Adventures with Jamboard

December 2020

Whew. I don’t know about you, but this 2020 school year has been one for the books. From back-and-forth with in person/virtual learning, to late starts, to every company and person trying to get me to buy or use just ONE more thing. I’m spent! But, when I come across a tool that is 1- free and 2- easy to use, I have to tell you about it! Have you heard of Jamboard?!

I started using Jamboard this past month with my Spanish 1, 2, 3, & 4 classes and it has been amazing for virtual learning. As I type this, my students and I are 100% remote. Engagement has been hard, getting them to respond has been hard, teaching life in general has been HARD. But I keep seeing Insta posts from @MrsCabellosC about how much Jamboard was changing her life & classroom and I finally decided to give it a go. @MrsCabellosC was posting images of templates and class activities that looked AMAZING…but I wasn’t ready for that level.

My first Jamboard: Would you rather…? I uploaded new background to the Jamboard frames and then had students use the sticky notes to choose a side. It was F-L-A-W-L-E-S-S until I re-learned that middle schoolers will take any chance to draw on anything in any moment…lesson #1 learned. Sometimes you can’t give EVERYONE access. (p.s. you can get Would you rather here for Winter & HERE for the New Year back-to-school!)

My second Jamboard: Storyasking, but with choices. I decided this time I would give 2-3 studentss “jobs” to help me with the Jamboard while the others helped make answer choices in the Zoom chat or by un muting. No rouge drawing! I had one student draw the lovely gato you see once the class decided my new puppy wanted to be a cat instead! And I had another student move the multiple-choice sticky notes into the blanks as we talked about it and decided on the answer as a class. This was a BREEZE. Pros: I could add pics of my puppy, I could draw on the pics (make her cry to show “triste”), I could draw arrows, I could add small sticky notes for new words to the class (voy: I’m going) that they needed help with. highly recommend. (ps. you can follow the adventures of my new pup, Loveland, here!)

My latest Jamboard: After story asking went so well, I decided we’d give storytelling/comprehension a try with Jamboard! I used a wonderful story from Martina Bex’s SOMOS 1 Unit 4 FLEX plans (my AMAZING curriculum- that I can’t recommend enough!!). I took screenshots of the story (low on time!) and added them to the Jamboard. Then I added the 3 BIG sticky notes with our target verbs & their English meaning. As we read the story, I had 3 student volunteers that I gave editing access to the board. The rest were view only! #1 used the shapes feature to create that highlighting look around our key verbs as we read them (and he decided to make them color-match, my hero!), #2 was my “we don’t know this word yet” sticky-noter. She made a sticky note for new words and then we added the English once we knew what they meant, and #3 was my question answer writer- as we reviewed the questions, they typed the answer. Super simple!

Have you tried Jamboard in your classes yet? I’d love to know how it has gone!