Classroom management is an essential element of maintaining a positive and effective learning environment, but it also requires patience, awareness, and clear rules. That’s a lot to balance when you’re also teaching, but technology — in particular, Jotform — can help.
Jotform is an excellent platform that allows you to create a wide variety of educational forms to use in your instruction. I have already reviewed in a number of posts here in educatorstechnology.com, the last of which was a post covering the different pre-made form templates for teachers.
1. Track daily data
You can use an app to easily and quickly track the important data that you need to record daily. This data may include student attendance, performance evaluations, progress reports, and incident reports.
Since an app makes these forms easily accessible, you’ll save time completing them and be able to quickly access the information in the future. Tracking your data can make it easier to perform future assessments, and you’ll have all of those records at hand if you need to review them with parents or supervisors.
Recording data can also help you prepare for evaluations. If you’re required to write reports about your lessons or teaching methods, continuously recording your data as you go can help simplify that report-writing process.
2. Schedule tutoring
Jotform’s tutoring app lets students request a tutoring appointment and allows tutors to schedule those appointments. The app is equipped with an application for new tutors, as well as feedback forms.
You could alter this app to allow students to set appointments for extra after-school help, study groups, and more. Alternatively, if you offer tutoring in addition to your teaching, this app could help you easily organize your tutoring appointments, avoiding unnecessary back-and-forth communication.
3. Create a reading log
Tracking each student’s reading and progress is easy, thanks to the reading log app. Students can fill out the app for each day that they read, making it easy to track and review student reading progress.
You can use the reading log for general reading assignments, like requiring students to spend a certain amount of time reading each week. Alternatively, you could use it to monitor students’ progress in a single book that the entire class is reading. If students start to fall behind, you’ll be quickly aware of it and will be able to take any additional steps, like talking with parents to help the student catch up.
4. Manage homework assignments
The homework management app lets you collect and manage homework assignments, quickly evaluating which students completed their assignments and which may be falling behind on their work. This app is particularly helpful when you’re collecting large numbers of assignments, or when you have multiple classes and need to keep their assignments organized.
5. Track toys or books
If you allow students to borrow toys or books from the classroom, the toy tracker app is ideal. It’s easy to customize and allows you to quickly keep track of which students are responsible for which classroom materials.
6. Keep parents updated
You can build a classroom parent app to create a parent portal specifically for your classroom. Add forms and links, like approval forms and notices that parents need to acknowledge. The portal can act as a line of communication between you and parents, eliminating the need to send printed forms and notices home with students. Now you can ensure that parents actually get the information you provide.
7. Manage lesson plans and scheduling
You can also build an app that helps you organize, schedule, and manage your lesson plans and other classroom activities. Add fields for event reminders, notes, and other information that will help you prepare for each day, week, and month. You can use the app to set deadlines for yourself, such as for lesson planning, to ensure that you’re ready for each day in the classroom.
8. Encourage parent communication
Connecting with parents by phone isn’t always easy. You can create an app that gives parents an easy way to reach you with questions or concerns. Parents can complete a form on the app, and you’ll receive the information.
This is ideal because it gives you time to review the information and prepare answers before responding to parents. It may also encourage busy parents to reach out when they might not otherwise be available by phone.
Create your own custom app
These are just a few ways you can use Jotform in your classroom. Since Jotform Apps are fully customizable, you can build your own app to meet your unique needs. There’s no coding knowledge required, and once your app is complete, you can record data through any device.
Apps can streamline data recording, facilitate communication, and help you stay organized so you can focus on teaching rather than on recording information.
