As promised, please find below a selection of activities we’ve cultivated for you to import directly into your Verso Classroom.
Verso Library Activity: Grades 3 – 6
Black History Month – Make a Difference
https://app.versoapp.com/flips/KouDMRaWpoW3jXXcE
Verso Library Activity: Grades 7 – 12
Verso Activity – Black History Month: “Let America be America Again” Langston Hughes
https://app.versoapp.com/flips/FBDHFDqCfG3iaQpnq
Verso Activity – Black History Month: Camille Rankine
https://app.versoapp.com/flips/izHXYWmcbAkyETh9t
If you need some help with copying/cloning activities, here’s a link to a helpful article:
Can I use the same activity more than once?
One common issue raised with using Google Documents or Google Classrooms for remote or blended learning, is how to get students to engage with each other and share ideas. Google Classrooms is great for sharing files but doesn't allow students to work together in a truly collaborative way, share ideas or engage with the lesson materials. However by combining your Google account with your Verso account you can.
This example demonstrates how teachers can combine Verso with a collaborative Google Doc or Google Classrooms to allow a richer and more engaging Google experience. It shows how to link your Verso account to your Google account and then how to use Verso and Google together to allow students to respond to engage with each other's ideas and provide visibility of individual thinking to the teacher.
This short video shows an example of students in grades 1 and 2 engaging in a math’s activity where they are using a model provided by the teacher to design their own problems for their peers to solve. The use of standard and non-standard measures and the opportunities for repeated practice, collaboration and creativity delivers high outcome, high engagement learning opportunities for all.
The general capabilities play a significant role in the Australian Curriculum in equipping our students with the knowledge, skills, behaviours and dispositions essential to thrive in and outside of school, as successful learners, confident and creative individuals, and active and informed citizens.
To support this process, Verso check-in has been designed to support teachers in meeting the requirement that they teach, assess and provide opportunities for students to develop and apply these capabilities to the extent that they are incorporated within learning area content, where they can support deep thinking and learning.
Fig 1: Verso reflection prompts can be filtered to focus on year level, learning area and capability . Simply select your subject area and the year level of your students. Select the learning outcome and use our filters to select your desired prompt.
Reflection prompts are questions that require students to think critically about what or how they have learned. They are designed to support synthesis and analysis, the forging of connections between ideas, and the development of knowledge, skills, behaviours and key learning capabilities.
The key ideas for Critical and Creative Thinking are organised into four interrelated elements in the learning continuum:
Verso check-in supports teachers in developing each of the four elements through the provision of banks of more than 250 carefully designed reflection prompts that can be filtered for a variety of contexts and purposes, providing an appropriate lens for student to develop capability in critical and creative thinking as they learn to generate, organise and evaluate knowledge, clarify concepts and ideas, reflect on their journey as a learner and connect their learning to new and existing concepts.
Verso Check-In Inquiry prompts have been organised into 6 sub sets, aligned to each stage of the inquiry cycle Each set contains :
1.Activate. Sample prompts include:
2.Discover . Sample prompts include:
3.Analyse. Sample prompts include:
4.Organise. Sample prompts include:
5.Evaluate. Sample prompts include:
6.Implement. Sample prompts include:
“This element involves students creating ideas and actions, and considering and expanding on known actions and ideas” Australian Curriculum
Sample Prompts:
“This element involves students reflecting on, adjusting and explaining their thinking and identifying the thinking behind choices, strategies and actions taken” Australian Curriculum
Sample Prompts:
“This element involves students analysing, synthesising and evaluating the reasoning and procedures used to find solutions, evaluate and justify results or inform courses of action”. Australian Curriculum
Sample Prompts:
In order to meet the priorities of individual schools and develop the broader capabilities of students, Verso Check-in Prompts also allows teachers to generate prompts of their own or quickly and easily search for prompts under the following additional headings:
“Student voice’ is the intentional collection of students’ thinking and feedback on their learning, and the use of these voices to inform and improve teaching, learning, and school-wide decision making.”
Prof Helen Timperley
The "My Impact" Dashboard provides access to classroom data capable of informing professional inquiry. The profile dashboard allows teachers to evaluate the impact of current practice on the ability of students to take ownership of their learning, as assessment capable learners, sharing real-time insights into the ability of each student to:
It also provides valuable insight into cognitive and emotional wellbeing, feedback on student perceptions of challenge, and the ability of students to apply appropriate verbs to discuss what they are learning.
Unlike the Teacher Check-in Dashboard, which provides an essential source of data from an individual lesson, the Teacher Profile presents data from the last 5 check-ins alongside school averages. When used together, these dashboards allow the intentional collection of students’ thinking and feedback on their learning to guide next learning steps for students and decisions about content and approaches by teachers and the addition of the Teacher Profile now informs the development of professional goals and broader decisions about teaching and learning.
Teacher Profile data can also be filtered to show differences between classes and used to support professional conversations about the impact of aspects of a teacher’s practice with coaches and learning specialists, and the work of PLCs.
According to Hattie’s analysis, students’ ability to report thoughtfully on their own performance has a massive effect size of 1.44.
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