week 9: Google Classroom app student selector

I’ve found myself this week getting really annoyed with the decreasing engagement and participation from kids during virtual learning. Virtual learning was a huge adjustment this fall and I don’t think I set a strong expectation for engagement just due to feeling everything out and unsure what was best practice. I’ve learned there is a fine line to walk when calling on kids in class. Ideally, they would unmute immediately and respond outloud. But in reality, students take forever to respond and then other kids answer in the chat while you are waiting for the student called on. Or the student called on has walked away from their computer and the teacher is unaware. It’s just frustrating and sometimes I feel like it’s not worth the time to call on kids to answer questions.

I’ve recognized one way to increase student accountability and participation is by calling on kids more frequently and randomly. I am not good at “randomly” selecting students. Especially in virtual learning, I know I would be much more inclined to pick a student I’m confident will respond and tempted to not call on students who are less engaged. The google classroom app has a neat student selector feature that shuffles the enrolled classroom students. It also allows the teacher to select when the student is absent or to call on them later. I’ve tried this week to use the student selector more frequently. I review with students the expectation when called on is to unmute promptly and answer. I remind them that if they don’t know the answer they can tell me that and that is fine. But if they don’t respond, I am unsure if they are at their computer.