Collaboration: Sharing Google Forms

Teachers are so amazing about sharing! It goes under the category of "why recreate the wheel?" most of the time. I share with you, you share with me, our lives just got easier and both teachers and students win!

This is why having a wonderful PLN that includes teachers on Twitter that I've never met has been so amazing! Recently, I was reading a blog post from Ms. Drasby (Google Forms Supports Spelling Mastery) where she shared a copy of her Google Form. I had tried to find a way to do that for over a year with no luck. 

I replied and asked about it and she wrote up the procedure in a blog post: Google Forms Force a Copy. It's super easy and simple but if you don't know the trick, it won't work like it didn't for me for so long! It's definitely worth the few minutes to check out her blog and learn the trick!
Google Forms Force a Copy

Now, I am so excited about being able to make forms as a grade level team and share the workload. We can share forms resources just like we do with Hyperdocs, Graphic Organizers, and everything else we do as teachers.

Here are a few of my favorites to get you started: When you click on the form link it will force you to "Make a Copy" of the form I created. So you will have your own, not shared with anyone, and your data will be yours alone. Since it's your copy, you can change it however you would like to make it work for you.

Parent Info Form (Click this link for the Form):
I post this on my website at the beginning of the year and usually get most of the info before school even starts on Monday morning. 

Favorite Genre of Books (Click this link for the Form):

<<This one is a good beginning of the year inventory of your students' reading interests.


Here is a spreadsheet of forms my 3rd grade students created to practice multiplication facts. When you click the link, it will copy the form into your drive. There is the tutorial to use Flubaroo to make them autograde. OR, you can turn them into Google Form Quizzes. You will just have to change the answers to multiple choice answers to use Google Forms quizzes at this time.

Multiplication Practice Forms (Click this link)



And here are several other Google Forms to share. 
Click to copy forms and make them your own. Follow the directions above from Ms. Drasby and share your forms too!
Google Forms (Click this link)

Flubaroo for Autograding

Autograding?! Can it be? Yes, it can!

(Screencast created for staff at my site.)

Create a Google form as an assessment or assignment. Go to the live form and enter the correct answers yourself. I put Answer Key in the name section to help me identify this set of answers.

Go to Responses. Create a Spreadsheet.

You can see the answers I already entered in the image above.

Now go to Add-Ons and Get Add-ons. Search for and add Flubaroo.

Enable Flubaroo as below.

Then go back and click on it again to start the Flubaroo. Go to advanced to enable autograde.

It will take you through several steps to choose how to grade each part. You can skip grading some pieces. If you need to hand grade an item, you can still use Flubaroo, but can’t autograde.

Choose your Answer Key row with the correct answers from when you took the quiz first.

Decide on whether or not you want the answer key sent with the scores.

And that’s it. All submissions will be graded and scores will be collected in the spreadsheet and students will get results in their email.

Answers will be collected on the first sheet.

Grades will be created on the second sheet with some highlighting for error analysis. 

Time saved on the things that can be assessed easily so you have more time to teach.

Class Dojo Winter Break Challenge

Here's a fun, optional way to keep the kids engaged over breaks. Post a quick challenge question every few days on Class Dojo through Class Story. I am using a google form to make it very quick and easy to see who is participating and award "Challenge Accepted" points.

I used Google Drawing to make an image with the question to use as the photo. Images will get more attention and quickly show the question. You can download the drawing as a png or jpg file to use as the photo and as the header for your form if you'd like. I used the frame and images from Creative Clips on TPT but anything will do.

I'm keeping each challenge to one question to keep it simple. Here is a copy of my Google Form if you'd like to make something similar. https://goo.gl/HLdlUd

It might also be fun to keep the challenges going when break is over. Think about having the students submit challenge questions for the class. They would love to see their challenge be sent out over Class Story!

Managing Data from Reading Log Google Forms

Previously, I've blogged about using Google Forms for Reading Logs and Responses. Click here Fun with Forms or here Google Form Fun to check out those earlier posts. I've been using Google Forms for Reading Response for a couple years now. There are several great benefits to doing this: 1) no paper copies, 2) all of the responses are in one place, and 3) did I say no paper copies?

Here are a couple images of reading logs we've used in the last year.

When you use Google Forms, all of the responses are collected in a spreadsheet. This makes it easy to check the responses. You can sort them based on name, date, title of book or more. Here is an image of one of the spreadsheets (names are removed.)

When you change the form depending on the response focus and reading standard you end up with several spreadsheets of info.

So instead of having the answers go to a new spreadsheet each time, change the response destination so they go to a New Sheet in an Existing Spreadsheet. This way you'll have one master spreadsheet with all of the data. Each form will have it's own page in the spreadsheet.

Check out the screencast for details:

Weather Map Math

Using the info I learned from Molly Schroeder here, my second grade class set up a weather survey with Google Forms and My Maps. (See previous blog post). The survey quickly spread from friends and family of our class families and sharing on social media. Photos and weather data came flooding in. See our live map here.

We've been enjoying looking at the different locations and talking and writing about why temperatures and seasons would be different. I love that My Maps has an option to color code the pins based on whatever category we choose. I did manually change the warmest bands to orange and red and the very coldest to purple to help them stand out with the kids.

Today, we took another look at the maps during our math block. We are working on addition and subtraction of two and three digit numbers. I gave the kids this worksheet to guide them through comparing temperatures from our home location to a location of their choice.

It was great to see them talk it through in their groups, defend their answers, and explain why there would be a difference. Those who finished one location tried a second choice on a dry erase board. Students who I knew were ready for a challenge were encouraged to try a comparison with the negative temp in Fairbanks, Alaska and how might that work. Several of the kids shared and the class was able to give feedback.

Some images from the class:

We are so thankful for family and friends helping us with this project. We have map data from all over the US, and on all 7 continents - including Antarctica! I'm sure we will refer back to this map many times over the next few weeks. 

Thanks to Molly for her inspiration!

Google Form Fun

What's there not to love about Google Forms? There are countless ways to use them. This week we are being Word Detectives. Students are finding new or interesting words and predicting the meaning before looking up the word in an online dictionary.
Here's an image of the form they are using for their words

You can check out a copy of the live form here. Word Detective Google Form  (Cleaned up my drive and this form is gone - out of date).

From the linked spreadsheet, I grabbed the list of words the kids have submitted so far and created a Wordle out of the list. 

Another variation is to intro a topic with images and video clips. As they viewed the images and clips, I had the kids submit words that they thought of into a form. Again I pulled their responses into a word art with Wordle. Looking at the word art helped us think about what we know and come up with questions that we would like to research.

Here are some of the questions that they have come up with so far:

• Are these lava rocks?
• why do they erupt. why do they make land?
• Was that the island that was created in the Pacific ocean? How many rocks were there?
• how does it explode?
• how does it blow up bursting in the air when it erupts?
• how do the people who take pictures not die?

Please comment with a way you have used Google Forms with your class.

Fun with My Maps

Recently I came across a link from Twitter to a you tube video from Teach Tech Play. They do a monthly teacher web share of lessons, tips, and ideas. This was December's episode and Molly Schroeder shared a great tip for using Google's My Maps with Google forms to share geographical data. You see Molly's part of the episode here. Teach Tech Play Episode 6.

Start at 30:15 to watch Molly's segment.
Basically, what you do is set up a Google form to collect data that includes location info. The collected info is gathered in a Google spreadsheet. Open My Maps (or just Google it). Follow Molly's instructions and demo on how to import the data.

Here is an example of my students sharing info from their winter break (names have been removed.) Example of Winter Break sharing map (<Link to live map example).

I also have plans use Molly's suggestion to collect weather and climate data from family and friends of the students to compare data from all over. I'm sure there are many many uses for this tool. Comment with your ideas, I'd love to hear them!

Thank you, Molly, for the great idea and explanation!
https://twitter.com/followmolly
https://sites.google.com/site/mydigitalfootprint/

Fun with Forms

If you haven't tried Google Forms you really should! There are so many fun and time saving uses for them. I've used them for student information gathering, polling, collecting student award names, quizzes, reading response logs and much more! Last week I had my second grade students use a google form to share great words that they came across in their reading. I had them predict what they thought the words meant and then look up the definition and add that. Here is the form I created to do this -

After they entered their vocabulary words, I copied the list of words from the spreadsheet that is automatically created for each form. I pasted the words into Wordle and made a word collage of their words. Here are their amazing words!

For more info about forms, check out the google tutorial.  http://www.google.com/forms/about/

40 Ways to Use Google Apps for Education

Here is an amazing resource for google apps for education.

40 Ways to Use Google Apps for Education

Check it out - try one thing new this week.

First Day of School Forms

We all have information we really need to get that first day of school to help everything run smoothly. Primary teachers especially, like to have lunch and dismissal info at the very beginning of the day. But the reality is, with 30 or more kids and families all coming in at the same time, you may miss someone. They might not see the form, the sign up list, or whatever it is you have out. Then you need to somehow make contact on the busiest of all days, the first day of school.

I decided to put my Google Geekiness into this and try to lessen the need for me to interrogate make contact with every single person. Using a Google form means many of my families can get me this info prior to school starting (we don't have "Meet the Teacher" events at our school.) And if they missed the link that I will put up on the class list, and on my website, I will have it on the front door both with the link and a QR code. Then I can concentrate on greeting my new kids and families and calming the criers helping everyone feel welcome.

Google Forms are awesome for this task. I created this one with just the info I needed to get through the day - student and parent name, quick contact info, lunch info and dismissal info. I'll save all of the "How can I help your child be more successful this year" questions for a follow up form. 

Here is what it looks like when accessed from a smart phone:

Creating a Google Form is very easy if you haven't tried it before. Here is the Google Forms Tutorial:  https://support.google.com/drive/answer/87809?hl=en

Then, if you want to make it into a QR code, go to a QR creating site like http://www.qrstuff.com/, add the link to the Live Form, and save your QR code. It's that simple.

Edited to add: Of course I will print out several forms for those who do not have internet access or a smart phone. Google Forms has upgraded recently to make printing out the created form just as easy so you don't have to create the form twice.