The Google Classroom board provides a safe environment for students to share their work. Earlier in the year students learned basic GarageBand skills and created a short commercial stinger. Then they shared their jingle in Classroom, and their peers listened and commented on their work.

Note in the picture that Isabella posted her commercial and 4 of her classmates responded. I gave little instructions to comments other than to keep comments positive.If you are curious to what Isabella’s jingle sounded like,
click here!

The next day, I printed comments out, and students chose the comments which they felt gave the best feedback towards their peers. Students reflected and discussed why feedback is important. (All the comments left below are from 8th grade students, age 13)

• “Based on my analysis many of the comments were not specific. There were also some that were specific and clear.”
• “Listening to our peers helped us learn how others thought and how to expand our creative minds.”
• “Many of us were positive and put thought into the comments when we shared our projects.”
• “Leaving nice thoughtful comments make the person receiving them feel good.”
• “Sharing our commercials with our peers is a good idea because it’s fun to hear their work.”
• “Will there be projects in this class that are equally or more fun than this one?”

After doing this once, students asked often to share their work in Classroom.  Without even asking, students would place their work on the board to share with the class to get peer feedback on their work. Classroom became a perfect place for students to share their work in a safe and controlled environment.

Limitations

Classroom only allows one level of responses. Students cannot reply to comments. When I have students do this, I use a classroom discussion board within SchoolLoop (our district’s online grading program). I wish Classroom would allow multilevel responses, it would offer a new level to classroom tools for students to use within GSuite.

But for a simple one level place of comments, Google Classroom offers a great avenue.

Categories: Apps