Using Socrative to Connect the Learning and Develop Understanding

I have been using Socrative for two years. For the most part this has primarily been to Turn Students into Teachers by getting them to make quizzes and then test each other using them, this was primarily a type of plenary for the end of the lesson. However, I have recently developed my use of this app to use it more at the start of the lesson and to show progression in the students' understanding.

This blog post features both an explanation from me and a video to show the activity I am describing taking place.

My GCSE class complete a source question

For the last couple of months I have being using the short answer function on Socrative. This allows students to respond to a question and then vote on the responses showing which answer they feel to be the best. Recently, during the revision season I have developed this further using Socrative to both connect the learning and allow the students to develop their understanding.

Are you surprised by this source?

At the start of the lesson I have projected a source up on to the board along with a question and asked the students to answer the question using Socrative (see the picture). Individually they complete the question. I have found that this has engaged the students as soon as they have entered the room and got the lesson started very quickly. Whilst they are completing this activity I can set up the rest of the lesson or take the register.

I then ask the students to submit their answers to Socrative. Some of the students write their answers in their notes app as Socrative can be a bit clumsy and it is easy to send your answer in before you are ready to.

Once all the entries have been submitted I then send the entries back to the students using the app. Once they have received entries from the whole class the students then have two tasks to complete:

1. Make a list of the points you have not included: the students have to look through the other entries from the rest of the class and note down the points that others have made that they have not. This acts as a kind of mini-plenary as the students have to reflect on their own responses and work out how to improve them. For some it might be simply facts and figures that they have missed out on. For others it may be more of a style issue. 
2. Vote for the three best answers: Socrative allows the students to vote on the best answers (to vote more than once simply ask the students to log out and back into the app). My current GCSE class have been especially good it picking out the best responses. The votes are sent back to my iPad / PC. The entries are completely anonymous so the students are forced to judge the quality of the answer and can't just vote for their mates.

To finish the activity I ask students, at random, to explain a point that they have picked up from looking at other students' responses. In the video below you can hear Lucas explain how he would improve his answer based on what he has read from his peers. This is obviously another mini-plenary as it allows the students to explain how they would improve their answer. This alternatively can be done as a Kagan style activity in pairs.

Finally, I read out the answers that got the most votes and the winners stand up. We have no idea who they will be. This is always a good moment as the students know it was the quality of their answer that got them the votes. You would expect that it is the same students who would get the votes but this is not my experience as a real mix of students end up winning.

Below is a video documenting what happened on one occasion when we did this activity:

 

Reflections

• This activity really gets the lesson going as the students are working straight away and is good for  pace. 
• It can be used as both a starter to connect the learning or as an activity in its own right depending on the context of the topic. In this case as it was revision I used it as a starter and something to get the students thinking about teenagers in the 1960s which developed in the rest of the lesson.
• The anonymous nature of the activity is great as it makes the students work do the talking.
• The students enjoy it and are always engaged by it, I hope that this came across in the video.
• It allows the students to develop their ideas in a supportive way. I am not just looking for the best answers but I am also looking for the students who can explain how they would improve their work.
• It is a great tool for both revision and practicing exam technique.

The students really enjoy this activity, they enjoy seeing whose work is the winner and they are able to explain how they would improve their own work showing both progress and a developing understanding of the topic/skill.

Below are the thoughts of some of my GCSE students:

Student Led Learning - The Power of YouTube

A students watches another group's video and completes her worksheet

Today my lesson was completely student led. My GCSE students produced videos on one aspect of Intolerance in 1920s USA, having produced the videos they then watched each others videos and filled in a large A3 sheet on the topic.

Whilst they worked on competing the sheet they had the advantage of working completely at their own pace (with their headphones in) and I was free to move around the room and offer individual support and advice where it was needed.

This is a similar activity to one where you would get the students to create presentations and then present them to the whole class. The difference here is that the use of YouTube allows the students watching the presentations to work at their own pace and rewind where necessary without holding the whole class up. Learning becomes more personalised.

The students had a lesson to research and prepare their videos and then about 40 minutes of the next lesson to complete the video and upload it to Edmodo so all the students in the class could watch it. They then spent the last 20 minutes of the second lesson and their homework completing the table by watching each others videos.

Each group had to showcase what they had learned in a video which answered the four questions I had set for their topic.

The A3 sheet that I created that all students had to complete.

The students were told that they had to make their work both memorable and filled with information. As this was the first time the students had completed this type of activity I created the questions that needed answering. When I do this later in the year I will get the students to create their own questions and thus put more of the emphasis on them.

The students led the learning and I was able to support those students that needed it. These topics vary in difficulty which allowed me to differentiate and pick groups relative to the difficulty of the topic. By having to explain to others and teach their peers in this way all of the students deepened their own understanding.

After they had completed the sheet the students had to think of two or three questions they still wanted answering and we discussed those in the next lesson. The aim was for them to pick 'bigger' questions than just those on the sheet.

PowerPoint slides were included by all groups to add detail.

Aims

• By making the work student led it meant that they had to take responsibility for it and this encouraged them to be independent. 

• It encouraged the students to be creative. I explained that they needed to make it memorable but also genuinely informative and the results were interesting. This hopefully made the work more memorable for both the students making the videos and those watching it.

• It allowed me to give help where it was needed and not be 'tied down' by having to 'give' the lesson.

• It was a great method to showcase teamwork and leadership.

Reflections
• The students were engaged throughout the series of lessons.
• The resulting videos were really creative and informative. My concern is always that the students will make something fun and amusing but not produce a video that actually aids learning. This was proven wrong as all the videos were tightly focused around the information and all were memorable as well as explaining key content.
• This type of activity always allows students to shine. This occasion was no exception. The video on the right is one of my students singing about the 'Red Scare' of the 1920s.

A student watches a court scene from the 'Monkey Trial'

• It was obvious from the subsequent lesson that the students had understood a great deal about the topic of Intolerance. They asked really thought provoking questions that showed both a deep level of understanding and a genuine engagement in the topic.

I am a big believer in using technology in this way. The sight of all my students working at their own pace, with their headphones in, is something to behold. It frees me up to address any problems of understanding.

That said even if you don't have 1-1 iPads like we do @Rossett you can still complete this type of activity, as I have in the past, setting the watching of each others videos as homework.

Reflections from the first week of 1-1 iPads @Rossett

At Rossett we have had 1-1 iPad scheme running for two weeks. That said it is only this last week that I have really felt that they are part of my classroom. Every student does not own an iPad and I have to book about 5 for most lessons. With that done I am effectively teaching in a school with 1-1 iPads.

Has this completely transformed my classroom. No I guess not. But that could be down to the fact that we have had iPads in school for a year, they just haven't been 1-1. This week I marked a GCSE mock exam and used YouTube (and ExplainEverything) to give my feedback. The students used my video generated content, in individual ways, to produce AfL targets (see previous post). I have been doing this for a year and 1-1 didn't change that.

That said I have already noticed that my teaching has changed.

Ebooks
My head of history has invested in some ebooks in PDF form that we have emailed to KS3. This has already altered how I set homework. Using apps like Popplet I have asked students to screenshot some content and make sense of it. This couldn't have been done before. As time passes I can see the online development of 'books' being used in very different ways.

Edmodo
I have now been able to use Edmodo in lessons. This week year 7 have been working on medieval towns. We play a game which necessitates the students keeping a town diary. The students completed the diary on the iPads (using notes or pages) and then pasted their work into an assignment on Edmodo. I then marked their work, offered a target, and the students then developed and improved their diaries and class work. This was all done 'paperless' within Edmodo. I can see a lot of lesson work being completed in this way in the future. Marking on Edmodo is simple and with some pre-written targets pretty quick.

Becoming an 'ICT' teacher
This is a big change that has occurred in my classroom. I have used Socrative, Edmodo, iMovie, Popplet and keynote/pages this week. My belief was that the students would be able to work these apps. This has not been the case. This has led to me having to become a pretty proficient 'ICT' teacher. I have always been 'good' with technology and I am thankful that I was given an iPad a year before the students. As this develops the students will become more proficient but at the moment the students need support with this. This has undoubtedly developed me as a teacher and has made me more confident in a computer room.

Emailing
Students having their email accounts on their iPads (or being able to access them on the school owned ones) has given me a great tool to share content. No longer do we need to have the work displayed on the board. This has allowed for increased de-facto personalisation of the lesson, something the iPads are brilliant for. We don't all need to work at the same rate and in the same way.

Engagement
The wider availability of this technology has allowed for greater excitement around school. "Are we using iPads in this lesson?" Has become a very common question. I'd have liked to think that students were already excited by the prospect of my history lessons but my use of iPads has certainly taken this to another level.

Differentiation
I love Popplet and YouTube and they are tools I like to use myself when learning. Obviously, now I can embed them into my teaching much more widely which has allowed me to differentiate much more easily. I remember last year filming myself reading an extract from 'Birdsong' to make the text more accessible. It went down a storm with all sets especially the bottom ones. I did as a bit of a gimmick to put it on a level playing field with Blackadder which we were comparing it with. The impact was much greater than that. iPads have the function to read out any text and, whilst it obviously won't be as good as a video of me, I think there is a lot of scope with this.

Obviously there are a lot of challenges with the 1-1 approach but it feels like a natural progression for me as we have had bootable iPads for a while now.

I will need to decide what to keep and remember that my students are working towards written exams.

Obviously, the initial excitement will drop as iPads become the norm. Or will it? Students always look forward to doing things they enjoy.

I love the possibilities that this approach to education brings. After only one real week of teaching I can see the impact. I am very fortunate to work in such a forward thinking school. I believe that our students are lucky to learn in an environment with so many possibilities. I would urge anyone in education to give this idea some serious thought.

I wrote this post on my iPhone on a busy delayed train. I am about to tweet it to 1,238 followers. 18 months ago I didn't have a blog or any followers. Two weeks ago we didn't have 1-1 iPads. Think where we will be in 18 months.

Below are a selection of photos from this week in my classroom @Rossett. All these photos are real they are not staged.