I have a dirty secret most people don't suspect when they see my theatre degree hanging on the wall. My secret is this: I love spreadsheets. A lot. I come from a long line of squarely German, logic-loving, accountants. That's how much I like spreadsheets. And graphs? Pie charts? Is love too strong a word to use twice? Needless to say, I have been the head cheerleader on Team Forms for quite a while.
One of my favorite, simplest uses for Forms is the class roster. I spent a few years (and hours) meticulously typing my five class rosters into Docs. Finally someone showed me how to put that work on the kids, instead of me! Now I just ask them to fill in this form at the beginning of the year, and I have a printable roster to use for everything from seating charts to grade sheets.
I also use Forms for end-of-class reflections, similar to an exit ticket. These reflections are a crucial part of project-based learning, and they let me quickly gauge how my students are coming along with their work. They take minimal time for me to prepare (like, seconds) and serve as an efficient way to read through many responses in one sitting.
Forms come in handy for working with colleagues, too. Last year, in a fit of I'm-going-to-do-something-about-it regarding vertical articulation (read: lack thereof), I sent a form out to our district's freshman English teachers. My goal was to get some guidance for how to best prepare SMS eighth graders for high school. In a perfect world, both the high school teachers and I would have built-in time to our work day to sit together and talk. However, we don't- and I know they're busy. Forms provided an efficient way to ask some pointed questions, both open-ended and multiple choice, so that the "conversation" wouldn't take too much of their time, and so that I could easily store and sort their responses. I've also sent out Forms as short surveys to my team of 8th grade teachers, for informal votes on student awards and meeting topics.
Forms also played a significant role in my action research earlier this school year. I used the new-ish "Quiz" function of Forms to collect pre- and post- data, to see what content my students learned after reading together as a class. Forms allowed me to easily sort my data to reflect outcomes as a whole, and based on certain groups of students. I used this data for my own purposes, but now I have hopes of employing a pre- and post- test routine for my students' benefit. In a recent training, author Michael McDowell explained the importance of students understanding where they are in their learning. I'm planning on giving a students a Forms pre-test to show them where their "learning gaps" are, and a second test a few weeks later to show how far they've come, and where they still need to go. Forms is an ideal tool for these kinds of assessments because of how easily I can show students pie graphs that reflect how they did, class-wide, on certain questions.
So, my secret's out. I'm a woman of letters... but boy do I love my numbers.
One of my favorite, simplest uses for Forms is the class roster. I spent a few years (and hours) meticulously typing my five class rosters into Docs. Finally someone showed me how to put that work on the kids, instead of me! Now I just ask them to fill in this form at the beginning of the year, and I have a printable roster to use for everything from seating charts to grade sheets.
I also use Forms for end-of-class reflections, similar to an exit ticket. These reflections are a crucial part of project-based learning, and they let me quickly gauge how my students are coming along with their work. They take minimal time for me to prepare (like, seconds) and serve as an efficient way to read through many responses in one sitting.
Forms come in handy for working with colleagues, too. Last year, in a fit of I'm-going-to-do-something-about-it regarding vertical articulation (read: lack thereof), I sent a form out to our district's freshman English teachers. My goal was to get some guidance for how to best prepare SMS eighth graders for high school. In a perfect world, both the high school teachers and I would have built-in time to our work day to sit together and talk. However, we don't- and I know they're busy. Forms provided an efficient way to ask some pointed questions, both open-ended and multiple choice, so that the "conversation" wouldn't take too much of their time, and so that I could easily store and sort their responses. I've also sent out Forms as short surveys to my team of 8th grade teachers, for informal votes on student awards and meeting topics.
Forms also played a significant role in my action research earlier this school year. I used the new-ish "Quiz" function of Forms to collect pre- and post- data, to see what content my students learned after reading together as a class. Forms allowed me to easily sort my data to reflect outcomes as a whole, and based on certain groups of students. I used this data for my own purposes, but now I have hopes of employing a pre- and post- test routine for my students' benefit. In a recent training, author Michael McDowell explained the importance of students understanding where they are in their learning. I'm planning on giving a students a Forms pre-test to show them where their "learning gaps" are, and a second test a few weeks later to show how far they've come, and where they still need to go. Forms is an ideal tool for these kinds of assessments because of how easily I can show students pie graphs that reflect how they did, class-wide, on certain questions.
So, my secret's out. I'm a woman of letters... but boy do I love my numbers.