Welcome to EduTips, a side project of a Cult of Pedagogy podcast where I share one quick idea to make your teaching better.

This is Jennifer Gonzalez and I am your host.

This EduTip is sponsored by Flupe.

Do you spend hours giving feedback only to find students throwing it in the trash?

Flupe is an app that allows teachers to give feedback four times faster.

After students submit their work through the app, teachers can respond quickly with comment banks, audio comments,

hand drawn responses, and feedback that can be anchored to specific places on images.

Unlike other assessment tools, Flupe uses research-based strategies to teach students how to give feedback and use their feedback to learn.

Through dialogue and revision, students can act fast on the feedback they receive.

On top of that, Flupe allows them to do peer review and self-assessment which both build feedback literacy.

Go to Flupe.edu.com slash EduTips to get a special offer for EduTips listeners or contact them at team at Flupe.edu.com for a school license.

Today's EduTip is use Huttles to communicate during group work.

Picture this. You have gotten your students started on some kind of group work and they're buzzing right along.

After a few minutes, you realize there's an important piece of information you need to give the groups.

Maybe it's a slight change in the original instructions, some hint that will make the work go more smoothly, or a next step that they need to know about.

One way to handle this, which is the root I often took, is to shout above the productive noise in the room until everyone is stopped talking in their groups and is looking at you, then deliver the information.

While this certainly gets the message sent, it disrupts the flow of work happening in the groups and requires you to raise your voice, which many teachers would rather not do all day long.

A different approach is to use Huttles, where one representative from each group comes over to you.

You huddle up as tight a group as you're allowed to by current social distancing guidelines and you calmly give that group the information.

Once they have it, they can then return to their groups and deliver the message. No yelling needed, no disruption to the flow.

This tip came up in episode 172 of my regular podcast, a conversation I was having with Connie Hamilton about the esteem level on Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

Our main focus was not on group work, but she used this as an example of ways to elevate students' sense of esteem.

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