One of the major benefits of a blended learning environment is the ability to leverage self-paced learning activities to improve student achievement. Self-paced learning activities do more than just allow students to work at their own pace, it also changes the role of the teacher. You can move from being planted in front of the class delivering content, to the sides of students delivering feedback. The extra time, and personal one-on-one and small group attention, provides meaningful opportunities to precisely guide your students with personalized and timely feedback. The video below shows how you can combine the organizational capabilities of Google Docs with the creation power of Google Drawings to do just that.

To begin, structure your lesson with Google Docs, adding in student-friendly goals, guiding questions to access prior knowledge, provide links to videos and readings to introduce new content, and then incorporate Google Drawings right into your Doc to give students the space to process and apply their learning. Google Drawings gives students the ability to create visual representations of their thinking. Students can sort ideas, annotate images, maps, and text, draw, write, and search outside images to add right into their Drawing. All of this happens directly in the Google Doc, keeping the students and their learning organized all in one place. Finally, in your Doc, include a space for students to reflect. Add a reflection question, include a link to Padlet or another communal digital board, or use Google Forms to collect student responses.

And of course, all of the benefits of Google are right at everyone’s finger tips. Students can easily share and collaborate with their peers as well as submit their work quickly with Classroom. Finally, as a teacher, improve your students’ learning with these 5 tips to better feedback  using the G Suite for Education.

What other Google Apps do you Smash together? How do you leverage self-paced learning activities to improve your students’ learning? Add to the conversation in the comments below!