Request a work selfie

One of my more popular ideas on Twitter was this back in October 2014:

I’ve been trying this out for a few lessons with my year 10s. Quality of work improving! Easy with @idoceo #RAG123 pic.twitter.com/8Th8Gnh1Yu

— MathedUp! (@MathedUp) October 21, 2014

The idea is to tell students at the start of the lesson that, at the end of the lesson, they will have an opportunity to ‘request a selfie’ by drawing a camera symbol in their books (they do this alongside their RAG123 rating). At the end of the lesson, those students who have requested a selfie, get a picture of their work taken and emailed home to their parents. The fact that they are told at the start of the lesson adds to their motivation and means they take even more pride in their work. I have been using this idea, or a variation of it (full class selfies without request, random selfies, homework selfies etc) for almost a year and I can’t recommend highly enough!   It first seems like a lot of work from a teacher’s perspective, but using an iPad alongside an app like iDoceo, makes it really straight forward and only adds a few minutes on to my marking time. See below for a video guide on this:  

The response to this has been phenomenal! There really has been a dramatic improvement in the quality of work students produce and it has helped create a positive atmosphere in lessons. I’ve received so many positive comments at parents evenings this year and feel that I have built up extremely useful relationships with the parents of the students I teach. I was even able to revisit some of these ‘selfies’ during my discussions during parents evenings as they were all stored in the iDoceo app and easily accessible. See the bottom of the page for a small sample of comments made by other teachers who have been using this idea. If you haven’t tried this before, then do it. Seriously. Vow to do it straight away. A money back guarantee from me! It really is worth the small investment in time. If you don’t have an iPad, you can take photo’s on your phone and send it that way. If you do give it a go, please let me know how you have got on in the comments section below. Feel free to ask any questions below too and check out this post for more ideas on engaging parents. Please click this Retweet button if you have found this useful. If you want more ideas on using iDoceo, check out this post. Also, if you haven’t done so already, make sure you subscribe below. [mc4wp_form]

Tried the work selfie idea this week. Immediate impact on presentation (b4 & after photos) pic.twitter.com/3K478VQ4RN — solve my maths (@solvemymaths) January 10, 2015

Sonnet 18 analysis, yr8, and ‘selfie’ requests, for image home still going strong – @MathedUp 🙂 pic.twitter.com/n9eAMObrTq — Fiona Ritson (@FKRitson) January 16, 2015

@MathedUp I used this with my Year 10s in English. So delighted they are proud enough of their work to want to share it with home! Thanks! — Hodders (@Hodders129) October 24, 2014

@Mando_Nottm @ASTsupportAAli you certainly can! Quick bit of video feedback as you are marking sent to both student&parent. I like it!

— MathedUp! (@MathedUp) August 11, 2015

 

Inspired by @MathedUp I am taking the #selfie one step further – sending to parents AND putting on display! pic.twitter.com/iMwrm4S9Bq

— Maths Teacher UK (@mathsteacheruk) September 3, 2015