Hawaii Society for Technology in Education

Author: Matt Tom

O‘ahu Language Arts Teacher

September 12, 2023

As a sixth-grade English Language Arts teacher, I provide lots of time in class for students to work on their extended writing assignments (research essays, narratives, poems, etc.), get help and feedback from classmates, visit resource stations for extra guidance, or to work privately on their work.

Although I set general landmarks and checkpoints for students so that they can track their progress through the writing process and toward the due date, I do not require students to stay lock-step, as each student has their own personal obligations outside of school, and each student writes at a different pace.

During these class periods dedicated to self-directed work, I conduct short writers’ workshops with individual students to chat with them about life, their thought process and progress on their writing piece, what they’re most proud of so far, and what they might need assistance with. I try to give students lots of formative feedback while they’re writing their piece so they can incorporate the feedback along the way.

In the past, when students would see that I was done talking with a particular student, hands shot up in the air along with, “Mr. Tom, I have a question!” and it was difficult to bounce around in a fair and timely way to answer all questions. I’ve found it challenging to address students’ questions and provide them with specific feedback they’ll remember and utilize. 

The following classroom management and feedback tools have helped me streamline our classroom feedback flow:

• Classroom Q

• Mote

• Screencastify

• Student’s Screen:

  • They’ll see a “Request Assistance” button, and a space for them to input a comment. 

  • I require students to write exactly what they need assistance with. (Requests like, “Can you read my whole essay?” are not accepted).

  • When they click “Request Assistance,” their name and comment will appear on the teacher’s screen.

  • The student’s screen will also indicate what number they are in the queue.

• Teacher’s Screen:

  • A queue will populate with the particular student who needs assistance and their comment.

  • I project my screen on the whiteboard, so all students can see who needs help, and what their questions are.

  • If a student can help address another classmate’s question, they’re free to stand up and help their classmates.

My general thoughts: 

• ClassroomQ made our classroom run so much more smoothly. Because the whole class can see exactly what their peers need assistance with, the majority of questions get answered by others in the class, rather than by me. This frees up my time to work one-on-one with students in writers’ workshop sessions.

• I make it clear to students that just because they’re in the queue, that doesn’t mean they can just chill. They should be working on other aspects of their writing assignment while in the queue.

I do have the paid Pro version ($19.99/year), as I use it very frequently throughout the year.

Giving voice comment feedback speeds up my feedback workflow and also gives my comments a more personalized touch. Hearing the tone, inflections, and emotion in my voice feedback can help better communicate both praise and constructive critical feedback.

Mote has a built-in transcription feature that automatically transcribes your voice comment and pairs it with the audio recording. The transcription is especially helpful so students always refer back to something visual, while the audio recording helps provide the nuances conveyed through one’s voice.

Mote is free to try with limited features, but I have the paid version ($59.40/year) which allows you unlimited notes, voice transcription and translation, and up to 5 minutes of recording time per note.

Screencastify is probably one of the most well-known and utilized tech tools in the last five years, especially during the pandemic to create instructional videos for distance learning, or to help students present their work asynchronously.

When students need a bit more help with their writing assignments, especially when it comes to formatting or moving large pieces of text around on the page, I create very short Screencastify videos with my visual/tangible feedback and insert the video link into a comment bubble on their Google Doc.

Students can then play and replay the feedback as many times as they need in order to understand it completely. 

Screencastify has a free option, Starter (for $7/month) or Pro (for $10/month).  The Pro plan allows for unlimited assignments, video creation, video length, and length exports as well as 1000BG in storage. 

Bonus tools:

• Scribe allows you to record a software workflow and turn it into a visual tutorial. No need to screenshot each step!

• CleanShotX is an extremely useful screenshot tool for Mac OS that has built-in annotation tools, scrolling capture capability, screen recording, and text recognition (OCR). I use this daily!