Holy GuacaMOTEly! Check Out How NISD Students Are Using Mote

The word has gotten out about NISD’s newly purchased tool, Mote! Several 3-5 grade teams had the opportunity to dive in and learn all about this new extension in a PLC called, “Holy GuacaMOTEly.” Mote allows users to add audio to any Google item and in other places via a link, embed code, or QR code. While this may sound simple, we know that simple tools in the hands of great educators can lead to big results. After learning about Mote’s capabilities, our NISD teachers had amazing ideas for integrating Mote into their lessons and giving their students the opportunity to share their voice! This post highlights student use of Mote for literacy and writing.

Holy GuacaMOTEly PLC

Writing and Student Creativity: 

Mote provides students the ability to add a layer of personalization to their writing! Utilizing Mote also promotes fluency and allows our students to be creative. Several third grade classes have given students the opportunity to use Mote within their nonfiction writing. Take a look at what teachers had to say about Mote and listen to students from different campuses as they share their experience:

Click to Enlarge and See What Our Teachers are Saying

Student Nonfiction Slides

Click The Speaker to Hear Why These Students Love Mote: 

 Shourya

Stuti

Elijah

Ava

Justifying Thinking: 

Mrs. Turner decided Mote could be a great way for her students to justify and explain their thinking during Problem Solving. In this example, Mrs. Turner provided audio supports in slides for students and then asked them to not only solve the problem, but us Mote to justify their thinking. Mote held students accountable to knowing how they got their answer rather than simply having an answer.

Why Alexia Loves Mote

Persuasion and Collaboration: 

Mrs. After seeing this Tug of War template in PLC, Mrs. Swezy (4th grade at Granger Elementary) decided to have her students use Mote to practice persuasion. Each student recorded their stance on the topic "Four Leaf Clovers are Lucky" and moved their icon on a continuum of how much they agreed or disagreed with the statement. This was a quick activity, but it allowed students to practice choosing a side. Mote allows student to get their thoughts out and would be a great for a pre-write, or reflection. Students were also all on one slide, so they could listen to each other's responses. Mrs. Swezy had students replace the speaker icon with quick selfie, so she could quickly see where everyone fell.

Mote Helps Us with Instruction in NISD:

Click the Image to Enlarge

Join Us for Holy GuacaMOTEly this Summer:

Holy GuacaMOTEly will be offered at this year's NISD Engage conference, along with another opportunity in August. Come join us as we experience Mote firsthand, preview examples of Mote usage throughout NISD, explore ready-made templates, and share ideas. We’ll learn how to share voice notes via link, embed code, and QR code. We’ll also provide time for you to create experiences for your learners using Mote. 

No One SAW this Coming, but we SEE NISD Keeping Learning Alive!

We can all agree that the current situation is not ideal. Educators are unable to expect what they normally would from students. While teachers can’t recreate their normal classroom environment, our Northwest ISD educators are amazing! They have been able to keep learning and literacy alive, connect with their students, capture their voice, provide personalized feedback, and involve families as an integral part of their child’s growth. For K-2 teachers, Seesaw has been the platform for making these goals a reality. Mrs. Fitch, Mrs. Perry, Mrs. Davis, Mrs. Embry, and Mrs. Moore from Granger Elementary have not only used Seesaw with fidelity all year, they’ve gone up and beyond to meet the needs of their students as they learn and grow from home. 

Continual Learning: 

Each Sunday, teachers send required and optional assignments home for students to complete. Perhaps one of the best features within Seesaw is the ability to capture student voice by allowing students to explain their thinking. With provided structure through Seesaw activities, teachers can encourage students to take their learning deeper with questions and question stems. One of Mrs. Davis’ favorite activities during remote learning is the Animal Adaptations science activity. Listen to the student’s understanding of adaptation, their language of the discipline used, and their ability to apply this learning to a real life situation. 

Click HERE to Enlarge and Listen

Continual Literacy: 

One of NISD’s goals for this year is literacy. Seesaw has allowed teachers to encourage students to keep reading and share their reading while they’re at home. One of Mrs. Perry’s favorite activities sent home to her Kinder class encouraged her readers to simply capture a picture of themselves reading. Mrs. Perry shares, “This activity not only encourages reading, but gives me a chance to see and listen to them read.”  

Click HERE to Enlarge and Listen

ELA coach Rebecca Maddox points out, “Seesaw is benefiting students, parents and teachers during this remote learning time with it's ease of use. Seesaw has allowed our youngest readers and writers the ability to respond and capture their thinking in a variety of ways. They use pictures and voice recordings to capture their thinking for others to view. It is great to see that students can document their reading and writing lives in this format to capture how they continue to grow and learn!”

Students from across NISD are reading and sharing their reading. The first week of extended break, Mrs. Moore sent an optional Seesaw activity to her class asking them to share about a book they read and one they are hoping to finish. These activities have since led to a deeper knowledge of books as the latest activity prompted readers to not only read, but to stop and jot information about the characters in their book. Get a glimpse into’s Reese’s reading HERE or by clicking the images below.

Click HERE to Enlarge and Listen

Stop and Jot (Week of April 12)

Engaging students in their learning is one of Mrs. Embry’s favorite aspects of Seesaw. She states, “Seesaw provides me the opportunity to create engaging lessons that allow students to respond in a way they are comfortable with. They can create a picture with drawing tools, type, or create a video.” Mrs. Embry, Mrs. Davis, and the Granger second grade team have personalized reading assignments by linking in an Adobe Spark video encouraging students to find fun places to read as they work on their reading stamina. It's fun for students to connect with their teachers by seeing them teach and encourage in the videos they send home.

Click HERE to Enlarge 

Mrs. Embry’s Spark Video

Mrs. Davis’ Spark Video 

Connecting with Students (SEL): 

It’s tough not seeing student’s faces each day. It’s important that students know how to identify their feelings, but also that they have a platform to share and be heard. NISD has prioritized social and emotional learning this year, which has helped equip our students beyond their content knowledge. Granger students are especially familiar with “Seesaw Feeling Checks.” These activities have become especially important as teachers get a pulse for how their students are doing, even when they can’t see them each day. Click on the image below to see an example of Mrs. Perry and Mrs. Moore’s feelings check. 

Click HERE to Enlarge

Mrs. Fitch points out, “My favorite part of using Seesaw is being able to connect with my students! I love being able to post videos directly to their journals and I love getting videos from them even more. It is nice to be able to post work for one student, or the entire class with one click.” Mrs. Fitch continually provides her students with personalized video feedback. Check out how Mrs. Fitch used Seesaw to wish one special student a Happy Birthday and make her feel special even from afar.

The heart of our NISD teachers is what makes students excited to learn!

Click HERE to Enlarge and Listen

Providing Personalized Feedback: 

Another benefit of Seesaw is that it protects the privacy of our students and allows teachers to differentiate and provide personalized feedback for students without displaying that feedback to the entire class. Mrs. Perry is very intentional about giving writing feedback on student work. Click on the image below to see samples from the last few weeks. 

Click HERE to Enlarge

Seesaw allows feedback to be written, voiced in an audio comment, or even a personalized video.

Inviting Families Into The Learning:

Mrs. Davis comments, "By using Seesaw daily, parents are able to see what content we are working on and what products their child is creating.  Parents have been very thankful for this program as Seesaw is sparking conversations as home, and parents are able to connect our learning at school to real world situations at home."

Click HERE to Enlarge

Click HERE to Enlarge

Student Growth: 

Lastly, another NISD goal for the year is that students showing yearly growth. Since Seesaw is the house for these student’s learning, teachers are able to see growth over time. Mrs. Davis states, “We have used Seesaw since day one as our students’ academic portfolio, so seeing growth is easy when you compare assignments from the first few weeks of school to their current work.”

Mrs. Fitch adds, “Being able to provide feedback and having the students go back and check their work has allowed me to see growth in their writing. I have assigned the Daily Oral Language activity for three weeks and have seen growth from week to week.” 

NISD is the Place to Be: 

Our NISD teachers are a walking example of this quote by George Couros, “Technology will not replace great teachers, but technology in the hands of great teachers can be transformational.” Our teachers have thrived in a season of uncertainty. While the situation is not ideal, these teachers have not thrown in the towel. They’ve connected in a way that shows their heart for students and their heart for learning. 

*The NISD IT Team is happy to announce that NISD has purchased Seesaw for Schools for the upcoming school years. This purchase is for all NISD schools ages Pre-K to 5th grade. Click HERE to learn more.

Permission to Be Creative!

Mrs. Johnson (a 5th grade teacher at Granger Elementary) created a collaborative Google Site with the purpose of expanding learning in the ELA and social studies classroom. On the homepage of the site, students find permission to be creative! The site reads, “This will be a place for you to take your learning to the next level by using your creative mind to build on what you’ve already been learning about in class. Think outside the box, explore new ideas, and discover topics that you’d like to know more about.” The license to be creative has led to student ownership that can hardly be put into words.

How did this site come about? Mrs. Johnson states, “Some students finish their classwork quickly and need to have a project to work on, or they need to be challenged to take their learning to the next level. I also have students who simply thrive when having projects to work on. I had many students who fell into these categories this year, and I really wanted provide them with more than just the everyday ELA and social studies classwork. With a blue crayon and a piece of notebook paper, I began jotting down their suggestions. We came up with a few ideas, such as making Google Slides, designing games, and creating Kahoot quizzes. Then, I asked these students about some of their topics of interest. That afternoon, I took their suggestions and organized them into a Google Site. By adding their ideas to the site in an organized way, many more ideas started flowing. I added more ideas of my own, and then I gave about seven students access to this site so that they could add more ideas. Together, we formed the basic structure of this enrichment site.”

Here is how the site works. 1. Students use the “Topics” and “Activity Option” pages to gain inspiration and decide on a creation project that they are interested in. 2. Students click on the timeline spreadsheet and sign up to create a project. 3. Students create the project of their choice using the tool of their choice. 4. Students insert their project into the “Finished Projects” page.  5. Students record a FlipGrid video explaining the what, why, and how of their project. They also explain how their project will impact other students and reflect on what they would have done differently if they were to do the project again.

Students lit up as they shared about their projects. Samanvita, Amari, Kaden, Shabbeer, and John could have chatted for hours about projects they had created and project ideas that were marinating in the back of their mind. "It's not like other classes because we’re getting to chose what we create" said Kaden. "It's really cool," says Amari with a smile, "It's like we are student teachers!" 

Samanvita shares a little about her creation, “I made a Powtoon about point of view, a WeVideo about story elements, and there is is lego website that I’m hoping to make a Stop Motion video from. Right now, I’m using Tinkercad to create a gun from the Revolutionary War. I also made a George vs. George quiz. I think I made it a little too tricky because most people only got 30%.” Samanvita asked me to take the quiz and I’m sad to say that I failed as well. All that said, she had feedback woven within the quiz and was able to help me learn from my mistakes.

Other created projects include, a 3D print of the Boston Tea Party ship, a mini Lexia series to help others who may want extra practice, various Kahoot and Google Form quizzes over covered topics, and even stop motion videos. According to these students, the most challenging aspect of the project is time management and choosing the right tool for the resource that they are making. They are learning that some tools are limited and they need to be purposeful when choosing. Many of these students get excited about their projects and end up working both at school and at home.

John's Mini Lexia Quiz and a Point of View Google Form

Kaden's Boston Tea Party Scratch Game

 In closing, Mrs. Johnson points out, “I was most surprised with how smooth the transition has been and how little guidance is needed. My students are extremely self-driven and self-motivated with this website. I am impressed with the variety of products that they have created as a result of this website. I am also thrilled about how excited they are to create so many different projects.” She adds, “One of our campus initiatives is to raise the level of Masters scores by 10%. I definitely believe that by doing these types of self-initiated projects, our students will show growth in their reading and thinking abilities.”

Be on the lookout for some of these student created products at EXPO 2019!