The Parents’ Bill of Rights Act is a highly complex topic, with information and legislation changing by the day, and tons of variance between states. Additionally, the language of most of these bills are vague, which leads to uneven enforcement and tremendous disparities in how the bills are implemented.

Our goal at Truth for Teachers is to advocate for educators and students, and it’s our position that the Parents’ Bill of Rights Act has the potential to be detrimental to both groups, as well as to parents themselves.

Additionally, we believe this kind of legislation creates an artificial rift between schools and the families they serve, when the goal for all stakeholders is to do what’s best for kids.

Furthermore, we know that public schools are designed to support the collective public good of our nation. They cannot tailor curriculum to every individual family’s worldview and preferences. It is the job of educators (rather than parents) to adapt the curriculum to be relevant and appropriate for the individuals in their classrooms, and educators deserve that autonomy and decision-making power.

Schools must be transparent with families and consider their input, and we support aspects of these bills that facilitate that goal. Therefore, we’re working to ensure the Parents’ Bill of Rights is legislated and implemented in a way that includes parent voice in decisions about curriculum, instruction, safety, and more. 

We want to build communication and trust between schools and the community, so that parents understand how decisions are made, have their input included, and feel comfortable relying on the expertise of trained educators in the classroom.

-Angela Watson

Currently in the United States, there’s a lot of discussion about creating a federal Parents’ Bill of Rights.

In March 2023, the Parents’ Bill of Rights Act was reintroduced in Congress, with 73 Republican representatives signing on.

There’s also work happening at the state level in many places. For example, Florida has already passed its Parental Rights in Education Act and is working to expand its reach.

Read on to learn how the Parents’ Bill of Rights will affect classroom teachers, and how teachers can advocate for themselves and their students in today’s educational climate.

What is being proposed in the national Parents’ Bill of Rights Act?

The Parents’ Bill of Rights requires teachers to provide parents with information about school policies, practices, and procedures that might affect their children’s education, such as student assessment results, attendance records, course syllabi, and more.

Additionally, schools and teachers must keep parents informed on how their child is doing in class by sending out progress reports or report cards regularly. So in essence, we as teachers are doing the same thing we’ve always been doing – keeping parents abreast of what is going on in the classroom.

At best, the Parents’ Bill of Rights can help foster strong communication between teacher and parent—something that is vital in order for children to succeed academically.

However, the Parents’ Bill of Rights can make teachers feel like they’re being micromanaged on what they teach, and create situations in which they’re unsupported with students who have needs they cannot accommodate.

In addition, with individual states also proposing their own unique version of the Parents’ Bill of Rights, it’s important to recognize how some may focus more on specific aspects than others. This will determine which priorities and demands are placed upon teachers.

How the national Parents’ Bill of Rights affects classroom teachers

There are 5 primary rights that are outlined in the bill:

• to know what children are being taught,
• to be heard by school leaders,
• to see school budgets and spending,
• to protect their child’s privacy, and
• to keep their children safe.

All of these things sound reasonable and positive. However, the vague and broad nature of the bill allows states to take a wide range of approaches as to how to protect these rights.

For example, the right to “keep their children safe” may be interpreted as parents having the right to be informed of violence or weapons at the school, or it may not.

And, this could be a positive protection for students and teachers, or not.

A requirement for schools to openly communicate any violent or criminal activity which occurs on school grounds could foster a transparent relationship between students, parents, and teachers. It seems especially important during this time when we are seeing an unfortunate increase in school fights, shootings within schools, and drug use and weapons being brought into schools. By providing relevant information regarding these issues, the Parents Bill of Rights enables a sense of trust and assurance for those who look to ensure their safety within school grounds.

However, the act could also be used to justify increased police presence in schools and carceral policies that create an uncomfortable or even dangerous learning environment. It could also be used to scapegoat and defame specific students and families if personal details are released along with incident reports.

It’s extremely important to consider potential applications of this bill even around something that seems as innocuous and undeniable as the importance of student safety.

Parents increasingly have the right to see the curriculum and teaching materials you are using

Both the national bill and all current state bills include this right, and it’s the one that has proved most problematic and controversial. This aspect of the bill ensures that parents have insight into what kind of material and activities their kids experience in school each day.

While this sounds like a good thing, it means in practice that parents can demand access to curriculum, lesson plans, classroom libraries, and more (depending on how the state/district interprets the bill.)

You’ll need to follow your districts’ lead here. If you plan to do an activity or text that does not appear on the education department website for a specific district, it may be necessary to run ideas for texts or lesson plans by an administrator or department head to protect themselves. This will require additional advanced planning and allow for less spontaneity and “teachable moments” that follow the lead of students’ interests.

What’s happening in individual states?

The Parents’ Bill of Rights is becoming increasingly politicized and unequally implemented around the country.

Some of the state-level bills do not allow teachers to address gender identity or sexuality in K-4 classrooms

For example, while it requires transparency in what is being taught to kids, some states — predominantly Southern ones — are pushing a backward agenda by refusing to teach any information related to gender identity or LGBT issues. They prioritize censorship over providing students with an accurate education about contemporary topics that should be discussed within our classrooms. The focus is on removing social issues that they don’t want discussed, as opposed to focusing on how historically accurate or relevant the curricula are.

Decisions about how to implement the Parents’ Bills of Rights Act are often made at the district level, with some districts making few or no changes, and others making radical, sudden changes. In some districts in Florida, all books have been removed from classrooms until they can be evaluated for compliance.

Teachers may have more autonomy on what they teach at the middle school and high school levels, but the legislation has had its intended chilling effect which is designed to make teachers highly cautious.

Some of the state-level bills do not require parents to immunize their children

This is true in Florida and raises health concerns for other students as well as staff. Vaccinations for various diseases have been required for enrollment in public schools for decades for the good of public health, but this is no longer something we can depend on.

Some of the state-level bills allow parents the right to deny certain services for the students

At the school where I work, there has been a recent push to eliminate self-contained special education classrooms. After doing some research, I realized that this is related to the Parents’ Bill of Rights, which our state has already put in place.

Due to this legislation, parents of students with special needs can say they want their students in general education classrooms, and the school must comply. Parents can deny the special education services that are offered and instead make unreasonable accommodation requests. This makes it more likely that general education teachers will have students that have intense behavioral or academic challenges, and have even less support in meeting those needs.

This “displacement” of students may have a bigger impact on secondary education, since many elementary schools still provide separate accommodations that allow students more access without completely removing them from a regular classroom setting. However, the bill could impact students who are in a co-taught, ESOL, or self-contained classroom setting, but whose parents deny services. Displaced students result in stress not just on the teacher, but on the student as well.

This aspect of the Act raises a difficult question: If parents can deny practical interventions that would improve educational outcomes, who should be responsible when those needs go unmet?

Currently, it seems as though the blame will fall on the teacher or school, which is highly problematic.

Furthermore, how do we prevent teacher burnout and attrition due to a lack of support with students’ behavioral and academic challenges?

How teachers can advocate for themselves and students

Get familiar with your state’s legislation and proposals around the Parents’ Bill of Rights

In general, northern districts (especially large districts) are prone to displacement and security concerns, while southern districts seem to prioritize curriculum with a focus on social and political matters. However, this is not universally true, and it’s important to understand what’s happening at your local level.

If you are in a unionized state, you are protected against any potential retaliation for airing grievances or discussing sensitive topics, making it a sort of ‘safe space’ when needed. Furthermore, joining the union is an effective way to learn more about Parents’ Bills and how they might affect your individual school district contextually.

If your state has made unions illegal, vote to change that. Unions are powerful forces for collective bargaining, which is why they’ve been suppressed in many Republican-led states where the goal is to preserve the status quo.

Make your voice heard if you have students that you believe are displaced

The Parents’ Bill of Rights presents challenges for teachers when it comes to student accommodations. Since the bill gives parents unprecedented rights in terms of declining or requesting services that might be inappropriate — and these requests are more likely to be approved than before — dealing with such situations can create a lot of additional stress for teachers.

Be aware that parents may be able to abruptly deny emotional and behavioral support services for their children, even if this is not in the best interest of those students that are suddenly taken from a more appropriate environment. It could leave students deprived of essential support that they still need, despite any perceived improvements by parental judgment alone.

For example, if a student has had a past history of being in a self-contained environment due to emotional or behavioral concerns, the Parents’ Bill of Rights would allow the parents to suddenly deny these services without any justification. The parent may feel that the student doesn’t need these accommodations or has improved enough to be taken out of these environments, but that may not always be true.

It is important to be aware of the consequences and challenges that displacement can bring for teachers and students. If you as a teacher feel that you have a student that is displaced, the most important thing to do is to reach out to the appropriate administrators and let them know about possible displacements.

It is not guaranteed that this will be adjusted quickly (or at all), but the Parents’ Bill of Rights requires there to be a different procedure for putting displaced students in the appropriate setting. This varies by state and district, but it usually involves all teachers, counselors, and other related educators to compile data and incident reports to justify why the student needs to be put in a more appropriate setting. While it doesn’t guarantee anything, the best thing to do as a teacher is to document everything to explain what you are experiencing if you have a displaced student.

Send out regular updates (even if it’s just an email) to let parents know of student struggles or progression

The most important action that a teacher needs to take to better protect themselves is to communicate with families about any struggles that their child is having in the classroom, whether this is related to behavior or academics.

One big component of the Parents’ Bill of Rights is that in order for students to get the appropriate interventions (whether it is related to consequences for behavior, academic support, or support related to mental health), the teacher will need to show proof that they have voiced their concerns. This includes actively communicating any student behavior or academic issues with parents and school administrators in a timely manner — an essential component of the Parents’ Bill of Rights ensuring that appropriate interventions are taken as soon as possible.

Even if this communication is not acknowledged, it is still an essential action that teachers need to take in order to make it clear what they are experiencing in the classroom. Teachers must take initiative to express their classroom experience in order that students may receive the essential support they need. This can be especially important when a student needs to move classrooms or is being denied assistance from parents.

So is The Parents’ Bill of Rights a good thing or a bad thing for teachers and students?

I think some of both outcomes are likely.

The good: Parents’ Bill of Rights has enabled a much-needed transformation in our schools, empowering parents to become more informed and involved decision-makers. It encourages transparency by ensuring that any criminal or violent activities occurring within school grounds are revealed, while providing parents with the control they need over their children’s education — from class selection to accommodations.

The bad: Parents’ Bill of Rights has caused numerous problems for teachers, such as displacement and high-risk behaviors in classrooms in which teachers and students are not well-supported. It’s also putting extreme pressure on teachers to make their curriculum and lesson plans accessible for parents (something that was not typically required until recent years and creates a lot of additional work.) The enhanced scrutiny this allows can also create problems, including changing what’s taught to thousands of students based on the opinion of a handful of folks with no curriculum training or experience.

However, none of this is written in stone. It’s not too late to mitigate the bad and enhance the good.

The only way to have a full understanding and transparency of the Parents’ Bill of Rights is if teachers are aware of how it impacts the district where they work. Staying connected with your school about student progress and joining together with other teachers in the district’s union can help you stay informed on how important legislation like the Parents Bill of Rights affects classrooms. With this knowledge, it will be easier to make smart decisions that ensure success for both students and educators alike.

The post What teachers need to know about the national Parents’ Bill of Rights Act appeared first on Truth For Teachers.

There are so many factors that have influenced the fact that reading a whole book as a class can end up being painful – time constraints due to testing in schools, learning loss from the pandemic that has made reading, in general, a struggle, and general lack of motivation within our students. As opposed to reading a full book in the classroom, excerpts can serve as an opportunity to better engage students and expose them to readings that vary in length, style and complexity.

If you are about to start a new unit and preparing to read a full book, see if you can possibly keep the theme of what you’re teaching and use reading excerpts around that theme. First, let’s consider why reading excerpts are beneficial for students.

Students have limited attention spans

The biggest concern that teachers in the classroom have right now is engaging students due to their limited attention span. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to keep students engaged in an entire lesson without feeling like you (the teacher) have to literally put on a full performance with multiple moving parts in order to keep students’ attention.

While increasing student attention spans is an entirely different subject in itself and there is no one solution to that at this time, imagine the pain that a student feels when they are forced to read an entire book that they may not understand or just don’t connect to. At least if you incorporate reading excerpts, it’s likely that the next passage or reading may at least engage them if they weren’t super interested in the last one. Regardless, the alternation of different texts can allow them to take their attention off of one reading and know that there will be another one coming up soon.

It allows students to read different literature and author styles

Some students become unmotivated in reading not because they don’t know how to read but because they don’t find interest in what they’re being forced to read. I was that type of student myself. I still remember being miserable in high school when I was forced to read Beowulf. No matter what I did, I just couldn’t find an interest in the text. I managed to deal with the text in class and just did the best I could on the assignments and passed.

Years later, I tried to read Beowulf again just to see if I would feel different about the text as a college student. I still abhorred the text when I read it as an adult, and something clicked in me as a teacher. I realized that not all texts are appropriate for all people, even those that are readers. I think that all English teachers should keep this in mind. When we force all students to read the same text and read the whole book, you will likely still have several students that will be unmotivated simply because of a lack of interest in the text.

Reading excerpts of books allows the student to also read a variety of different writing styles, which accommodates different students. Some writers have a style that is easier to understand while some writers have a style that is more complex and more appropriate for strong readers. When using excerpts, it’s important to vary up the style of the passages to acknowledge both reluctant and avid readers.

It helps with test preparation

When possible, I still try to give students opportunities to improve their test-taking skills. While the pandemic surely helped with encouraging testing companies to give students less pressure on some college admissions tests, public school systems seem to be testing even more than before to catch up on the lack of testing that was done during the pandemic. Truthfully, we don’t know what they will do with the data on testing at this point, but as long as tests are still being administered to students, I like to err on the side of caution and provide them with opportunities to succeed on those tests.

From looking at the workbooks that I use on test prep and sample tests that are provided for my district’s standardized test, I’m seeing that the majority of the reading done on ELA standardized tests is passages and excerpts from literature. What better way to prepare students for the structure of standardized tests than by incorporating excerpts in your own lessons?

How To Do It Effectively

If you are considering teaching with excerpts and think that it would be beneficial to your students, try it out! However, there are some things to keep in mind so that your plans are coherent and have a thematic element. As I continue to describe how to effectively teach with passages, I’ll give more details on how I recently taught a Sci-fi unit with excerpts.

Keep a theme going

Frame your excerpts around the curricular theme you are focusing on. If you’re ready to write a narrative, a great way to incorporate excerpts is to have students read excerpts from different memoirs/narratives to help them also see authors’ different styles of writing. Keeping a theme helps you have consistency and a connection in your readings.

When I taught the Sci-Fi unit, I decided to focus on dystopian fiction since our focus was on helping the student make a connection between the real world and what happens in fictional texts. Dystopian novels (old and new) are often realistic to some extent and discuss the worst-case-scenario of what can happen when government control or technological advancements get taken too far.

Once I knew that their essay would require them to compare one of the themes of the fictional texts to a non-fiction reading, I decided to focus on dystopian passages that would show the student different worlds created in fiction literature. This way, they would also be able to have a choice in which theme they would focus on within the essay.

We read passages from Fahrenheit 451, Hunger Games, and Divergent. I had two more passages I would have liked to use, but we ran out of time as the school year came to an end. This, however, is why teaching with passages can be beneficial. If you run out of time, you can typically still get your objectives and goals met without feeling upset that you didn’t get to finish reading a particular book.

Include background context with the passage to start off

Depending on where your passage starts, give the students a brief introduction to the text and some context to help them understand what the passage is about. It’s also helpful to give them information such as the author and publication date in case students are interested in reading the full book at their own leisure. That’s another plus with excerpts: it encourages students to read by giving them a small “taste” of different books. You will be delightfully surprised to find that a few students will ask you about some passages they found interesting.

When teaching the Sci-fi unit, I made an introduction sheet that I included before the text of each passage. It included a picture of the book cover, the book’s author and publication date, the “back of the book summary” as well as a small amount of text to discuss what has happened so far in the book (for when we read a passage that wasn’t the beginning of the book).

This helps the students figure out not only details on the book that they can use if they want to check it out at the library or get their own copy of the book, but it also prepares them for what we’ll be reading and where we will begin.

Keep activities that help them tie the texts together

Finally, be sure to incorporate activities in the lesson plan that tie the texts together. Since you’re likely doing a thematic lesson, it shouldn’t be hard to do this. You can put students in groups and ask them general questions (based on figurative language, plot elements, dialogue) and let them choose which excerpt they would like to explore. You could also do this after each excerpt to ensure that students are going back to the reading and exploring deeper parts of the text to help gauge comprehension.

As we read our Sci-fi passages, we completed a range of activities in between the readings and continued to tie them together both through independent activities and group work. When we first read Fahrenheit 451, our first assignment was a group activity where students identified different figurative language and summarized specific parts of the excerpt we had read (since Fahrenheit can be considered a complex read). By the time we were done with the next two excerpts, we were able to start giving students choice on which passage they did work on, and we could start building on comparing and contrasting the different texts and different plots.

As you continue to do more passages, you can start having activities that somehow tie the texts together or continue to require students to go back to previous readings (to reinforce learning and prevent them from forgetting a passage that they read). If you have control over the type of essay or writing task that students will complete, consider having them write or complete a project that compares/contrasts the passages or ties them together in some way.

The post 3 ways to teach with book excerpts instead of entire texts (and why this benefits students) appeared first on Truth For Teachers.

Since many of the students have been out of the classroom for over a year (yikes!) it will be so important to offer an appropriate balance between structured lesson plans and activities that help you build rapport with students. One way to achieve this is to use technology games and platforms that can be used for both learning and relationship-building.

Even before the pandemic, I’ve always been in pursuit of learning about ways to engage students without long periods of lecture. Now, after a long period of virtual teaching, I am even more passionate about exploring this. I’m finding that the main way to keep students fully engaged is to not only make the lesson itself interesting but to also use some type of online technological platform that helps display student performance in live time. It helps with accountability and also keeps the students stimulated. Here are my top five favorite online teaching platforms:

Nearpod

Many school districts have an account with Nearpod, which is an interactive teaching platform that allows teachers to deliver lessons for K-12 students in a varied and engaging way. With Nearpod, your lessons can range from an interactive field trip to the classic whiteboard drawing to a basic multiple-choice quiz or practice activity.

What makes Nearpod unique is that the teacher has the power to pace their lessons to their preference. For example, if you teach a “live” lesson, you can control what the students see on their screen and how long you stay on that particular question/slide. Videos and other materials can be embedded for either the class to see at the same time or at their own pace. And to top it all off, Nearpod still offers many professional built-in lessons on a range of subjects in the case that you don’t want to start from scratch.

Plus for Personalized/Blended Learning: You could essentially set up a small lesson on Nearpod for students and let them work at their preferred pace. The fact that you can use a variety of different materials (videos, drawing, slides, PDFs, interactive field trips, gamified questions) is what makes Nearpod such a well-rounded learning tool. Try using Nearpod to do getting-to-know-you activities for students that may still be a little shy and aren’t ready to do a lot of talking on the first day back to school. For students that don’t want to participate verbally, you could read their answers out loud (with their permission) to acknowledge what thoughts/information they have to add to the lesson. 

Remind

Imagine if you could contact all of the parents of your students at one time and tell them about your upcoming project for class? I hear your response right now….Can’t I send a mass email and do just that? Well imagine if you can send that message but it goes to your parents’ text messages and they can’t see your personal phone number? Well, that’s how Remind works.  Remind is a text-messaging-based app that allows you to send and receive messages by phone without revealing your personal cell phone number. The best part about it is that you can send private or mass messages and your parents or students can respond to you privately.

One awesome thing about Remind is that you can access it from your laptop to send longer messages. For example, I have students who message me on Remind to get detailed help on assignments. If they ask me something that might be a longer message, I can get on my laptop and type it faster. They will see it as a text message, but you have the ability to type from any device (tablet, laptop, or smartphone).

You can also send different types of attachments through Remind as mass messages. Just keep in mind that mass messages have a character limit but personal messages do not.

Plus for Personalized/Blended Learning: Remind is so valuable because it can be used as a community tool that reaches all students/parents at the same time but it can still be used for confidential, one-on-one communication. Although I would not recommend requiring a student to sign up for Remind, you could always give incentives for using Remind and use it in a way that makes it enjoyable for the student. 

If you use Remind, be consistent in using it so that students can understand its value. You could send short, motivational texts to students weekly or helpful academic tips on a regular basis. 

Make a separate account for parents so that you can update them on important events and assignments and also get in contact with them individually if you need to. If you do newsletters, cut back on paper by making them electronically and sending them out through Remind. This is also a great way to ensure that parents get important documentation that otherwise might not get to them if printed out. 

Also, don’t forget that you can manually invite parents (so you don’t have to depend on the student to ask their parent to sign up). At the beginning of the school year, I send all parents an invite by entering their contact information in the system. I allow students to sign up while in class and keep my codes on the board. 

Gimkit

I decided not to discuss Kahoot for now because so many of us are familiar with it. However, there is another interactive “gaming” type of learning tool out there that is like Kahoot on steroids, and it’s called Gimkit. Gimkit was created by a young man who had grown bored of Kahoot and wanted to make a learning game that worked in a different way.

I’m not sure exactly how long Gimkit has been around, but I started using it in 2019 when I was teaching in Georgia. I had a student that requested that I give it a try when we were reviewing literary elements and figurative language. The one caveat that must be mentioned before I get you all excited is that unlike Kahoot, Gimkit is not free. Right now, in order to use it, you need to subscribe to a monthly subscription that costs between $7 – $8 a month. You do get a free trial to test it out to see if you like it. After I did the trial, my students were so in love with Gimkit that I had to keep it around.

What makes Gimkit different from Kahoot is that students essentially work independently and at their own pace. Oh, and the kicker: it’s a money game. So, you start students off with a certain amount of money. As students start the game, they will see multiple-choice questions that are presented in a stream. As they answer the questions correctly, they get money; however, when they get the answer incorrect, they lose money. As the student accumulates money, they can then spend that money in different ways. They can buy “multipliers” which will ultimately increase the amount of money they make for each correct answer. They can also buy power-ups which can help them “freeze” a classmate’s screen (so they can’t answer questions for a few seconds), decrease a classmate’s money, or even change the music that is playing during the game. And that only scratches the surface.

Since I’ve purchased the subscription, I’ve seen Gimkit constantly evolving and I love the personalized messages that I get from the creator, “Josh from Gimkit.” They often have different game themes, such as Humans Vs. Zombies during Halloween, and they even did an Among Us version of Gimkit based on the popular video game. Each game has a leaderboard that can be shown on the teacher’s screen to show student progress.

Gimkit is especially helpful if you are focused on memorization and drilling often needed for vocabulary words.

Plus for Personalized/Blended Learning: Gimit gives students the chance to multitask in a way that no learning tool does right now. While Kahoot still has its place (and I still play it with my students regularly), many students need a different type of stimulation that goes beyond selecting an answer quicker than the rest of the class. Gimkit takes a much more personalized – but still gaming – approach. While the student answers the stream of questions at their own pace, they still have a menu that they need to use in order to get the power-ups, multipliers, and freeze/blur options. It’s all a strategy game that determines how they can manage their time between answering questions and maximing their money and resources in the game. 

Students cannot win the game if they simply answer the questions correctly but don’t use the power-ups, and if the rules of the game are not explained appropriately, some students may shut down and refuse to play. Unlike Kahoot, Gimkit is a layered game that has many working parts. 

I recommend that teachers using Gimit play it a few times with their students to understand how it works or have a student that is good at the game walk around the classroom and help others. I just love the idea of students having a choice of what we can play when we gamify our lessons.

Live Docs/Slides

Using the live features on Google Slides and Docs is so much more helpful and convenient in the virtual classroom. Most educators are very familiar with Google Docs and Slides, but one particular feature that I’ve been having a lot of fun with is the live feature. When I say live feature, I’m talking about making a document or slide editable so that everyone can make changes at the same time.

This could be used for actual work assignments or for rapport-building exercises for students. I recently used them for both. When we started working on our research paper, I had students go into a live document and try to build a claim for their argument. While they worked on that, my co-teacher and I looked at their claims and gave them feedback. As we gave feedback, I was pleasantly surprised at how many of my normally reluctant students dived in because they wanted to get instant feedback. I think it was much more productive than having them submit a claim as an assignment that would ultimately take me several days to grade and give feedback on.

I’m also planning to use Live Google Slides to make a virtual yearbook for my students from now on. I’ve always been a teacher that enjoyed having pictures of my students even when we were all in the classroom together. After the pandemic, I promised myself I would always make more of an effort to get pictures of my students and make an electronic yearbook of my classes.

Last school year, I used my AP students to make my first attempt at a class yearbook. When I asked students how they would suggest that we put together our yearbook, I had a few students suggest that we set up a live editable Google Slide that they could go in and submit pictures to as well as adjust the layout on their own. I thought this was such a cool idea! Again, this gave students the chance to personalize their work. They picked their own pictures and made adjustments to the slides in the way they felt most comfortable with.

Plus for Personalized/Blended Learning: Live documents can be used for many things as long as you and the student are comfortable sharing what is being typed in the document. You could also use it for quick fun questions. For example, you could ask students something simple like “Who is the funniest member of your family, and why?” Make a box beside their response and you could comment on their response in live time or have other students comment back to them in live time. 

Live documents also are also great for formative assignments similar to the claim assignment I was talking about earlier. A difficult concept to a student may become easier to digest or understand when they are able to see what their peers are thinking about. 

The post Need an easier way to personalize learning & differentiate lessons? Try these 4 tools. appeared first on Truth For Teachers.