With the ever-changing landscape of education this year, we have had plenty of new technology to learn, along with managing managing our students online, supporting their emotional and academic needs, and trying to work in a little bit of a personal life. It’s been a challenge for us all, to say the least! With all of the new platforms teachers have been introduced to this school year, it’s been difficult to discern what benefits one online learning site offers versus another. SeeSaw is one of my personal favorites, and I have five benefits of utilizing SeeSaw in your classroom!
Because SeeSaw activities are online, there is absolutely zero prep! Nothing needs to be printed, sorted, cut, laminated, etc. The only preparation you must take is to scroll through your library of resources, and choose the one to assign to your students based upon what skills you are targeting. With all of the added stress of this school year, the switch to online resources has at least alleviated quite a bit of prep time for teachers everywhere!
SeeSaw has many built in tools into the dashboard, which allows you to modify directions for assignments in order to best fit your students’ needs! Tools such as drawing, adding a photo or video, adding a note, and links allow you to create new assignments, enhance directions, or differentiate what different groups of students are asked to do.
These tools also allow you to provide feedback in a variety of ways during and after assignment completion. This can create a conferencing experience for your students, but completely virtually!
With all of the unknowns, one of the toughest parts of this school year has been helping our students (and ourselves) adjust to a variety of teaching situations this year. The routines, procedures, and workflows will look different for our students if they are in the classroom versus being completely online. One easy way to create consistency for our students is to incorporate the same online learning routines into our live classrooms that we use virtually. That way, whether you are hybrid, or bouncing back and forth between virtual and in-school learning, one thing will remain the same for your students! SeeSaw is a great platform to use during distance learning, but also is easy to work into the classroom with virtual assignments!
Consistency also makes it easier to keep our students growing. We can ensure that our students are practicing the skills that they need, even if they are not right in front of us! This is so important to me as a teacher. Our students already lose plenty of instructional time with all of the transitions, so any little thing I can do to keep them practicing the skills they need is well worth it!
When your resources are hosted on SeeSaw, it’s easy to track which assignments you have given to different students, who has completed each task, and what you have graded. Seeing all of this information in one place makes it so much easier to stay organized than if you are sifting through piles of papers!
Above all, SeeSaw activities are interactive, colorful, and fun! As we know, engagement translates to investment with so many of our students. If we can engage the majority of the kids in our classroom, then we have enough buy-in from them to ensure that they will see a task all the way through. I love using SeeSaw activities for this, exact reason! My students love the activities I assign them, and in turn I see a higher rate of completion!
Are you ready to try SeeSaw in your own classroom? I have a variety of First Grade Math Activities that you can try with your students today! Click here to see all of the options offered in my TPT store.
