Virtual “Post-it" Wall

Typically when teacher’s review concepts, it looks something like this:

Teacher: "What is one thing you can tell me about yesterday’s lesson?"

Student raises hand. Teacher calls on student to answer. One student responds. Another student raises his/her hand and answers. And so forth. 

Point being, student’s respond one-at-a-time and more often than not, you only assess a few students rather than your entire class. What if there was a way to have each student respond with a virtual post-it response? Meet Padlet. (Website or app based)

Essentially, padlet is a virtual wall that gives you the ability to allow students to respond all at once in an organized fashion. Picture a wall in your classroom where you write a question on a large piece of paper and students respond on a post-it note. Padlet allows you to do this, virtually. Padlet also allows you to add images, links, and graphs to your wall. One of my favorite features of padlet, is the ease of sharing the padlet with your class! You can share via email, social media, and you can even embed the link onto your own website/class blog. However, I find the QR code that padlet creates for you (Genius! One less step for us!) to be the easiest way to share your wall. The students would use their devices, scan the qr code, and it would take them directly to the padlet in order to post their responses.

Ideas of how to use padlet in the classroom:

1.     Brainstorm new topics

2.     Exit Ticket/Bell Ringer (One thing you learned. One thing you remember.)

3.     Post, “What is something from this lesson that you need extra help with?”

4.     Book reviews (favorite quotes, characters, questions)

5.     Back Channel (As you teach, students can pose and respond to each other’s questions over the topic that you are teaching.)

6.     Prediction (Stop and predict what is coming up next in your novel.)

7.     Note taking

The ideas are endless!

The image below is a sample taken from the padlet website.