Getting students engaged outside of the classroom can be difficult. While most students understand that they must complete homework and assignments for their classes, creating homework assignments that are engaging helps to reinforce learning and development.
Below, we have some ideas on how you can use some of the tools in Microsoft 365, Teams and SharePoint to create brilliant and effective homework assignments.
Use the Reading Progress tool.
The Reading Progress tool in Microsoft Teams is a great way to liven up reading tasks, comprehension and language learning.
Students can record video or audio of themselves reading a passage and submit it to their teachers for feedback or grading.
What’s more, Microsoft picks up on any mispronunciations, omissions and repetitions – which is great for saving teacher time when marking.
Students are also likely to feel more comfortable reading a passage in their own home, rather than aloud in front of their classmates.
Add audio clips into Class Notebooks and Assignments.
It’s easy to add audio clips into Class Notebook and we know that some teachers have been using this feature to set learning objectives and instructions for homework tasks.
Not only does this save the teacher time, but it also injects a bit of life into homework tasks.
A new feature in Teams allows you to add video instructions directly to Assignments, while students can submit videos of themselves speaking a new language, practising a presentation, reading a passage or playing an instrument.
Create revision videos that can be used again and again.
Video is a great way to engage your students outside of the classroom as it’s a lot more engaging than sending over blocks of text and worksheets to revise from.
You could keep a library of revision videos in SharePoint for your classes to access, or even embed videos into Class Notebook to compliment revision guides.
As an additional bonus, when it comes to the end of the year, you can reuse the content you’ve created for your new classes – so there’s no duplication in work.
Get creative with whiteboards for assignments.
A relatively new feature to Assignments, the whiteboard allows you to integrate a virtual board into Assignment tasks.
You could either assign a previously created whiteboard (i.e. one that you created during a lesson) or add a blank whiteboard with students to work on.
Another great idea is to create a whiteboard where students fill in the blanks. It gives your class something different to do than work in Word or their Class Notebook.
Source: Microsoft Tech Community
Test knowledge with quizzes and forms.
Quizzes and forms can be easily set up in Microsoft 365 and work great in and outside of the classroom.
One idea is to use a form to quiz your students on their understanding of a previous lesson. Or, you could incorporate a quiz into a reading comprehension task.
Not only are quizzes and forms more engaging than filling out a Word document, but it also gives you as a teacher an almost instant overview of whether the learning has been understood and what areas you may need to recap during the next lesson.
If you would like to learn more about how we can help your school or trust achieve more with Microsoft 365, please contact a member of our team today.
