to engage in Social Emotional Learning (SEL) activities and brain breaks. 

5 Fun ways to review for test prep in the classroom

1. Spark excitement with educational games

Gamification in assessments can bring about an increase in student engagement. Friendly competition sparks excitement as well as engages students in an interactive setting. Time to Climb is an educational game appropriate for all ages of students. It can be used for targeted test prep linked to state testing requirements. Create your own review games and questions linked to a specific standard, or use an activity bank tied to specific learning targets.

Time to Climb allows students to receive immediate feedback on their progress through the activity. At the end of each timed question, students see if they got the correct answers or not. This immediate feedback will give them the information they need to be successful when answering the subsequent questions in the activity. Additionally, teachers can instantly see which students are being successful and which students need more support. You can even pause the activity in order to engage in a teachable moment if many students are struggling. Time To Climb is a great exit ticket or culminating checking for understanding activity during test prep season in order for you to be able to link progress or regression on a specific standard to an individual student.

2. Make learning interactive with Drag and Drop activities

Having students categorize information is a high-yield learning strategy. Key terms and vocabulary can be used in these activities to support test prep and content mastery. This type of activity supports learning by having students identify similarities and differences through categorizing, labeling, and matching.

Drag and Drop allows students to move either words and phrases or pictures into categories. One of the most powerful aspects of Drag and Drop is the ability to upload backgrounds. This helps to personalize the activity in order for teachers to target specific standards and learning goals. In using customized or downloaded backgrounds, students can drag and drop the names of capitals into states or countries, odd and even numbers into corresponding buckets, and vowel or consonant blends into words. Drag and Drop is a truly universal tool that can be used in all subject areas.

Matching Pairs activities give students the opportunity to connect vocabulary words with definitions, link together cause and effect properties, and practice math facts for faster memory recall. Take these test review activities for high school, elementary, and middle school students by having them submit their own vocabulary terms and content ideas for their peers to engage with. This creates a greater sense of learning ownership and inclusion.

3. Combine VR and simulations with interactive lessons

By using Nearpod in a test prep environment, students can annotate their thinking through interactive features such as the Virtual Reality (VR) Field Trip and PhET Simulations. By doing this, students are making their thinking visible to teachers and engaging in fun ways to review for a test. Combining these types of elements allows students to utilize higher levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy and reach the upper levels of Webb’s Depth of Knowledge.

For example, having students explore the tomb of Ramses III using VR Field Trips, noting the hieroglyphics on the walls. The teacher or individual students can take a screenshot of the hieroglyphics from the activity and post the picture on a Draw It slide. Students can then annotate their thinking on the picture by drawing on the slide or using a text box.

You can also take students on a nature walk using Virtual Reality (VR). On their exploration, students can identify certain types of foliage, ground coverings, and tree lines. By using a screenshot of the VR experience, students can then annotate on a Draw It to expand on their thoughts. By conducting this type of activity, students have more control and choice when it comes to their answers. 

The same notion can be applied to PhET Interactive math and science simulations. Students can complete the simulation and then take a screenshot of their work. For example, one of the simulations has students creating a shape with tiles of different areas and perimeters. Once students create these shapes, they can take a screenshot of their work, upload it to a Draw It, and then explain how each shape meets the required criteria.

4. Get real-time insights using multi-format quizzes

Multi-format quizzes are a more standard method of test prep. However, ensuring that data is tracked will help both teachers and students ensure that progress is being made. On Nearpod, Quiz content can be created to align with state testing standards and mirror testing formats of state assessments. Teachers can also monitor student performance data in real time from these formative assessments and address misconceptions at the moment.

Quizzes can be used in multiple ways to stimulate excitement and engagement in the classroom. Use quizzes for bell work as a way to both pre-assess as well as create an exit ticket to ensure that students leave for the day understanding the concepts covered during the instructional day.

One of the most powerful ways to support students while using quizzes is to insert reference media at the moment to give students a way to research the answer. Insert videos, websites, audio clips, pictures, and more alongside quiz questions to stimulate higher-level thinking. Mirror testing protocols from state and national assessments, getting students used to using different types of questions and answers format.

5. Temperature check the room with polls

Polls can be utilized to check the temperature of the room during test prep season. Create a Likert scale poll asking students how they are feeling about their level of knowledge of a certain content standard. This activity will help tests decide if they want to move forward with content delivery or pause to reteach certain elements. By having students self-assess their level of understanding, it helps to put them in the driver’s seat of their own learning journey. Leverage data-driven instruction and use the insights from students’ answers to create small groups for the next classroom review.

6. Make time for brain breaks!

Empirical research indicates that regular brain breaks from seat work help to increase knowledge retention and engagement during an activity. This is especially true in the younger grades, where teachers need to break instruction into small, digestible chunks in order to encourage retention at high levels.

Work in VR Field Trips into lessons that have students explore a beach, gardens, or other calming images to help relieve stress and to allow them to take a brain break. Students can then express their feelings in a Draw It or a Collaborate Board in order to support one another. Time To Climb can be another fun test prep idea to break up the stress of test prep by providing students with an entertaining, competitive outlet.

Another great way to give students a brain break is to bring movement into the classroom. Create a slide that takes students through a physical or breathing exercise, allowing them to disengage from academic work for a short period of time.

It’s time to make test prep review fun for you and your students

Test prep is often thought of as a necessary evil in education. However, Nearpod can make test prep interactive, engaging, and fun for all students, regardless of age or current ability. Access informative data to help inform the next steps with an instructional review or selecting individual students for reteach opportunities or intervention. By increasing engagement, teachers can get 100% of their students involved in test prep activities, leading to more successful learning outcomes for all students.

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.

David Franklin

Dr. David Franklin is District Strategy Consultant for Nearpod as well as an award winning school administrator, education professor, curriculum designer, and presenter. He earned a Doctorate in Educational Leadership from California State University, East Bay, a Master’s Degree in Education Technology from National University, and holds a B.A. in Music from the University of California, San Diego. Dr. Franklin is also an Adjunct  Professor of Education for Colorado State University. Dr. Franklin has presented at national and international education conferences and is a sought after presenter in the areas of academic intervention, school leadership, creating a shared vision, creating common assessments, and data analysis.

The post 6 Ways to make test prep review fun for students appeared first on Nearpod Blog.

Formative assessments collect student data that provide insights teachers can use to inform the next set of instructional strategies, often making adjustments in real-time. Student assessment outcomes may indicate that teachers need to modify or even scrap their instructional plans in order to revisit or reteach concepts. There are many different types of assessments, from diagnostic assessments to summative assessments to authentic assessments. However, formative assessments are a common method teachers use for monitoring student progress daily.

Formative assessments provide teachers with real-time indicators of progress (or lack thereof) to make data-informed decisions when it comes to individualizing and personalizing instruction. These assessments can be active learning strategies—thumbs up or thumbs down, polls, quizzes, and the ever-popular “exit tickets.” But formative assessments are not just for teachers! They can also empower students using formative assessment to track progress themselves. Based on the frequency of formative assessments, students have more intel to drive their own learning journeys; they can seek out supplemental resources or practice materials depending on whether they are looking for more challenges or further support.

How to monitor student progress during a lesson

Teachers are ever observant and vigilant in monitoring student progress during a lesson. They can make observations about a student’s level and type of participation. They may use strategic questioning to gain evidence of student thinking and when tracking student progress. Many use active learning strategies such as think-pair-share to encourage collaborative learning and allow for peer-to-peer learning and feedback. Through such continuous analysis, teachers also can provide actionable feedback to students on an ongoing basis.

One of the hallmarks of Nearpod is that the comprehensive platform provides educators with real-time formative assessment data to monitor and modify instruction throughout the day. Allowing them to make “in the moment” instructional decisions to support student needs. Nearpod offers nine types of formative assessment:

• Drag & Drop
• Draw It
• Open-Ended Question 
• Quiz
• Poll
• Collaborate Board
• Fill in the Blanks
• Matching Pairs
• Time to Climb

The formative assessment data from these interactive features can be tracked whether a teacher is delivering a Live or Student-Paced Lesson lessons. When launching Live lessons, the content is synced across all student devices, allowing teachers to see every student and identify misconceptions. With Student-Paced lessons, students work at their own pace while teachers keep a finger on the pulse of individual students’ performance on activities, quizzes, and homework assignments. With both delivery methods, teachers can find comprehensive post-session reports via the Teacher Dashboard or downloadable CSV or PDF files.

During a Live lesson, click on Teacher View in the top right corner to see student responses to activities and assessments. You can share answers (anonymously, if you prefer) to highlight exemplars or address misconceptions. During a Student-Paced lesson, you can “View Progress” via a lesson code for any student in real-time.

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 Tips for monitoring student progress with real-time formative assessment data

1. Choose the formative assessments that will provide the right insights

As mentioned above, formative assessments vary in format from strategic questioning and observations to engaging activities and assessments. Teachers employ multiple techniques and strategies depending on the format, content, and cadence of their lesson plans. The key is to pepper formative assessments throughout instruction so that students are actively participating and you are receiving feedback about individuals and the whole group.

Nearpod offers a variety of features that can help teachers use formative assessments when monitoring student progress throughout lessons. Consider how you might use Polls during an anticipatory activity to gauge prior knowledge of a new concept. Then, weave in an activity learning strategy like Collaborate Board throughout a lesson for quick checks of understanding. As an exit ticket, create a short multiple-choice Quiz or ask an Open-Ended Question to evaluate whether student learning objectives were achieved (and by whom!). These insights can help with data-driven instruction methods.

2. Embed formative assessments into lessons or stand-alone activities

Formative assessments can be bite-sized as well as more comprehensive. The trick is to immerse yourself in the many formative assessment strategies (see these active learning best practices to start) so that they become natural touchpoints for you to depend on throughout your daily instruction. Many say that teachers have eyes in the back of their heads, and while this sixth sense can help with classroom management, it can also help progress students toward reaching their goals.

Within a single Nearpod lesson, you can add a slide featuring a quick interactive check for understanding, like Fill in the Blank, or you can use Time to Climb to conclude a lesson with a bit of fun competition. Or, you might design a learning experience around a single activity. For instance, you could use Draw It to kick off a K-W-L chart or a Collaborate Board to capture small group work on a particular concept or problem. On Draw It, teachers can view students’ responses and data in real-time and share responses on students’ screens for discussions.

3. Provide feedback to individual students

Formative assessments provide teachers with rich data; then, the question can be, “Now what?” In addition to leveraging formative assessment data to design the next steps in instruction or even for planning a reteach, you can also intervene in the moment with targeted feedback. A continuous feedback cycle ensures that students stay engaged as you support them and boost motivation to strive toward their goals.

Nearpod’s feedback feature, Live Teacher Feedback, helps you provide such a continuous feedback cycle so that students don’t have to wait for support, encouragement, and praise. You can expand the toolbar on Draw It to add stickers or annotations to students’ work and responses within Nearpod. Screenshots of your feedback will appear in the associated student reports and notes as well. Students will be able to see your feedback in real-time, which helps them learn from errors and misconceptions, ask questions, and try different strategies.

4. Share student work

Many teachers appreciate the notion of “show what you know” when it comes to asking students to demonstrate their understanding, proficiency, and mastery of a new concept or skill by sharing their work. Teachers can use examples of student work to highlight where common missteps can occur. They also can share examples to showcase exemplary work or to applaud innovative thinking or self-expression.

Students can submit their work using the variety of interactive activities found in Nearpod. Tools like Draw It provide students a choice in how they demonstrate their learning based on their ability or preference, through drawing, writing, typing, or images. Teachers can share student work on the devices to encourage them to demonstrate their skills while developing mastery. Collaborate Board encourages peer-to-peer learning as well as peer-to-peer feedback. This feature is used as a digital discussion board where students share responses using text or images while commented on with their peers’ posts. Both tools provide evidence of student thinking that the teacher can monitor and share with other students.

5. Monitor class performance to check understanding

Teachers strive for student engagement, but the reality is that students’ attention can wax and wane throughout a lesson for many reasons—from the commotion outside a school window to the lack of personal interest in a topic. Therefore, teachers are masterful at weaving checks for understanding throughout even an hour of instruction. They may incorporate subtle personalized learning strategies to gauge understanding while also giving students voice and choice about what to pursue so they can take ownership in furthering their learning, whether that be asking for more support or seeking out a new challenge.

Nearpod’s Teacher Dashboard provides a turnkey way for educators to check whether or not students have started an activity or lesson and how they are progressing. Having formative assessment data analysis for progress monitoring student growth means that you can make informed decisions in the moment about how to challenge or modify instruction for a student, a group of students, or the entire class. You may choose to pull one or many together for a quick mini-conference to individualize the learning a bit more.

6. Adjust learning in the moment

In a popular Friends episode, Ross yells out, “Pivot!” at the top of his lungs. Teachers are nimble and applauded for their flexibility in response to classroom needs. By continually weaving formative assessment strategies into monthly, weekly, and daily lesson plans, teachers can rely on real-time data analytics to make informed decisions about what to teach next and how to do so. Additionally, integrating tailored standardized test prep into these strategies empowers educators to effectively address and reinforce key concepts necessary for student success.

Remember, you can duplicate and modify any existing Nearpod lesson. You may choose to add more interactive activities on the fly to boost your formative assessment strategies within a particular lesson. During Live lessons, you can also launch the Whiteboard for a more collaborative and visual discussion. Also, you could use the Live Annotation feature to highlight, draw, or type on content slides in real time to encourage more interactivity and model for students.

7. Use lesson data to differentiate

Teachers know they have a diverse classroom when it comes to varying personalities, ages and stages of development, and ranges of abilities. The first day of school is filled with anticipation as teachers meet their learners often for the very first time. With such a group of individuals in mind, teachers nowadays avoid “teaching to the middle” regarding skills or being a “sage on the stage” preaching to the crowd. Instead, they try to personalize and individualize learning plans, so much of their lesson preparation is thinking of ways to differentiate instruction based on anticipated needs. 

The real-time data collection that Nearpod provides means that teachers can differentiate instruction, targeting support and challenges accordingly. Many teachers plan for such differentiation, yet the data means that they can employ such strategies as needed in the moment, preemptively avoiding frustration or disengagement. Nearpod empowers teachers to recognize and address differentiation and thereby provide a more tailored and targeted approach to instruction. Nearpod supports needs-based decision making in classrooms and schools, and aligns with intervention approaches such as response to intervention (RTI) and Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS).

Start using Nearpod for monitoring student progress

Periodically reassessing goals is essential for both teachers and students, as goal setting can evolve or expand over time. Teachers’ and students’ goals can shift or stretch at any time, but it is best to take this moment to reflect on what the data says in order to make informed decisions for the last half of the year. Formative assessment examples can be a teacher’s best friend when it comes to encouraging student participation, connections, and confidence building. Student engagement grows when they make progress and their curiosity is sparked. Explore new ways to use Nearpod’s nine formative assessment tools during the rest of this school year to help you monitor progress and enhance 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.

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 monitor student progress with real-time formative assessment data appeared first on Nearpod Blog.