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.

Nearpod’s lesson library is the perfect solution for those teachers who feel nervous about learning new tech but are excited to see the benefits of our interactive lesson platform. Here are three quick tips to get started using Nearpod’s pre-made standards-aligned K-12 content.

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.

3 tips for using Nearpod’s lesson library

1. Use a pre-made lesson from the lesson library

Nearpod’s growing lesson library includes 22,000+ K-12 standards-aligned lessons that provide teachers with the additional content they need to fill in curriculum gaps and make lessons interactive.

Teachers no longer need to search for supplemental content and find ways to make worksheets and downloadable files more engaging. With Nearpod, teachers get all the benefits of pre-made standards-aligned content, built right into an interactive platform. Nearpod has interactive activities for students to show what they know and engaging media embedded right into lessons.

One of the best ways to jump into using Nearpod is to experience it for yourself first, and a pre-made lesson is a great way to save time creating a lesson on your own. Focus on finding standards-aligned content through our standards filters which include standard or state, subject, grade, and strand. You can also filter and search lessons by keywords, sources, and partners. When you’re ready, launch the lesson and watch how it impacts student engagement in your classroom. During the lesson, you can also get real-time insights into student morning.

After your lesson, head to your reports to find post-session reports you can share with other colleagues via email, or download as PDF and CSV files for your grading and records. Through these reports, teachers can print and share data on how the entire class did on a lesson, or create reports on individual students.

2. Customize an existing lesson

We know teachers love to take their supplemental content to the next level. When you’re feeling ready to create some content of your own in Nearpod, an easy way to save time is to customize a pre-made lesson with your own resources or with interactive activities like Draw It, Matching Pairs, Time to Climb, and more.

Find a pre-made lesson you love and customize it in three different ways:

• After you’ve found a lesson you’re interested in using, go through the slides and activities and cull them to focus on just what you need for your classroom and students. For example, you can change the wording of formative assessment questions or math problems to be a perfect fit for what you need from your content resources in the classroom.
• After you’ve perfected your lesson to present the content exactly how you want, you can add in existing PowerPoints, PDFs, or other resources you love into a lesson.
• Finally, teachers can add quick checks for understanding using Nearpod’s activity banks. These standards-aligned activities are the perfect way to customize a lesson. Nearpod’s activity banks help create engaging and interactive lessons while saving time.

3. Create your own lesson and keep it in your library for the future

Many teachers have developed content resources to support their lessons. Use the pre-made content on Nearpod’s lesson library as a guide to create your own. Don’t recreate the wheel and use what you already have as inspiration. Teachers can upload the resources they already have into Nearpod to create interactive lessons and then organize them into folders for future use.

Whether you have worksheets you’d like to digitize, PowerPoints you’d like to make interactive, videos, PDFs, slides, or web content from other online resources, Nearpod can combine them into one engaging and interactive learning experience.

When you combine the resources you already have with Nearpod’s interactive formative assessment types and engaging media, you turbocharge your content.

Start exploring Nearpod’s lessons

Discover a plethora of free quality lessons and teaching resources available for educators to utilize and enhance their classroom experience. Whether you’re new to Nearpod or looking to enhance your lessons, these three tips provide a quick start to leveraging its interactive platform effectively. Join the Nearpod community today to access a wealth of standards-aligned content and transform your classroom experience.

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.

Nearpod Team

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

nearpod.com/

The post 3 Tips for using Nearpod’s lesson library appeared first on Nearpod Blog.

Bringing that joy back is what drives the Nearpod team. We want you to spend less time planning and more time teaching and connecting with students. We’ve gone beyond teacher lesson plans and built a library of 22,000+ high-quality lessons, videos, and activities ready for you to teach immediately. It’s easier and faster than ever to search this library. Your next lesson is now a click away, saving you time and helping you focus on what matters most—student outcomes.

Foster a love of learning in every student with Nearpod. Teachers can sign up for free to access quality, standards-aligned lessons and create their own interactive lessons and activities. Administrators can schedule a call with an expert to unlock the full power of Nearpod for schools and districts.

What makes us “content experts” at Nearpod?

Nearpod’s curriculum team comprises of former educators who have been in your shoes. Our collective classroom experience weaves itself into every resource we create. But we don’t just rely on our small team when creating teaching resources. We work with a vast network of educators who, drawing from their varied areas of expertise, design the high-quality lessons, activities, and videos you’ll find in the Nearpod Library. So, when you use a Nearpod resource, you can trust the intention and competence of the educators who had a hand in creating it.

In addition to enlisting the help of other experienced teachers, we frame our resources around the research-based instructional models you know and use. Here are some examples:

• Explore our Nearpod Core Subject Lessons collection to see the 5E and GRR models at work
• Give Project-Based Learning a try with our Freckle collection for elementary math
• Model Guided Inquiry by using Great Question videos, such as Greek Mythology

You can also trust that you will find the instructional best practices you use daily embedded right into our resources. From objective-setting and feedback opportunities to cooperative learning and hypothesis testing, our team works to maximize the impact of everything we make through research-based instructional strategies. Additionally, all of our lessons follow our pedagogical principles and go through an extensive review process. Learn more about Nearpod’s focus on quality lesson content.

To further support creating free and valued lessons, we partner with trusted, leading education organizations, such as Next Gen Personal Finance, NASA eClips, PhET, Smithsonian, ReadWorks, Education.com, PBS Kids, iCivics, and more. Together, we work to build a library that makes it easier for you to find all the teaching lessons you need, all in one place. 

All of us hope that thanks to our work, you’ll stop scouring the internet for free teacher resources and regain some of the time you need to do the most important job in the world.

What types of free teaching resources does Nearpod have?

To keep your students engaged, you can’t teach the same way every day. Educators spend considerable time searching for high-quality lesson plans that will allow them to teach using multiple modalities. Any teacher who has spent hours watching videos or scrolling through hundreds of game ideas while preparing for a lesson knows this is easier said than done. 

Here are the varied, flexible resources you can find in the Nearpod Library:

Lesson Guides

Elevate instruction with our comprehensive Lesson Guides for grades K-9 in Math, English Language Arts, Science, and more. Whether you’re a seasoned educator or just starting out, our Lesson Guides provide the framework you need to spark curiosity, foster critical thinking, and facilitate effective instruction.

Click below to preview and download our Lesson Guides!

• Math Lesson Guide for grades K-9
• ELA Lesson Guide for grades K-9
• Social Studies Lesson Guide for grades K-8
• Science Lesson Guide for grades K-8

Interactive lessons

Finding free teacher lesson plans is great. Finding free, read-made, high-quality lessons is better. Nearpod lessons are both the lesson plan and the student experience. Nearpod has 8,500+ interactive lessons with immersive slides-based experiences that you can launch with a single click. Once you launch a lesson, you’ll seamlessly take students through direct instruction, practice, reflection, and more. 

We design every Nearpod lesson with a specific learning goal in mind. From there, we define the learning objectives and adopt the learning design model best aligned with the lesson’s purpose. Then, we take that framework to build a learning sequence that contains:

• Engaging, clear, and effective instructional experiences
• Rich multimedia, such as video, articles, and Virtual Reality (VR) Field Trips, reinforce new concepts and make real-world connections
• Metacognitive reflections and polls to promote self-awareness, monitor prior knowledge, and spark discussion
• Frequent, interactive checks for understanding invite your students to write, record themselves, draw, sort, match, collaborate, fill in the blanks, answer multiple-choice questions, and more. Seeing your students’ performance on these tasks in real-time allows you to quickly identify learning needs and adjust your teaching on the fly.

And if you find that our lesson doesn’t exactly match your teaching and learning goals or needs a sprinkling of your personality, remember that all of our lessons are modifiable. You can add or delete slides and modify student activities to make our lessons just what you need.

We’re always busy expanding our library of high-quality lessons! Here are just a few of the collections you should explore:

• Our ever-growing collection of 500+ Nearpod Core-Subject Lessons, including team favorites such as Seven Wonders of the Ancient World and Introduction to Edgar Allan Poe.
• Our Nearpod & Lalilo collection teaches phonics and word families
• Our Nearpod & Freckle series shows students that math matters with project-based learning
• Our new Teaching With Infographics series was developed in partnership with iCivics
• Our constantly updating Current Events collection

Games and activities

Whether you’re a beginner looking to ease into teaching with Nearpod or simply searching for activities to use for your lesson plans, interactive activities are perfectly bite-sized practice opportunities designed to be versatile.

Here are some ways you can use our activities:

• Use them as hooks, checks for understanding, asynchronous practice, or even assessments
• Use them on their own or add them to lesson using our integrated activity bank, accessible right from where you create your lessons
• Use several activities at once for small groups or differentiated instruction

Whereas full lessons contain multiple slides, activities use a single, interactive slide to pack in all the learning action. 

Here are some of the types of Nearpod activities you’ll find in our library:

• Matching Pairs to foster vocabulary acquisition using text or images. When your students are done, share results with them in real time for feedback and reflection! 
• Draw It to make the learning experience hands-on by drawing, highlighting, typing, or adding images to text, charts, graphic organizers, graphs, tables, and more.
• Time to Climb to make a game of concept and skill review! Watch your students answer questions and compete to make it to the podium!
• Drag and Drop learning activities, in which students sort words, phrases, numbers, or images to practice concepts and skills from word problems to the writing process. 
• Collaborate Board: to help you break the ice, encourage classroom discussions, and foster student voice in the classroom. 

Interactive videos

Using multimedia such as video is ideal for memorable student learning. Still, the time it takes to find just the right resources can make this feel unrealistic. To save you time sifting through endless video search results, Nearpod has 10,200+ educational Interactive Videos you can use for your high-quality lesson plans. Find videos from names you trust, such as Crash Course, SciShow Kids, Smithsonian, TED-Ed, and more. We’ve even embedded interactive questions into every video you’ll find on Nearpod, allowing you to monitor your students’ understanding in real time. We are also proud of our growing collection of Nearpod Original videos—best-in-class, free instructional videos written and produced by our own video team.

 Here are some of our favorite Nearpod Originals: 

• What Is Poetry?
• Types of Rocks
• The Solar System
• Perimeter
• What Led to the Chinese Exclusion Act?

Just like activities, Interactive Videos give you the flexibility you need:

• Add or remove interactive questions right inside the video to tailor the experience to your students’ needs.
• Use videos on their own or add them to an existing Nearpod lesson or activity.
• Watch together in front-of-class mode or send to your students’ devices for synchronous or asynchronous instruction.

How to find free high-quality lesson plans

Interested in sharing or saving the tips on this blog post? We’ve rounded up all of these teacher resources into a downloadable PDF. Print it out to share with colleagues, send it digitally, or save it in your files for reference!

Enhanced Search Bar

Find the resources you need with just a few clicks with our enhanced search:

• Use a single search bar and a keyword to search for lessons anywhere on the platform. You can find all the resources on the Nearpod Library or Nearpod programs. You can even find all those amazing lessons you forgot about in your own library.
• Search faster with real-time suggestions that appear in the search bar right as you type!
• Looking for something specific? You can now filter according to content type, subject, grade level, and standards.
• You’ll always know how to find your way home with a Nearpod menu that always stays the same on the left side of your screen.

Curated Collections

Featured in the Library

Sometimes, you might just be in the mood to browse! You can explore our curated content collections right from the Nearpod Library. Every month, we update our “Featured” section to bring you seasonal topics, relevant holiday resources, and new partnerships. We also give you easy access to our latest must-haves in the rotating carousel at the top.

Your school or district library

Teaching is a collaborative effort. We know you work hard with your department, school, or district to curate resources that are just right for your community of students. If you use a school or district Nearpod license, you can find content recommended by your colleagues in the school library. And suppose you want to expand your search to our library of 22,000+ free resources for teachers. In that case, the enhanced search bar will always be right at the top, ready for you to explore everything in one place.

What can you do with Nearpod content?

Teach it as-is or customize it

All of the free teaching resources and high-quality lessons in the Nearpod Library are customizable. You can save any resource to your library and edit it. You can divide it into two or more lessons by duplicating the lesson: add or remove slides, change activity directions, add your own visuals and supports as reference media, swap one activity for another, or anything else you know your students will benefit from. 

Here are some ways you can customize your effective lesson:

• Have students who will benefit from the option to draw and write? Swap in a Draw It for an Open Ended Question and allow them to do both!
• Want to engage your students with a bit of competition? Replace a Quiz with a Time To Climb activity.
• Need your students to submit audio instead of written responses? Turn on the “audio response” feature on an Open-Ended Question.
• Want to add even more real-world connections? Add a Virtual Reality (VR) Field Trip to your lesson.

Organize your lessons in My Library

When you’ve found the perfect lesson or modified one to make it right for your students, it’s easy to store it in your library.

Pro tip: Rename the lesson and add descriptors in settings so it’s easier to find later! For example, you might rename the lesson “Entering the Cold War” to “Cold War Unit Opener” and add things like “5th period,” “pre-assessment,” or other relevant terms in the lesson settings. 

Drag and drop your favorite content into folders you can name, rename, and color-code. Organize your resources by subject, class period, month, unit, or whichever system best serves your needs! And with the search bar, remember that every time you enter something, you’ll see results from the Nearpod library and your own library of tried-and-true resources—everything is now just a click away.

Start saving and creating lessons

Nearpod’s expertly curated and easily searchable library of free teaching resources is there for you, regardless of the type of Nearpod license you have. Additionally, schools and districts can put even more resources at their teachers’ fingertips, thanks to Nearpod Programs. No matter how you use the Nearpod library, we hope our growing library will help you spend less time searching and more time focusing on what you love.

Foster a love of learning in every student with Nearpod. Teachers can sign up for free to access quality, standards-aligned lessons and create their own interactive lessons and activities. Administrators can schedule a call with an expert to unlock the full power of Nearpod for schools and districts.

Caroline Grider

Caroline is a former French, Spanish, and EL teacher who followed up ten years in the classroom with a gig as a content writer for Nearpod, and has been on the Nearpod Content Team ever since. She loves to think about how to use Nearpod content to make teaching easier.

The post How to find free high-quality lessons and teaching resources appeared first on Nearpod Blog.

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.

Already have a Nearpod account? Log in now to start exploring our lessons!

Nearpod’s focus on quality lesson content

Created by our in-house content development team of former educators and experts, our lessons are designed with a focus on quality. You might be wondering exactly how the Nearpod content team defines “quality” when it comes to educational resources. And how are these lessons created and vetted? To answer that, first and foremost, we point to our three pedagogical principles.

Nearpod’s pedagogical principles

Nearpod’s content is rooted in these three core beliefs. These three principles guide every content development project and are at the core of how we define quality here at Nearpod.

Principle 1: Active learning

We believe active learning can transform students’ educational experience and improve academic outcomes. 

Principle 2: Rigorous, scaffolded content

We believe rigorous and scaffolded content can accelerate achievement by helping raise expectations for all learners.

Principle 3: Formative assessments and feedback opportunities

We believe formative assessments and feedback opportunities empower students to learn and teachers to teach.

Types of Nearpod lessons

Before we dive into how we create and review our lessons, you might want to know a bit more about the kind of content you can find in the Nearpod library.

Every new lesson project, or “series,” is created for its own specific instructional purpose. Sometimes, we partner with a publisher to achieve that purpose. That’s why many Nearpod lesson series feature curated content from one of our many trusted publishing partners. Thanks to partnerships with organizations like iCivics and NASA, our team of lesson writers can leverage Nearpod’s interactive lesson-building platform to create a learning experience around the publishing partner’s curated videos, weblinks, activities, and more.

There are also many thousands of Nearpod lessons in the library created entirely by the Nearpod team. You can check out Nearpod’s popular Core Subject lesson series as one great example. Here, we’ve leveraged Nearpod’s interactive lesson-building platform to create a learning experience, creating and writing much of the lesson content ourselves without a partnership.

In both instances—whether we’re working with a publishing partner or producing a Nearpod team lesson series—the same processes and guidelines are in place to ensure quality. Key to this process are our multiple rounds of review.

Learn more about how you can find quality lessons for your classroom in the Nearpod Library!

How lessons are reviewed

Every Nearpod lesson, whether created with a publishing partner or not, receives multiple rounds of review. There are at least two main review stages:

Review 1: Learning Experience Design

In this first review stage, we focus on the instructional quality of the resource. Does the lesson achieve its stated learning objectives? Is it appropriate for the grade level? Is it standards-aligned? Does it reflect our pedagogical principles? We’ll give much more detail on the Learning Experience Design stage below, but it’s worth noting that this stage can take a few rounds of back-and-forth as a learning experience reviewer works with a lesson writer through drafts and revisions!

Review 2: Editorial

After ensuring the quality, it’s time for our second stage of review: editorial. Now, an editorial reviewer steps in to focus on grammar, usage, punctuation, spelling, and more. We want to be sure our content is clear and accurate, and that nothing distracts or competes for students’ attention!

In addition to these two stages, we might also enlist additional reviewers, like fact-checkers, subject matter experts, or consultants, to partner with us on specific elements that fall outside of the two stages above. We always welcome what we like to call that “extra set of eyes” on a lesson!

Lesson quality at Nearpod

As noted above, every Nearpod lesson receives a review for quality. The Nearpod content team refers to this as the Learning Experience Design review, or LXD for short! Our LXD reviewers receive consistent training and guidelines so that we’re all looking out for the same range of elements and asking the same questions that guide our feedback. Here’s a summary of a few of the major categories and questions that guide our LXD review.

Guidelines for Learning Experience Design

• Standards alignment: Does the lesson teach the aligned standard(s) thoroughly and at the appropriate level of rigor?

• Learning objectives: Are the lesson’s stated learning objectives aligned to the standards? Does the lesson achieve its stated objectives? Does it provide data or evidence of student achievement on each objective?

• Lesson structure: Is the lesson sequenced logically, reflecting an understanding of depth of knowledge and Bloom’s taxonomy?

• Grade appropriateness: Does the lesson include grade-level appropriate language, content, and activities?

• Nearpod interactive activities: Our reviewers check that all Nearpod interactive activities follow our internal lesson writer guidelines. These include specifics about which activity type to use for which instructional purpose and how to properly frame and design each activity to maximize engagement and learning.

• Multimedia: Are the multimedia experiences included in the lesson framed properly with background knowledge and necessary context?

• Vocabulary: Are necessary key words and vocabulary defined for students? 

• Visual design: Are design elements (color, bolding, icons, etc) used in a meaningful way to serve the instruction without distracting?

• Relevance: Do examples used in the lesson showcase real-world connections for student learning? Are these examples relevant, interesting, and representative of the intended grade level?

• Language, tone, and representation: Does the lesson adhere to our internal guidelines for tone, sensitivity, representation, and inclusion? We want our lessons to be windows and mirrors for students so that they can see themselves reflected and learn about the wider world too!

One final review before publishing

After a lesson passes through the two main stages of review—that is, both learning experience design and editorial—it’s ready for publishing … almost!

We do one final stage of quality review within Nearpod, clicking through each and every piece of a lesson to make sure everything is functioning as expected!

Start using Nearpod’s high-quality lessons

Teachers rely on Nearpod for content they can trust, and with the plethora of resources in the library, quality is of the utmost importance. Created and reviewed by experts, our lessons reflect our commitment to creating content you can trust.

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.

Already have a Nearpod account? Log in now to start exploring our lessons!

Rebekah Bergman

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

The post Nearpod’s focus on quality lesson content appeared first on Nearpod Blog.

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.

Already have a Nearpod account? Log in now to start organizing your library!

What are the different lesson libraries in Nearpod?

Nearpod offers various libraries to support teachers, schools, and districts. Let’s begin by exploring the library options available within Nearpod:

• Nearpod Library: This is where you can find premade, standards-aligned lessons created by the Nearpod Team and other publishing partners. These lessons can seamlessly be added to My Library for easy access.
• My Library: This is a teacher’s personal library containing lessons created by the teacher, lessons saved from the Nearpod library, and lessons shared by other teachers.
• School Library: This library facilitates the sharing of lessons among teachers within a designated school. You can add lessons from your My Library or the Nearpod Library to the School Library.
• District Library: Lessons shared with all Nearpod users within the district are available here. You can add lessons from the School Library, Nearpod Library, or your own My Library to the District Library.

What are the benefits of using the lesson libraries on Nearpod?

Utilizing Nearpod libraries not only streamlines lesson organization but also offers many other benefits. Teachers gain access to a treasure trove of premade, standards-aligned lessons through the Nearpod Library, saving valuable time in content creation. My Library allows for personalization, enabling educators to curate lessons and share resources seamlessly. The School Library and District Library foster a collaborative environment, facilitating the exchange of educational materials among teachers within a school or district. This interconnected approach not only optimizes individual teaching practices but also nurtures a community of educators working together for enhanced educational outcomes.

17 Best practices for organizing your lesson library on Nearpod

To enhance your Nearpod experience and make the most of its features for teachers, schools, and districts, let’s explore effective methods for organizing your My Library.

1. Make the most out of the organization options

After you create a folder, you have 6 options you can use to sort and organize further:

• Rename: Change the name of the folder title
• Move: Move the folder to the correct category
• Add Lessons: Search and sort to find and select multiple lessons you want to include in the folder.
• Folder Color: Assign a color to the folder
• Remove: Delete this folder and the content inside of it.

2. Organize by subject

Divide your lessons by subject to more efficiently retrieve content. This ensures quick access to materials relevant to each subject, promoting a streamlined teaching experience.

3. Sort by grade levels, marking periods, or semesters

Align your lessons with marking periods, semesters, or sections, catering to your school’s structural framework. This approach optimizes organization, especially for teachers managing various courses.

4. Leverage subfolders

Enhance organization by creating subfolders within subjects and organizing lessons into specific units or chapters. This method can help establish a clear structure for implementing teaching models such as the Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) and addressing subject-specific needs.

5. Archive past years’ lessons

Ensure historical reference by archiving materials from previous years. This practice allows teachers to revisit, adapt, or reuse content, building a valuable bank of past resources.

6. Organize by units and subfolders

Create a cohesive curriculum structure by organizing lessons into units with subfolders. This approach facilitates logical sequence planning, making it easier for teachers to deliver lessons in a structured manner.

7. Create folders by teacher types

For secondary and unified arts teachers, organizing materials by sections aids in managing diverse classes. This strategy allows for targeted planning and retrieval of relevant resources for each section.

8. Seasonal lesson categories

Align teaching plans with the academic calendar by categorizing seasonal lessons. This ensures the convenient incorporation of timely content such as back-to-school, holidays, test prep, and end-of-year activities.

9. Favorites folder

Get quick access to tried-and-true content! Create a “Favorites” folder and add your favorite lessons from the lesson library that you’ve created or that have been shared with you. Use this folder as inspiration for future lessons, sub planning, or simply include it in your lesson plans.

10. Slide banks and templates

Create a dedicated folder for templates to reuse the structure and design of past lessons. This helps teachers consistently generate well-organized instructional materials.

11. Sort by purpose

Categorize your resources based on their purpose, such as homework, in-class assignments, and brain breaks. This method allows for quick access to materials specific to each task, streamlining your teaching preparation.

12. Sort by teaching groups

Categorize your resources based on teaching groups, including whole group, small group, and intervention groups. This approach facilitates targeted planning and retrieval, allowing you to quickly find materials suitable for each teaching setting.

Ideas for organizing your School Library

13. Notes from the principal’s desk

Create a folder titled “Notes from the Principal’s Desk” and make subfolders for important topics like newsletters, faculty meeting notes, and upcoming events.

14. Research-based

Within a folder for recommended lessons by administrators, subfolders can also be created for RTI, MTSS, and exemplar lessons.

15. Required training

Create a folder called “Required Training.” Subfolders can be used for different types of training, such as differentiating between academic and non-academic training within your school or departments.

16. Seasonal school events

Create a folder named “Seasonal Surveys.” Within this folder, create subfolders for different seasons or events. For example, “Back-to-School Surveys,” “Holiday Event Polls,” etc.

17. Sorting folder options available on Nearpod

Sort lessons by using the “sort by” dropdown in the left-hand corner of the libraries. Here are the various options you can sort by:

• Recent: Use this option if you want to quickly access the most recently added or modified items in your library.
• Lesson Title: Alphabetically arrange your lessons by title for easy reference. This is useful when searching for specific topics or lessons.
• Author: Arrange items alphabetically by the author’s name. This can be helpful if your library includes contributions from multiple educators.
• Lesson Size: If the size of the lesson is a relevant factor, you can use this option to sort by the size of the lessons. This could be useful for quickly identifying longer or shorter lessons.

Choose the sorting option based on your immediate needs. For example, if you’re looking for the latest additions, select “Recent.” If you want to find lessons by a specific author, choose “Author.” The sorting options provide flexibility in accessing your library based on different criteria.

Start organizing your libraries on Nearpod!

Optimizing your Nearpod library is essential for teachers, offering a tailored space to store both personally crafted and curated lessons. By actively curating your library and utilizing resources from the school, district, and Nearpod library, educators can maximize the potential of this versatile platform.

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.

Already have a Nearpod account? Log in now to start organizing your library!

Patti Gandolfo and McKenzi Barnett

Patti is a Customer Success Manager for Nearpod and Flocabulary drawing from nearly two decades of experience in Pennsylvania’s public schools. Her roles spanned from teacher, coach, librarian, and administrator. Patti’s commitment lies in providing every child with equitable access to top-tier education.

McKenzi Barnett is a Customer Success Manager and doctoral candidate specializing in Curriculum and Instruction. With previous experience as an educator in West Virginia, she has taught students across elementary, middle, and high school levels. Her passion lies in advancing digital literacy among all students.

The post 17 Ideas for organizing your lesson library in Nearpod appeared first on Nearpod Blog.

Our latest product updates for the upcoming back to school season meet the needs of educators and equip them with the necessary tools to deliver effective instruction and facilitate engaging learning experiences!

Teachers and administrators can log in below to start using these updates. If you’re new to Nearpod, sign up for free or schedule a call with an expert.

What’s new with Nearpod: Back to School 2023

Discover Nearpod’s latest product updates for Back to School 2023! This PDF highlights the introduction of live teacher-to-student feedback, a simplified Lesson Builder, Search Enhancements for easier lesson planning, and more. With over 22,000 high-quality lessons, videos, and activities in the extensive standards-aligned library, Nearpod equips educators with the tools to support every student’s unique needs and foster a love for learning. Teachers and administrators can log in or sign up to access these new features. Don’t miss out on these exciting updates—download the PDF now and get ready for a successful back to school season!

Visualize and support student understanding with real-time feedback and insights

We are so excited to introduce Nearpod’s live teacher-to-student feedback feature, just in time for back to school (a TOP requested feature—we mean it when we say your feedback matters and we listen)! With this new feature, teachers can provide LIVE feedback on students’ work, allowing them to intervene in the moment. Teachers can quickly identify common misconceptions or provide additional help when students need it the most, ultimately boosting student engagement and achievement.

What can you expect with live teacher-to-student feedback?

• Direct feedback on individual students’ work in drawable activities, such as Draw It, Drag & Drop, and Math Manipulatives* (math manipulatives are exclusive to the Nearpod Math Program)
• Access to a wealth of real-time insights and adjust your instruction on the spot to better support each student’s unique needs

Create engaging lessons right in Nearpod with a new, simplified Lesson Builder

In addition to live feedback, we’re debuting our NEW Lesson Builder experience. We believe teachers are the architects behind creating engaging and interactive lessons that support student learning; to better support this, we’ve completely overhauled our Lesson Builder, making it easier for teachers to create captivating and personalized lessons. With our intuitive interface, teachers can craft dynamic lessons catering to their students’ needs and learning styles.

Additionally, our extensive standards-aligned content library offers a plethora of easy-to-customize, pre-existing materials. Whether teachers prefer to start from scratch or modify existing content, Nearpod’s Lesson Builder provides the tools to create captivating lessons that captivate and inspire students.

What can you expect with the new Lesson Builder? 

• Create and build lessons with a streamlined, familiar experience 
• Quicker and easier lesson creation functionality—build, edit, and reorder slides and activities

More exciting updates!

Focus on teaching, not just searching for supplemental resources in the Nearpod library with Global Search Enhancements: 

• New search filter to easily find lessons created by specific publishers 
• New lesson counters 
• Related search term suggestions to better refine search results

The beginning of the school year is the perfect time to dive into Nearpod’s extensive standards-aligned library. Our goal is to minimize your planning time so that you can focus on teaching and engaging with your students. With over 22,000 high-quality lessons, videos, and activities, the Nearpod library is packed with ready-to-use resources.

Curious to learn more about our exceptional content and trusted partners? Discover how to find free quality lessons and teaching resources.

Seamless and secure integration with the new implementation of LTI 1.3.

• LTI 1.3 provides an optimized learning journey that combines streamlined processes, advanced security features, and enhanced user authentication

Start using these Nearpod updates now!

We hope you are as excited about these new product updates as we are. After all – your feedback fueled them! Teachers are at the center of everything we do, we’re determined to provide you the tools and resources you need so you can focus on doing more of what you love – delivering impactful instruction and positive student outcomes.

Here’s to a great back to school season — you’ve got this, and we’ve got you!

Teachers and administrators can log in below to start using these updates. If you’re new to Nearpod, sign up for free or schedule a call with an expert.

Nearpod Team

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

nearpod.com/

The post What’s new with Nearpod: Back to school 2023 appeared first on Nearpod Blog.