Student Check In/Out
I recently had a SEL Sketches community member reach out to me regarding their SEL needs in their building (you can do this too lindsey@SELsketches.com!). Her administrator wanted her to run a 2 hour long PD on student SEL for her teachers (2 hours?! – WHAT?!).
Anyway… among many other things that I recommended, the Student Check In/Out Google Form has to be the easiest and most useful tool that my teachers have been using all year!
How it Works
My district adopted Canvas several years back, and as you can imagine, we’re rolling strong on it now. In an effort to familiarize students and families with the system, teachers in my district were instructed to use Canvas as their plan book as much as possible this year. Because of this, almost all of our classrooms start the day with students logging in to the system.
Each teacher in my building has created a copy of this form specific to their classroom. Students have learned (through specific instruction from my teachers) how to log in to this form to do a quick check-in first thing in the morning. Teachers can then see the results as soon as the students hit submit – making prioritizing student needs super easy!
What the Data Looks Like
So, here’s what we see when we pull the spreadsheet data from the form (the name column has been hidden for obvious reasons)!
You’ll see that this teacher keeps track of different days by highlighting them to make it easy to see any changes. You can easily see from the Yes/No questions those students that would either like to talk to the teacher, to me, or to both of us. I happen to work with AN AMAZING group of teachers. They do an amazing job of responding to the “yesses” and they are quick to let me know about those students that have requested to see me.
One of the things I like best about these forms? I can easily sort the results by student name and find patterns in their data! Taking a look at the student above, I can see this student is feeling pretty rock solid. It’s unlikely that they’ll need to check in with me, and if they DO request to do so, then it means something really must be going on. Also, if their scale starts to increase for any reason, then it ques the teacher and me in to the same thing – something is going on.
So this student has requested to check in with the teacher and with me quite frequently. You’ll see that their scale jumps around quite a bit as well. This is a student that has NEVER asked to speak with me before, but finally had the courage to do so through this form (how cool?!). We have been able to have some pretty meaningful conversations and problem solve situations that otherwise may have been left to fester.
Isn’t it Overwhelming?
The answer to this question? Sometimes, yes. Most of the time, no. Again, my teachers are pretty amazing. They are well aware that if a student asks to speak to me my schedule doesn’t always allow me to do so the same day. You know what else? My students are pretty amazing, too. They’re pretty aware of the same thing, and they understand that sometimes it may take me a bit to get to them. Teachers are quick to play gatekeeper for me, and they do an amazing job of letting me know if a student needs immediate attention.
~Lindsey
I’m using a similar form – in google, but it’s separate and doesn’t go through teachers. My question is, how do you connect with students who say they want to meet with you? We are completely online, so if a student says yes, I will email them to start a conversation or offer to set up a google meet with them. But, over half the time, the student doesn’t email me back. These are elementary students so they don’t have their own phones. Do you have a different system that works better? Thanks.
Ugh the downfall of online learning! Unfortunately, I’m in the same boat with my online learning students. Typically, I keep track of the students that request to meet with me and if I’m having no luck the teacher will try as well. We are mostly in person now with SOME of our students virtual, so it’s not a problem that I have come across too much. Unfortunately, I feel like you do with this situation. I do everything I can to reach the students, but sometimes I get nothing back. The most success I have gotten has been from sending a message that directly gives them the date/time of our meeting with the link included. I do this rather than asking them if they want to meet because I feel like it’s more direct and asking isn’t quite as useful since their response of “yes” to meeting with me is basically already their acknowledgement.