Speaker 1: So I wanted to record another video that this one's to talk about different strategies that you can put in place to make sure that you're keeping track of what students are doing and if they need help and how much time you spend with each one of them. So in class I use a combination of a timer, a spreadsheet, and a student-centered response and education system. So let me explain what that is. So first of all when I assign an assignment I always start a timer and I have these timers sitting on my desk for this. One of them is just a total amount of time that I'm giving your students to do that assignment. I'll call that my limit timer and then I have a focus timer where I spend a little bit of time per section of that assignment and when the focus timer goes off I say something to my students. So for example I'll say like, hi guys five minutes went by you should be done with the introduction piece by now. Let's move on to the activity number one. If you're not done with that you should be done with the introduction piece by now. Let's move on to the introduction yet. Let's get moving so that you can you can make sure you finish this activity by the end of the day. Doing things like this helps move the students and keep them centered on what they need to do. It kind of wakes them up if they're off task, puts a little bit of pressure on them to deliver right. So timers, very important one of the things that I do. And I also have a third timer and this is more of a stopwatch. What I do with this is I start the stopwatch the moment I start helping a student. And I do this because although I don't want to like have pressure to stop helping the student, I want to give them the time that they want I remember that I have other students and so I do kind of have to try not to spend too long with only one student and then not pay attention to the rest of the class. But I'll have exceptions and times where the student really needs me I will forget about the stopwatch, but I do always generally start a stopwatch because I want to make sure that I don't spend too long with one student. So, If I'm seeing a stopwatch, I've been here for five minutes, I don't know what's going on with the rest of my room, and that kind of worries me, right? Even the best multitasking teacher has trouble to pay attention to everybody else if you're really, really focused in one student. And sometimes you have to. Sometimes you have to do pull-out groups. Sometimes you have to do work one-on-one. And you have to trust that the rest of your team is trained to work on their own. But just like that student needed help, others probably do as well. So if you want to be doing checks for understanding on a routine basis, using a third-timer that's just for yourself to make sure that you're not spending too long with one cause is important. Then there's also something that you have to use to track your investments. So I have usually a spreadsheet, either a physical one or a computer or a tablet. And what I will do is when I talk to a student, I'll put a little dot next to their name. When I... As soon as I ask a question, I'll put a different color dot on their name. If I have to do any kind of interaction that I want to track, whether it's like student is off task or student is off camera, in the case of online or student was unresponsive, disrespect, behavioral issues, I have different colors on my spreadsheet to just... I just press a button and it automatically tags and adds a score to that column. And it also tracks which date and time. That imprint took place. So that way I keep a record of all the changes and all the different interactions that I have with the student. And it's just a quick tap. And back in the day, it used to be a bit more complicated. I used to use hash marks. But now that I have a tablet and a spreadsheet, it's a lot easier to manage that and collect data on the fly about these interactions that I have with the students. And I scan over my interaction sheet for today. Because... I usually have a day sheet that aggregates into an average sheet. And if you're interested in how this works, I am happy to share my sheet with you. I'll try to put a sample in the description of this video so that you can see how it looks like. But on my daily sheet, I can glance over and see, oh, I haven't really talked to this student yet. Let me go check on them. So this is a really good way to keep track of... Whether I'm neglecting someone versus somebody else. Now, sometimes I know that I can leave that student alone. There's a very independent learner. They're usually really good in the past. And so I don't need to necessarily go check on them, especially if they're not asking me for help. But I do generally try to prioritize certain students over others. But I also try to spread a love, so to speak. Right? And I know the ones that I need to prioritize and spend more time with. And I give them preferential seating. And in the case of online instruction, I put it on a GoGuardian group that is at the top of my monitoring screen so that I can glance at them often to make sure that they're staying on task and doing what they need to do. The third piece is the student-based response or information system that I generate. And whether this is in a physical classroom or online, what I use is a color-coding system where the students use flags to generate reactions. Or in Zoom or Google Meets, they would just put, for example, a symbol to indicate where they're at. So, for example, I'll say, if you are working on today's task, I want you to put a rad reaction up. Or if you're working on a task from a previous class, you're doing some catch-up work because you can't really do today's task without finishing that one first, I want you to put the slow-down reaction because you're a little bit behind and you want me to slow down. I don't know if I can actually slow down for you, but I'll try my best, especially if there's too many people in the slowdown. If there's too many people in the slowdown reaction, I'll consider doing that. There's a pace that I need to keep, but there's also a consideration of how much of my student is learning. And I usually think about, like, are they needing me to slow down because they're having difficulties or because they're having behavioral difficulties that I have to address in a different way. So it all depends, right? But either way, I'm not going to drag my classroom across the year and make them learn nothing. So I do tend to slow down if they need to. Maybe I will use a green reaction. They're done with today's work and they're working on either practice work or some extension work or engagement work that they're passionate about or something like that that goes beyond what I actually assigned for the day. Maybe they use a speed-up reaction if they're done even with that or if they need my attention for something. I might have a question mark reaction, which is to call my attention. And in person, these are different flags that they pull from a little deck of cars that's sitting on top of their, their seat, and they lift the car and put it on the flag holder. And I bought these little flag holders online. So if a student needs help, they might have the flag indicators of what task they're working on and then a flag indicator for their help. And if they laze that flag, I would try to go to them and help them. Now, in more recent years, even in the live classroom, I actually use a cue system where the student, when they actually use that interaction on the meet and they call me. And as soon as they call me, they get put in line for help. And so that way, I don't have to neglect anyone. And it kind of goes in order of request, or the request could be upgraded if the student has a priority request, or if they have a special need. These things get automatically prioritized by the app. So it's kind of awesome to keep track of that. Okay. Keep track of your students' needs in the room and who needs the attention. And it's really cool, too, because if you use this app, they can actually put the what is their question and other students can upvote it if they have the same question. And that way, they can be grouped together in a pull-out group, and I can pull them together and actually work through all of them at once in this up-weighted question. So it's a classroom management system that allows me to generate that data. And so I really... I really love using that. So even if the kids are all in the same room, I still have them log in if they have Chromebooks on this meeting or app so that I can use this management system. And I also like them to have me in the meeting anyways, because they can send me messages, and then I can talk to them and see that message in private and use it as a management thing as well so that nobody else needs to know that we're talking. So even though it's an in-person class... I used to be passing out post-its, right, to talk to students in private without anybody noticing that I'm talking to them, if I had to do a correction, now I just use a message. So it's an easier way to streamline the communication. So this task-based reaction system allows me to also prioritize and monitor the students so that I don't do this. And so as my time is going off, if I don't have a student that actually needs help or not working with anybody in particular, I am doing this. So I'm doing this. I'm doing the rounds, right? I'm looking... If I'm online, I'm looking at GoGuardian. I am scanning student by student. I'm seeing what they're doing. I'm seeing if what they're currently working on is possibly something that they need help with, or if it's in the physical classroom, I'm walking around to do the same thing. And I will have these scaffolds prepared ahead of time that are like these nets that I throw at the student if I see them fall, right? So they're trying to do this acrobatic stuff. It's hard for them. They're challenging themselves, trying to do something difficult. And if I see that they're getting... I'm stuck. I throw the net before it's too late so they don't get hurt, so they feel cushioned, so they feel supported. So if I notice a student is having trouble with something, I will pull my scaffold and give it to them, anticipate their need so that they feel like, oh, man, this guy is always there for me. And I want them to feel that way. So this is what I want to do if I have the time and I'm not working with someone. I am always scanning for an opportunity to give somebody a scaffold. You can also have these scaffolds ready ahead of time. And if you're using like a meeting or app or you have a folder, what you can have is the student click on the link and get the scaffold automatically on demand if they need it. I'd like to do that, but I also don't because sometimes the students will get the help even when they don't need it. And then they don't challenge themselves. And then they're not in that zone of proximal development, right? I want them to be... I want it to be hard for them. It doesn't need to be easy. So I want them to challenge themselves. And some students... Some students will just go for the help before they really try. And so I try not to have the file open unless I am doing a pull-out group or I'm working with a student one-on-one and I'm looking at my clock and it's going to take a long time. I might activate the help document and make it available publicly so that anybody can use it, right? But if I prefer doing it is have the document in private and pull the link and send it to the student as soon as I notice that they need it. And that can be a cover support. So all my... All my assignments as I develop my lessons throughout the year get these anticipation, misconception, extra help guides ready to go so that I can send it to them the moment they need it. And if I don't have something like that, I will create one on the fly and just send the student a message. But what I notice is that if I send that student a message, there's probably going to be another student down the line or even in the same classroom at the same time that's going to need the same message. So that I save the message. And that's how I'm building my anticipation guides over the years. I also try ahead of time to think about what are some of the misconceptions they're likely to face. And I deal with that on the document ahead of time. So what that looks like is a document that has multiple just columns and the rows. And I create bookmarks to each section of the document. And then there's a master page. An index with the typical question. And if the student clicks on their question, it goes to the answer, right? But it's almost like a frequently asked question document, right, that anticipates their needs. So these are some of the tools that I put in place to make sure that the students feel supported, paid attention to, to route the class. I forgot to mention a couple things, which is that I try, to make it go for myself, that in the focus timer, the second timer that I mentioned earlier in the video, let's say I give them 10 minutes to do that section. I will try to interact with as many students as I can in that 10-minute window unless I am doing a special support event, right, when I'm pulling out a single student or a group of students that have the same issue on the queue or that I noticed. By the way, I don't necessarily just respond to the queue. If I'm doing my research. And I noticed that three or four people have the same misconception, and I don't have a FAQ ready to go for it, or the FAQ is not necessarily going to help them. And I feel that if there's not for that, I will pull them into a breakout room in the case of online instruction or a table, a pullout table in my room and say, okay, you, you, you, and you, you need help with the same thing. Let's talk about this right now. And then I'll do some subquotient questioning and guide them so that when they go back to their seats, they know what to do. They know what they're doing already, right? So the other thing I was going to say is that I do try to always have these pullouts on a regular basis. So even if it is on the fly or if after they turn in their work, I notice patterns in a certain students that have certain problems and some of the misconceptions on the next class, I'll plan a pullout loop and pull students out. Okay. Okay. Okay. So that's, that's the plan. That's the plan. So I'm going to give the class a little bit of time to think about it. So I'm going to give the class a little bit of time to think about it. Now for these planned pullout groups, I will try to give the rest of the class an alternative or other assessment or some catch up time or some reading time or some content access time, something else that they can do or some enrichment time while I do the pullout group. Because I don't want to be distracted from the pullout group if it's a planned pullout because that's an intervention, right? And if you're, if my school has SDL or student directed learning or a period where the student is not able to do it, where that's designed for me to meet with students, like office hours or something like that, then I might sometimes do the pullout then so that I don't have to do it in class and then I can continue to be available for my rounds. And so these are some ideas of what I can do to manage student involvement throughout the class, help pace the students, help time myself, help engage the students, help make them feel they're supported, prepare scaffolds ahead of time to catch them in case they're falling, create a help queue, do my rounds, do pullout groups or in special interventions so that all my students feel supported. So this is why I can't really plan doing class or grade because that's my job as a teacher. I want them to be in the center of the work. I want them to be doing the inquiry, the discovery, the discussions, and I'm just there to facilitate, right? So I will lecture very little, but I will work very hard. That's kind of my style. And how I do interventions in my room. I hope that's helpful, and I'll see you the next time. Until then, don't do anything that will not make your mom proud.