One of my favorite aspects of Jamboard is the ability to check my students’ understanding in real time. In the event I see one not participating, I immediately check on them via the chat feature to see what is going on.
Additionally, I am able to further push students consistently with Jamboard activities because I am seeing their responses & virtual engagement in real time. I can also guide them better. It is like having aerial view, and frankly I love it!
One more thing that I am noticing as a result of preparing lessons & checks for understanding with Jamboard is that I am staying in the target language more!
Now, don’t get me wrong! I am still not anywhere where I used to be pre-COVID times, I honestly don’t think anyone is. It is okay, this is a new normal.
Because Jamboard has helped me increase engagement & target language usage, I want to share some more Jamboard ideas I have conducted with my Spanish classes these last few weeks.
If you are brand new to Jamboard, I highly suggest you check out my previous blog post before reading through this one.
1) Lead them to powerful presentational success with a powerful and guided brainstorming session!
I cannot be more thankful for @SamaraSpielberg and her school district for sharing the hard work they put into the Gratitude Unit. You can access Samara’s free resources here.
I started doing the unit with my students at the beginning of the month. The unit provides the students the opportunity to show gratitude through journal entries. I have noticed that when I conduct opportunities to pre-write with Jamboard, the writing in their journal entries is just a lot richer.
This is an example of a pre-writing activity where students had the opportunity to do some brainstorming and pre-writing.
The examples below reflect how students expanded these sentences according to their levels. They completed these journal entries upon completion of the brain storming session. Only those students who were absent that day failed to complete the assignment.
This brainstorming template can also be used as a way to take attendance at any point during the class, to make connections with students, to host an SEL check, and as an exit ticket.
It is a multipurpose template that you can find inside my 22+ Jamboard template bundle available in Spanish, French, and English.
You can also make your own templates by creating them in Google slides or Power Point and saving each individual one as a JPG. or .PNG image file and then uploading them to Jamboard as an image and adjusting it to meet your needs.
My templates, however, will save you a ton of time as they are ready to be used inside Jamboard!
2) State & Defend an Opinion with a Jamboard T-Chart
This particular day in the beginning of the school year, we were discussing our class trends. We did a series of activities in separate break out rooms to find out the most difficult, boring, fun, interesting, and easiest classes. This is what they came up with collaboratively.
Because the focus of the lesson wasn’t to exchange basic information and describe classes and school (this was just an opportunity to recycle language they already were familiar with), but rather to give & defend their opinions. During their individual work session during the last 10 minutes of class, students had to create a comment to agree and to disagree with some the class trends.
This T-chart Jamboard template shows me everyone’s contributions.
This T – chart Jamboard template can be used to have students categorize information or to host a personalized question and answer session similar to playing THIS OR THAT!
3) Play THIS OR THAT with Jamboard!
You can easily create several JAMBOARD FRAMES (similar to a page, but in Jamboard it is called a FRAME) in seconds by DUPLICATING these and simply have a different question on each frame. Then, have the students type their name on a sticky note and as you ask the question, they can move to the side that reflects their preference. You can extend this activity by asking them to justify their response in writing or by unmuting to speak.
4) Build Stronger Connections to an Authentic Resource
It is no surprise that I enjoy teaching with graphic organizers. In fact, two years ago, I did a presentation at the World Language Teacher Summit 2019 on how to make a variety of organizers to teach an entire class with only a blank sheet of paper. I even wrote a blog post about that which you can visit here.
I highly value graphic organizers because they promote higher order thinking skills and students seem to connect concepts and thoughts in a more organized manner.
Because this was an interpretive listening activity, I allowed them to write in English and/or Spanish.
- The activity from beginning to end lasted 30 minutes!
- This is an activity that you can easily replicate for all levels of Spanish!
Many more ideas to come...
These upcoming weeks, I will continue to blog tons of Jamboard ideas that I have tried and others that amazing educators have began to use after attending my Jamboard trainings.
Honestly, this is how I am able to see if my students are with me in a virtual setting or not and I can bring more accountability in REAL time. Not to mention, the time Jamboard has saved me!
I really hope Jamboard reenergizes your classes because it really is pretty magical!
I also want to invite you to share your Jamboards! Tag me in Twitter as @profedelgadillo or at Instagram @profesoradelgadillo, and use the hashtag #WLJamboardideas so that other educators can be inspired with your ideas as well. We are always stronger together and our WL teacher community is always among the best at sharing!
Want to watch trainings I have done on Jamboard? Then I want to invite you to join my free Facebook Community Transformation Through Acquisition Driven Instruction today as my trainings are housed in that page.