There are so many great ways to really enhance the writing process when using G Suite for Education. Whether you are brand new to using G Suite, or a Google Classroom ninja, this short blog post will give you some ideas as to how you might help learners with their writing (and even save you time in the process!).
Google Classroom
Google Classroom is a fantastic tool that helps streamline your digital workflow! Instead of making photocopies of worksheets, or getting students to scribble in their books, you can use Google Classroom to generate digital copies of your worksheets (or simply blank documents) for every student in your class. You can then see all the student work (live and in real-time!) in one place and give live formative feedback.
Google Docs
Google Docs is the word processor in Google Drive. It's the G Suite equivalent of Microsoft Word and because it lives in the cloud, there are some great additional functionalities. Here's 5 features that should enhance the way you work with your students:
1) Live comments
Select any text and add your comment! Students see these in real time and in context of their work. They can reply to your comment, edit without having to redraft the whole section, and easily track changes and comments over time.
2) Voice typing
Voice typing is built in to any Google Doc; find it in the 'Tools' menu. It's a great way for students (and teachers) to get what's in their head into writing. It's an incredible accessibility tool for SEND learners - take a look at some examples of the formatting that's possible:
3) Draftback
Every Google Doc has an inbuilt Version History where you can track how a document looked at different points in time - great for evidencing student progress and developing student metacognition. Even better, there is a great free Chrome Extension called Draftback which allows you to play back a document as it was written! This is really useful when supporting students - and even looking for plagiarism!
4) CheckMark (marking codes)
CheckMark is a great free Chrome Extension that allows you to use marking codes that you may use in your school ('C' for capitalisation, 'sp' for spelling etc...) in a Google Doc. Once you've enabled it, simply double click on a word and a magic box appears above it. Then choose which comment you want, and it will automatically add it as a written comment without you having to type a thing - a real time saver! It even counts how many times you've made the same type of feedback!
5) Video feedback
After you've given your students' their feedback, they will need to act on it and (hopefully) improve their work. Sometimes students are able to act on your feedback when you sit down and discuss it with them. Unfortunately this isn't always possible with a class of 32 students in the contact time you spend with them. A great way around this is to leave your students some video feedback using the extension Screencastify.
We hope that you found some of these suggestions useful! Please leave us a comment if you try one of them out!