Teachers are always looking for ways to engage their students, especially in our new online environment. Here’s 3 simply effective resources I’ve used myself, broken up into 3 categories: Great Ideas, Teacher PD, and Online Tools. Enjoy exploring our first weekly edition of Teacher Tips Thursday.
I got this idea from fellow TCDSB educator Merle Gonsalvez. It’s captured in this tweet.
What a paradigm shift for students. Simple with the potential to be extremely effective and will definitely create a more caring and respectful class environment.
I was recently interviewed on the High Performing Educator podcast. Youth speaker Sam Demma has a diverse array of guest from teachers, administrators, guidance councillors and student council moderators.
It’s like picking the brain of some of our country’s most innovative and creative educators. A great way to get new ideas you can implement with your own students.
A perfect listen while driving in the car or folding laundry!
Know an awesome educator that should be featured? Email info@samdemma.com.
Padlet is an online tool that can be used in person or face-to-face.Think of it as a virtual cork board where students can pin up an electronic post-it note. Here’s an example where I’ve used it at event with 100 students council members.
Students can:
- Post a comment
- Like or rank other students’ post
- Add a comment to another student’s post
Here are other designs you can use.
There are multiple ways to use Padlet. Some of the ways I’ve used it are as follows:
- While watching a movie or video, have students jot down their thoughts and ideas.
- I had a student ill and absent from class so I made a padlet for that student and classmates wrote a personal get well message.
- Brainstorming an idea and other students can read, comment, and rank their peer’s ideas.
- During a guest speaker, students wrote down their thoughts and questions.
- During a staff meeting, we were mandated to watch a safety video, so we used padlet during the video to collect questions and ideas.
Notes:
- Free to sign up. Paid account opens more features.
- Profanity filter can be turned on and off if you are worried participants may type inappropriate words.
- Post approval can be turned on if you want to preview each post prior to publishing.
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Here’s another example I created as an online guest speaker for the TCDSB virtual school. The topic was equity. After the lesson I asked the students to write their thoughts.
About the author:
Michael Consul is resource teacher at the Toronto Catholic District School Board in the Catholic Student Leadership department. Follow him on twitter @MikeCLeadership
Teacher Tips Thursday is brought to you by:
Teachers meet Teachers. A group of educators who’s motto is “Changing Education by fuelling those who run it!”
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UPCOMING TMT EVENTS:
I hope you enjoyed our first weekly edition of Teacher Tips Thursday. Got a resource, idea, or PD opportunity you want to share? Email stefanie.lenzo@tcdsb.org.
Catholic Student Leadership 
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