Like most educators in recent weeks, I am sure many of you are scrambling to put together user-friendly, engaging, meaningful lessons for your students. I've spent so much time at my computer converting old lessons to digital versions that I think I am developing both carpal tunnel syndrome and "tennis elbow!"

Now that we are four weeks into remote learning, I am discovering what works and what doesn't work for my students. I am fortunate that my students are well-acquainted with Google Classroom. We have been using the Google suite of tools since the beginning of the school year. My students get flustered when there are too many posts in Google Classroom. So, to keep posts to a minimum, I have been creating and using a lot of hyperdocs and hyperslides. I can post a week (or more) worth of lessons, activities, and assessments in one doc or slide. Since I switched from posting multiple assignments in the Google Classroom to one post (a hyperdoc or slide), I am receiving far fewer questions and I am receiving far more completed work! Awesome.

Hyperdocs and Hyperslides are pretty easy to create, they just take a little time and creativity. I teach middle schoolers so I like to make mine visually appealing with lots of images and gifs! I also design mine as a gameboard (or something similar.) There are lots of examples you can find online as inspiration.

Here are a few examples of slides I created for my most recent unit on the Middle Ages for my 7th graders.

Would you like to read more about this lesson? Click here!

What online activities do your students like best? I would love to hear from you!