Transitioning from classroom to hybrid/remote teaching with ASSISTments

I’m Khanh Pham, a 7th grade math teacher at McDonough Middle School. This will be my seventh year teaching middle school and this is my third year teaching 7th grade. I learned how to use ASSISTments while in my previous school, Rex Mill Middle School, and fell in love with the way ASSISTments is set up.  

Before the pandemic started, ASSISTments was very useful because it helped my students be proactive and responsible for their learning. What do I mean by that?  When I started using ASSISTments, I immediately noticed a change in students turning in assignments and doing homework. Then as I showed them the Assignment Report and how they did their homework, they were shocked that I could see their progress including when they opened an assignment, viewed hints, and viewed answers.  

What was a typical day in my classroom like before the pandemic? Students would walk in to class and start on the warm up posted. Then we would look at the Assignment Report from the previous night’s assignment. I would go into detail on the report; what we got right and where we may have gone wrong. Then as the class goes on, I review the questions I see who missed the most then teach my lesson using the questions. I also use an EXIT TICKET piece from the content to test what students know during the lesson. As I showed more and more of the report each day, I saw an increase in students completing the work. Students were also more engaged as they work on assignments because they knew the report would show their progress. I found that students increasingly tried to do better on each question as they progressed through assignments.

Then, toward the end of the school year,  the pandemic hit and it was a shock for everyone. My fellow teachers went into a panic because they didn’t know what to assign to students, However I was calm because I knew I would use ASSISTments because I had already established a routine with ASSISTments and students were already familiar and comfortable with it.

This year, teaching at a new school, I started my routine from the beginning with ASSISTments. It’s been exciting to have a tool that works and allows my students to see their progress at the same time. I continue to use ASSISTments as homework/practice work virtually every day. Now, with the transition to hybrid learning, I’ve found ASSISTments to be even more useful! ASSISTments has helped maximize the quality of learning in my classes and has flexibly met my needs as we’ve transitioned from in-person to remote, to hybrid learning and hopefully soon back to full in-person.