Explain Everything!
As teachers we love verbs! Especially Bloom's Taxonomy verbs...explain, illustrate, show, analyze, diagram, create, design, produce, evaluate, critique, justify....the list could go on and on. All of these levels of thinking are possible when you have your students use Explain Everything.
Ideas for your students.
Reading
Sketch to Stretch
Have the students use this app to draw and organize their thoughts. Have them record their explanation.
OR
Students can watch and listen to a peers explanation then record their critique of the student's analysis.
Signposts (from Notice and Note by Kyleen Beers and Robert Probst)
Have your students deduce the signposts from their reading of a particular chapter or story. Have them take pictures of the text evidence then record a justification for their selection. You could take it a step further and create a Thinglink with the cover of the book and link it to the student videos they created about each of the signposts.
How do you get your students to evaluation?
After students finish their projects, give them the rubric below and have them evaluate at least 3 of their peers presentations. This can be done in a small group setting or with whole class presentations.
Math
Writing
Social Studies
Ideas for you.
Create teaching tutorial videos and use them the following ways:
Ideas for your students.
Reading
Sketch to Stretch
Have the students use this app to draw and organize their thoughts. Have them record their explanation.
OR
Students can watch and listen to a peers explanation then record their critique of the student's analysis.
Signposts (from Notice and Note by Kyleen Beers and Robert Probst)
Have your students deduce the signposts from their reading of a particular chapter or story. Have them take pictures of the text evidence then record a justification for their selection. You could take it a step further and create a Thinglink with the cover of the book and link it to the student videos they created about each of the signposts.
How do you get your students to evaluation?
After students finish their projects, give them the rubric below and have them evaluate at least 3 of their peers presentations. This can be done in a small group setting or with whole class presentations.
Math
- Give a student a problem that has been worked incorrectly. Have them take a picture of it and analyze where the errors are and show how to work it correctly.
- As an extension activity have your students create tutorial videos on a particular TEK. Post these on your website and tell the kids their videos will be used with next year's students.
- PBL: Have your students design a business. Have them predict their profits using a linear equation or exponential equation (depending on the level) and explain their prediction and justify their choices. This project has the potential to address many TEKS
- As a beginning of the year review tell the students that they are going to create a teaching website for the kids from the grade below them. Assign particular TEKS to them then share the videos with the earlier grade to use in their instruction.
- Many of the TEKS in math fit nicely with Explain Everything's functionality.
- A student can record any inquiry activity, then generate a testable hypothesis. They could then record and explain their experiment and evaluate its validity. These videos could be shared with students in other classes in a science conference and discussed.
- Any time a verb in the TEK says model, Explain Everything is your app. The student can take pictures or create a visual model in the app itself.
Writing
- Students could insert a video from the internet and critique it for persuasive techniques used in media messages (Tek 6.13A)
- Students could analyze a piece of writing for different literary devices
- Write and/or analyze a piece of poetry through pictures and recorded video.
- Create an interactive weekly journal with various writing assignments for each week that have significance within the student's life
- Create a word journal with pictures, sounds, videos and student derived definitions
Social Studies
- The student could analyze a current event and it's relationship to historical events; they could create concept maps, include video and text evidence for their argument then present it to the class in video form.
- The student could create thematic, interactive maps, graphs, charts, models, and databases depicting aspects such as population, disease, and economic activities of various world regions and countries. (Teks 6.3 D) They could use a combination of videos, links, and self-recorded explanations for their project.
Ideas for you.
Create teaching tutorial videos and use them the following ways:
- Create an interactive lesson for your students. Export it as a project file, then have your students open up the project file and complete the lesson. They can then turn it in or have it evaluated by peers.
- create a QR code poster of tutorial concepts that can be used throughout the year or sent home as a smaller paper version to parents at open house
- create videos explaining your procedures to change up the 1st day routine (you will then be able to say to a student watch the procedure video for...instead of having to explain it again throughout the year)
- create a video journal to give yourself feedback on particular lessons for the following year
- post on your website for absent students
- differentiate your instruction with different levels of teaching in your videos for leveled instruction
- blended learning
- flipped classroom
How do we send these between student and teacher?
There are 4 ways you can export: a video, a pdf, an image, or a project file
Project Files: This option is great if you want the student to be able to open it and add to the project in the form of an interactive lesson. You would export it to your Google Drive or OneDrive and then share a link to the file with the student. They will then receive the open in option and they can select Explain Everything. It will open and be a file that they can interact with or add to.
Click Here to "Open In" a lesson that I created for my science students to see how the project file function works.
Project Files: This option is great if you want the student to be able to open it and add to the project in the form of an interactive lesson. You would export it to your Google Drive or OneDrive and then share a link to the file with the student. They will then receive the open in option and they can select Explain Everything. It will open and be a file that they can interact with or add to.
Click Here to "Open In" a lesson that I created for my science students to see how the project file function works.
Instruction Guide
Click Here to access a detailed instruction guide by Explain Everything.
Video Tutorials...
Click Here to be redirected to Explain Everything's tutorial videos.
One Rubric to Fit Any Subject...
The rubric below was created on iRubric. iRubric allows you to create digital rubrics that can be accessed on devices. Use the rubric code to search for this rubric on iRubrics. It will allow you to make a copy and edit it for your needs.