Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Task Cards and Evernote

I've been wanting to use task cards with the texts we are reading, but I knew I didn't want to use paper.  I thought about all the apps we have on the iPads and I knew I needed one that would allow the students to include the task card and their response, as well as somehow turn it in to me.  I finally landed on Evernote. This is the process we followed:

  1. I wrote out the topics/questions on index cards.  I didn't have card stock available and I knew I wanted to use them multiple times, so I thought it worth my time. Plus, I wanted multiple colors to help facilitate the switching of cards between students. This example is using Lord of the Flies, which my AP literature class read during the winter break. They had 3 1/2 weeks of break, so plenty of time to finish the novel. These task cards from Juggling ELA's shop on TeachersPayTeachers.com. You can find them here: http://goo.gl/ZEuqry 
  2. I passed out the task cards and had students create a new note in Evernote.  They added a picture of their card and wrote their response underneath. I gave them 10 minutes to respond and had them switch cards with a classmate. I classified the cards using the different colors: plot events, characterization, figurative language, theme, key quotes, etc. As long as their cards were different colors, I knew they were analyzing different elements. After ten minutes, they switched again so they ended up with three different task cards analyzing three different elements of the novel. 
  3. Student Submission
  4. After responding to three cards, I had them discuss their cards with their groups. Then to submit, they clicked "share", then "copy link" and they submitted the link to me. We use the Canvas LMS, which has an option for students to submit a URL for an assignment, but you could also have them email it to you or put it in a Google Form.  





2 comments:

  1. Thank you so much for mentioning my task cards in this blog post.

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  2. I wanted to say thank you again. I'm still getting click throughs to my TpT store from this post. I have a digital version of these cards now and I'll send them to you for free if you email me jugglingela@gmail.com

    ReplyDelete