Google Forms and Long-Distance Learning

When distance learning began in March of this year, I knew I was going to have to start thinking and teaching differently than I was used to. What I didn't realize, was just how challenging that would be. I'm not the teacher who can plan step by step lessons days in advance. I have objectives and ideas and directions I want my students to travel, but overall I try to just light a spark and see where the class discussion and activities take us. 

This works in my classroom, where I have physically set up the room to encourage student-led group and partner work. In the not so physical space of "online learning" however, this does not translate well. Especially considering the fact that I was not able to work synchronously at any point with students through video meetups. 

In the classroom, I am constantly doing informal assessments and check-ins with students. With distance learning, I still wanted to assess kids and give feedback but I needed a more formal and organized method of doing so. I turned to Google Forms and I made "quizzes" - some traditional, and others that were fun surveys. Either way, I learned a lot about this google feature and ways to streamline it to more effectively assess students. 

Here are some tips and tricks I created - I posted a few screenshots but you can view the full slideshow here!

**Caveat: google forms is not the only means of assessing - this is just a really quick and easy "dipstick" to informally check in on kids in the online world**