In a world where education is constantly evolving, the need for innovative tools that ignite students’ creativity and passion for learning is more important than ever.

Night Zookeeper, an interactive online platform, is revolutionizing the way teachers inspire imagination in their classrooms.

In this post, we will explore how Night Zookeeper can foster creativity in the classroom.

Unleashing Creativity in the Classroom: How Night Zookeeper Sparks Students’ Imagination

What is Night Zookeeper?

Night Zookeeper is an educational online program for children aged 6 to 12+ (Grades 1 to 6) that uses gamified learning to help them develop reading and writing skills.

It offers a full language arts curriculum while transforming “boring school work” into fun and engaging games, challenges, interactive lessons, and collaborative projects – children often don’t even realize they’re working!

Night Zookeeper also provides a safe space for all children, including awesome community and blog pages which they’re free to explore and use to further improve their reading and writing skills.

A team of highly qualified tutors reviews all content shared within the program.

Are you ready to make reading and writing fantastically fun for your students?

*Related: 3 Essential Guides for Teachers: Adapting Instruction to Every Student Ability

At its core, Night Zookeeper is designed to make learning fun and engaging. The platform revolves around a captivating world where students create and interact with magical animals, embark on quests, and engage in creative writing challenges. It’s this blend of storytelling and interactive gameplay that captures the imagination of young minds, making them excited about learning.

One of the most significant ways Night Zookeeper sparks creativity is through its focus on creative writing. Students are encouraged to write stories, poems, and reports about their unique magical animals. This not only helps improve their writing skills but also allows them to express themselves in a safe, imaginative environment. As they create their narratives, they learn the power of language and storytelling, skills vital in all areas of education and life.

Another aspect where Night Zookeeper shines is in its ability to personalize learning. Every student’s journey is unique, with the platform adapting to their specific learning pace and style. This personalized approach ensures that students remain engaged and motivated, as tasks are neither too easy nor too challenging. It’s in this tailored learning environment that creativity flourishes – students feel confident to explore, make mistakes, and learn from them, which is essential for creative growth.

*Related: Say Hello to FigJam: Your Jamboard Alternative with Endless Possibilities

Check out Night Zookeeper’s downloadable learning resources, great for getting your child excited about reading & writing.

Night Zookeeper for Schools and Teachers

Teachers are not left behind in this creative journey. Night Zookeeper offers a suite of tools for educators to track student progress, provide personalized feedback, and integrate the platform’s resources into their lesson plans. This ease of integration means that teachers can effectively use Night Zookeeper to complement their teaching methods, making lessons more dynamic and impactful.

Night Zookeeper is more than just an educational platform; it’s a catalyst for creativity in the classroom. By blending the art of storytelling with interactive and gamified learning, it provides a unique space for students to explore, imagine, and create. For teachers looking to spark imagination and foster a love for learning in their students, Night Zookeeper is a valuable resource worth exploring.

Get the FREE Trial!

Classroom Reading & Writing Program

• Make reading & writing fun for your students!
• Boost their vocabulary, spelling, and grammar!
• Save yourself hours of grading time!

*Please note that this post contains affiliate links, and I may earn a small commission if you make a purchase through these links. This helps support the maintenance of this blog and allows me to continue sharing valuable content.

© Shake Up Learning 2023. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Kasey Bell and Shake Up Learning with appropriate and specific direction to the original content on ShakeUpLearning.com. See: Copyright Policy.

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Let’s face it, not every topic or subject is something intrinsically interesting to young learners. This is why I have a special on-air coaching episode for you with Debra Copeland and Rebekah Munoz. 

Get ready to learn how you can start engaging students who aren’t interested in the content you’re presenting to them. 

I wish students would love our content as much as their teachers, but it’s just not gonna happen.

There will always be topics that interest different students, and there will always be struggles with skills that are challenging.

Writing is one of those challenges.

As a former language arts teacher, I’ll admit, I struggled with teaching writing. It’s not easy to teach, and it’s definitely not easy for our young students to master, let alone enjoy.

Let’s dive into this on-air coaching episode with two teachers who are always striving to improve and engage students in new ways.

But first…

Shoutout

Ryan Read called in on the SpeakPipe line to share ways he uses sketchnoting with his students. This goes back to Episode 48 with Carrie Baughcum as we discussed creative ways to use sketchnoting in the classroom.

Quick Tip of the Week: 

Check out this blog post from Jake Miller about a slides timer extension. Clay Smith is an educator in New York City, and he created a Chrome extension that allows you to put a live timer on your slides!

Engaging Students Who Aren’t Interested in the Content

For Debra Copeland and Rebekah Munoz of Rudder MS, this is especially true. Their school is primarily filled with economically disadvantaged students who speak over 30 different languages. 

They are both extremely busy heading different teams within their school to help bring in and train new teachers, build leaders, coaching sports, and helping with incorporating technology. If that weren’t enough, they teach ELA in a grade that is tested for STAAR. 

The Biggest Struggle 

When you teach in a school with students of such varied backgrounds and languages, it’s hard to help them hone their writing schools. For Debra and Rebekah, it’s especially hard because they are teaching their students to pass the state tests. 

Rebekah shares that one of her biggest struggles is helping her students understand that the first draft is not the final draft. They aren’t motivated to learn how to make their writing better in many cases, because they don’t fully understand the language, or just aren’t engaged. 

We dive deep in this call to see which tactics have worked best in Rebekah’s classroom. She shares that having the process displayed and represented in stages on her wall has helped her students visualize the process better. 

As they finish each section, they get to move their name down the line on the wall, and this has helped motivate more of her students, but there is still work to be done. While this process is improving, she wants more of her students to engage and understand the purpose.

Ways to Increase Engagement

Rebekah is already doing some amazing things with her students, but Debra and I help point out ways she could revise the lessons to make them more engaging. Rather than having to rely solely on self-revisions, she could allow peers to use suggesting edits in Google Docs.

In this same way, to promote reading work out loud to hear the errors, she could be using Flipgrid to allow another student to read the work out loud and give meaningful feedback. 

Debra has implemented both of these strategies, and they’ve helped both the writer and reviewer to level up their writing skills. 

Why Reflection is Important to the Writing Process

Whether a student is reviewing and reflecting on their own writing or someone else’s, their understanding of the writing process will improve. Going forward, Rebekah plans to use bits and pieces of Debra’s process and her own to help her students better understand the writing process. 

She’s going to give her students a rubric to fill out as the writer reads their work and records on Flipgrid. The reviewers will fill out the rubric, and after everything is done, they can then make comments on the work. 

This will all take place after they’ve done their mini-lessons on self-revision, and this will show them everything they missed. This will further show why revisions are so important to writing.

How Could These Changes be Measured? 

Rebekah would likely use modeling to reveal additional ways that students could reflect on their work. She wrote her own essay for this project, and in the future, would give the students the rubric to grade her work as well. 

Debra mentions that Rebekah is really good at using Screencastify. She could record the modeling lesson so that students would be able to review the lesson as often as needed, and any absent students would have access to the lesson.

Another way to use Screencastify would be to use the same draft and show the revision process over time. This way, Rebekah could point out why certain words were changed and why certain sections were re-written.

I also mentioned the Draftback Chrome extension could be handy for seeing the revision process come to life.

It would also help her better explain what she means by expecting their first drafts to “look” messy once revisions are done.

Why Publishing the Student’s Work Changes Their Perspective

Because of Shake Up Learning, Rebekah has been digging into expanding the audience that sees the students’ work. She’s been using Google sites to publish the final drafts of her student’s papers, and it has changed their willingness to perfect their work.

She shares a recent project that they did regarding writing an email. The students got to email another student or teacher in the district to share different subjects. One of those subjects was how the student felt they’d changed from the prior year to this year. 

The things the student’s shared really touched her. Students were proud to learn how to build their sites, and sharing how much their writing had improved. 

What Are Their Next Steps? 

Debra wants to offer more opportunities to allow students more creative ways to present their ideas. The district is moving toward using Choice Boards. She is working to make the writing more authentic and real world.

Rebekah completely agrees. She is trying to teach her students how to be engaged authentically and to take away the fact that this is not for a grade but for life. She wants to build life-long learners. 

About Debra Copeland

• 36 years teaching preschool, elementary, and middle school
• Teaching Fellowship for 3 years with pre-service teachers at University of Texas San Antonio
• Published Author in Curriculum Theory – De-Mythologizing Educational Reform (ROOT)
• Second year at Rudder Middle School as an Instructional Coach for ELA
• Debra on Twitter

About Rebekah Munoz

• 10 years of teaching experience- ELA grades 6-7
• Taught my first 5 years in South Texas- the majority of my students were ESLs/At Risk/Eco Dis from Mexico
• Have been at Rudder MS for 5 years- similar demographics 
• All my teaching experience has been at Title 1 campuses
• My passion is geared towards low performing and reluctant readers
• My goal is to motivate students to fall in love with reading and become lifelong learners
• I enjoy taking risks with technology and thinking outside the box with traditional lesson plans
• Rebekah on Twitter

Podcast Question of the Week: 

• What strategies do you use to better engage students in the content that doesn’t interest them?  
• Post your answers in the Shake Up Learning community or on your favorite social platform.
• Join our FREE Shake Up Learning Facebook group.

Get Google Certified This Summer!

Become a Google Certified Educator Level 1, Level 2, or even a Google Certified Trainer.

Go to GetGoogleCertified.com to learn more!

© Shake Up Learning 2023. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Kasey Bell and Shake Up Learning with appropriate and specific direction to the original content on ShakeUpLearning.com. See: Copyright Policy.

The post [On-Air Coaching] Engaging Students Who Aren’t Interested in the Content – SULS054 appeared first on Shake Up Learning.

Assess Student Writing in Google Docs with WriQ

WriQ is a FREE tool that helps teachers easily assess writing in Google Docs.

This Google Chrome extension helps teachers not only assess writing, including grammar, punctuation, spelling and more but also helps teachers track progress over time.

Below is a guest post outlining the features and recent updates.

Please note, this is a guest post, not sponsored.

How to Easily Assess Student Writing in Google Docs

This is a guest post by Mark Schwartz from Texthelp.

All teachers can agree that assessing student writing is a tedious and time-consuming process. Plus, monitoring student progress and analyzing their growth over the course of the year can be even more difficult. At Texthelp, we’ve spent the last several years coming up with a solution to give teachers some of their precious time back without diminishing the value of their feedback or the instruction to their students. And that solution is WriQ®.

WriQ, a Chrome Extension for Google Docs, is a writing achievement and assessment tool that supports both teachers and students in the writing process. For the teacher, WriQ saves time by auto-marking spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors, as well as seamlessly integrating rubrics for delivering qualitative feedback. For the student, it uses a combination of gamification, nudge theory, and research around writing bursts, to motivate them to work on improving their writing.

Step 1: Assessing a Paper

(If you’d prefer to see WriQ in action, you can view this short video).

Using WriQ to assess student work is easy. After installing the extension from the Chrome Store, open a student’s writing in a Google Doc and click on the caret to show the sidebar. (Note that the first time you use WriQ, you will have to identify yourself as a teacher, and will have to register to save a score and access other features).  

Once the sidebar is open, you will see the auto-scoring features of WriQ: 

• Accuracy percentage (based on correct word sequences)
• Spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors
• Word count 
• Vocabulary maturity (based on age of acquisition) 
• Time on task (time spent actually writing or editing)

You’ll also see that any errors that WriQ found are now underlined within the student’s document. It is important that you check through the document to change or add any errors that WriQ may have missed or got wrong. If you do see any missed or mismarked errors, simply click where the error occurred, and change (or ignore) it.  

Once you’ve completed the quantitative assessment of your student’s writing, you can move on to the qualitative assessment through the use of WriQ’s built-in rubrics that are specific to the grade and genre chosen at the start of the grading process. That’s right, no more manually marking a printed chart. Instead, simply choose the correct criterion level that best matches the student’s writing for each assessment area. WriQ will automatically do the calculations and the rubric visualizations for you. 

Note that teachers can create custom rubrics if their students have a premium license of WriQ. For more information on how to set up and use custom rubrics, see the related blog post.

Once you’ve completed all your grading, WriQ generates an image with an overview of your assessment, which can be inserted directly into the student’s paper for real-time feedback. The image includes your written feedback to the student, the metrics generated from WriQ’s auto-marking, a helpful visualization of the rubric, and a WriQ Score.

Step 2: Tracking Progress

(If you’d prefer to see the WriQ dashboard in action, you can view this short video).

After a student’s paper has been graded, the information will be entered into the teacher’s dashboard, which contains data for each student and all of their documents that have been scored with WriQ. This will allow educators to track individual student growth, while also enabling them to compare their students’ results to local and national norms. 

Step 3: The Student Experience

(If you’d prefer to see the WriQ student experience in action, you can view this short video).

The student experience in WriQ focuses on student motivation, using a combination of gamification, nudge theory, and research around writing bursts. 

After getting the extension installed, students will see the WriQ icon in their Chrome Extensions bar. When they open a Google Doc and select the WriQ Chrome Extension, a small box will appear in the bottom, right-hand corner of their Doc. (Note: If it’s their first time accessing WriQ, they’ll have to go through a quick tutorial before getting started.) 

This small box is the “WriQMeter”, which tracks Writing Bursts. Writing Burst length is a measure of writing fluency – the longer the burst, the higher the fluency.  By enabling students to track their own bursts, they can see their progress over time and get the internal motivation they need to keep improving. 

All students will be able to track their best and total bursts for that day, while premium licensed students will be able to see their progress weekly, monthly, and annually. This encourages students to spend more time writing, to write more words, and to write across different subject areas.

Bursts, however, are not the only thing that WriQ measures. Word clouds and subject keywords from the Academic Word List provide insight into how much writing a student is doing in different subject areas, and which words students are using the most.

In future releases, badges and other rewards will offer additional motivation to continue encouraging students to achieve in writing. 

Have you had a chance to try WriQ yet? If not, install it today to see how it can revolutionize how you assess writing. And, if you’d like to try WriQ for free with your students, please fill out our WriQ Pilot Request Form, and someone will be in touch shortly! 

Want more?

Check out these releated posts:

• 9 Ways to Improve Student Writing with Google Docs
• How to Cite Sources in Google Docs

© Shake Up Learning 2023. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Kasey Bell and Shake Up Learning with appropriate and specific direction to the original content on ShakeUpLearning.com. See: Copyright Policy.

The post How to Easily Assess Student Writing in Google Docs appeared first on Shake Up Learning.

Today, I am going to share with you 9 Ways to Improve Student Writing with Google Docs!

There are so many amazing digital tools that teachers can use to support writing in the classroom. As a former writing teacher, I can’t help but geek out a little at all the possibilities. But when it comes to G Suite, and Google Docs, in particular, there are some excellent tools to help teachers and students throughout the writing process.

This post will focus on Google Docs specifically, but I have a few tips and ways these can be used in other G Suite tools as well.

In addition to the built-in features of Google Docs, we also have access to use third-party add-ons, apps, and extensions to customize the entire Google Docs experience.

One tool that I often recommend is the Read&Write for Google Chrome toolbar. This tool can level the playing field for many students, and you will see it referenced several times in this post.

(For more details on using Read&Write for Google Chrome to create Dynamic Reading Experiences for your students, click here.)

This episode is sponsored by WriQ.

WriQ gives a 360-degree overview of every aspect of student writing so teachers can provide meaningful and accurate feedback to each student.

WriQ, the latest innovation from Texthelp, grades papers digitally in Google docs – saving you time for other precious instructional activities. Join a growing community of teachers and try WriQ today.

Visit: text.help/shakeupwriting

Writing with Technology Matters

Students not only need to learn how to write, but they need to learn how to write with technology.

Writing with technology will help prepare students for the future as well allow them to do things that just aren’t possible on paper:

• Digital collaboration
• Digital workflow
• See the revision history and process
• Research
• Give them student ownership of learning
• Publish for a global audience
• Increase engagement and motivation

9 Ways to Improve Student Writing with Google Docs

1. Voice Typing (Docs and Slides speaker notes)

Let’s face it; the blank page can be intimidating even for the most experienced writers. Sometimes it is easier to just to talk and get all of your ideas out. With voice typing in Google Docs, we can help all types of learners to improve their writing.

Most of us talk faster than we type, and I hear complaints from teachers every day about students’ lack of keyboarding skills. Save your sanity and class time and allow students to dictate their writing into the Google Doc.

And let’s not forget how useful this tool is for those students that struggle or have learning disabilities! Voice typing helps students who struggle with the mouse, keyboard, or holding a pencil.

• Students can talk faster than they can type –supports ALL learners.
• Great for the littles who can’t write yet!
• Support struggling writers.
• Support English Language Learners

To access Voice Typing in Docs, go to Tools > Voice Typing.

To access Voice Typing in Slides, go to Tools > Voice Type Speaker Notes

Learn more in my blog post: 7 Reasons You Need to Try Voice Typing

2. Spelling and Grammar Check

Google Docs has not only a spell-check tool but also a grammar check. Teachers have been asking for a grammar checker for many years, so this is definitely a step in the right direction.

To enable the Spelling and Grammar check in your Google Doc, go to Tools>Spelling and Grammar.

This will allow students to hover over the underlined words and see the suggestions.

Source: Google Support Center

However, it doesn’t seem to be as robust as some teachers and students need. So I’d like to introduce you to an alternative Spelling and Grammar checker built into the Read&Write for Google Chrome toolbar.

It’s called “Check It.” It’s the first icon on the toolbar.

Click the Check It button to activate it while in a Google Doc. It’ll check for spelling or grammar errors as well as phonetic spelling, homophones or other confusable words.

Watch this video to see Check It in action.

3. Version History

The version history in Google Docs will show you exactly who did what and at what time! That’s accountability, y’all!

Google saves automagically every few seconds, and you can access every change that it records.

Go to File>Version History>See Version History

In the version history, you will be able to see how the document evolved and what each student contributed, color-coded by the user’s name and time-stamped! (Be sure you click on the drop-down arrow to see even more detail!)

This allows us to see the writing process in action, and see contributions in collaborative work.

You can also name versions, for instance, first draft, final draft, etc.

You can also restore older versions if something has been deleted or if a writer wants to go back and see what they changed.

Bottom line, version history gives teachers and students:

• See EXACTLY what each student contributed! = accountability
• Named Versions
• The ability to restore Versions
• The ability to quickly see new changes
• See if a student used time wisely.
• See if a student copied and pasted large portions of text!
• See the writing process in action!

4. Word Prediction with Read&Write for Google Chrome

The word prediction tool in the Read&Write for Google Chrome toolbar is a thing of beauty.

Once this tool has been enabled and students begin typing in their Google Doc, they will see a drop-down list of words that may come next in their sentence. This is a great way to help struggling and emerging writers as well as English Language Learners.

The Word Prediction tool is the second icon in the toolbar. (Click to enable.)

5. Using Comments for Teacher and Peer Feedback

There is a lot of research that supports student collaboration and the power of feedback from peers.

Using this strategy in writing can really help students improve, or it can be a big waste of time!

For this strategy to work, students need to learn and see good models of construction and positive feedback.

One strategy to use and model is the TAG strategy.

• Tell the writer something you like.
• Ask the writer a question.
• Give the writer a positive suggestion.

When students are writing in Google Docs, make good use of the comments feature.

If you have a collaborative document, be sure to assign tasks and comments by using the “+” followed by their email address to ensure there is no confusion.

You can also check the little box to assign the task, and if students have email they will get a notification!

The Read&Write for Google Chrome toolbar also gives you an added option for comments: voice comments!

The power of your voice in feedback cannot be oversold!

Click on the next to last icon that looks like a comment bubble with a play button to record a voice comment.

6. Suggest Edits in Docs

Google Docs has three modes: (1) editing, (2) suggesting, and (3) viewing. (You will find these in a drop-down menu under the share button.)

Editing is the mode you are most familiar with when you have editing rights, which is the default when you create a new doc.

Suggesting is something special! Suggesting is a way for collaborators to suggest edits and revisions to the document. Any changes are green-lined and appear as a comment out to the right. The owner of the document can choose to accept or reject the changes. (Note: You will also see this turned on when you are using the grading workflow in Google Classroom.)

7. Use the Built-in Dictionary

Google Docs is very robust and even includes a built-in dictionary. (Go Tools>Dictionary)

Students can look up words and find meaning, parts of speech, and even synonyms.

8. Create Footnote Citations in Google Docs

This is a feature that really makes the jaws drop during my presentations!

Many teachers do not know that Google Docs has a built-in citation feature.

You can easily add footnote citations by using the Explore tool in Google Docs. Even those footnote citations do not meet every need; it is so nice to have this built-in to Google Docs. This is light years above what I could get my sixth graders to do when it came to citing sources.

1. Go to Tools>Explore (or click on the explore icon 0n the bottom-right)

2. Type in your search query to find the source

3. Hover over the result, then click on the quotations in the top right of the result

4. A footnote citation will be added to the bottom of your doc

For a more in-depth article, see How to Cite Sources in Google Docs.

To learn more about the other things you can do with the Explore tool, check out this post.

9. Assess Digital Writing with WriQ

Going paperless with your writing assessment can be a difficult transition for many teachers. But letting go of your red ink pens and stacks of papers can be a liberating idea!

WriQ is a FREE Chrome extension for Google Docs that automatically grades papers digitally.

It’s faster, more accurate and consistent than traditional manual and subjective grading – giving students, parents and teachers clear visibility of writing progress over time against peers and standardised norms.

WriQ uses a powerful computer algorithm that instantly assesses each student’s writing in Google Docs, replacing the time-consuming task for teachers of assessing manually.

Here’s what you need to know about WriQ:

• Free tool for educators to help assess student docs
• WriQ allows teachers to score student writing directly in Google Docs
• No additional logins needed
• Can automatically score several writing indicators such as spelling and grammar errors and writing maturity
• Includes rubrics to help assess writing quality
• Track progress over time

This is the tool that writing teachers have been searching for!

Try WriQ for FREE today!

Learn even more about WriQ in my previous post: How to Assess Digital Writing.

Podcast Question of the Week

“What G Suite tools can you use in your classroom to help your students become better writers?”

Share your response on social with the #ShakeUpLearning hashtag, or join us in the FREE Shake Up Learning community to discuss further.

© Shake Up Learning 2023. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Kasey Bell and Shake Up Learning with appropriate and specific direction to the original content on ShakeUpLearning.com. See: Copyright Policy.

The post 9 Ways to Improve Student Writing with Google Docs – SULS030 appeared first on Shake Up Learning.