Direct access to InThinking pages for students

Student access gives students direct access to the Inthinking site, as part of a teacher subscription. It enables teachers to set assignments, using learning activities from selected pages of the site. Teachers can easily create groups of students, set work for all students in the group, and monitor the activity of students in each group.

Schools that have been forced to close temporarily due to the new coronavirus, Covid-19, are making extensive use of ‘Student Access’. These schools need to engage their students in distance learning and the Inthinking website is proving to be a very useful tool for this.

There has never been a better time to discover what Student access has to offer.

• Encourage students to use the Topic sections as an interactive textbook. These are concise summaries of the ideas in a topic, supported by embedded videos.
• Ask students to produce questions for each other based on the content. Start by focussing on lower level command terms like State, Identify, Outline. Students can even make quizzes for each other using  Quizlet.
• Use the Activity sections of each Sub-topic to set activities for students to complete either individually or in groups. Many activities have a suggested table to support learning. These can be copied into an online document, such as a Google doc, and completed online and shared in the class and with the teacher, e.g.  Applying the Pollution Management Model 
• In the Activity sections there are several Review activities for students to use to check their understanding, e.g  2.4 Succession Review 
• In the Activity sections there are videos to watch with guiding questions, e.g.  2.1 Whitebark Pine Trees and Clark's Nutcrackers and  3.4 Keystone Species 
• Think laterally; some activities can be adapted for the online environment.
  • Could your class complete a debate such as  1.5 Dilemma of DDT Debate using a Google Hangouts Meet or by recording an audio pitch using the computer's sound recorder?
  • Could students attempt to produce a system diagram, e.g.  The Climate as a System and then send you a photo of their attempts?
  • Produce a case study presentation and do a screencast to send you with Quicktime (Mac) or Loom (Windows), e.g.  2.4 Succession Case Studies 
• For "practical work" there are many activities which can actually be done online or independently. Here are just a few:
  • Collecting and analysing data 2.1 Yellowstone National Park Wolves 
  • Collecting data 4.1 Analysing Water Use 
  • Data analysis 4.4 Water Temperature and Dissolved Oxygen 
  • Measuring Change 7.2 Modelling the Albedo Effect 1 
  • Creating surveys using this guidance  Designing Surveys and Questionnaires 
  • Learning how to write methods  Improving Planning Skills - The Sandwich Challenge 

• Have students test themselves using the Quizzes 
• Use the review activities and release the answers to students using student access once you are ready.  Review Activities 
• Use the flashcards in the  Key Vocabulary and Ideas for Each Topic 
• Check their understanding  Checking Your Understanding 
• Read about  How is ESS Assessed? 
• Read the advice on writing part c essays  The 9 markband essay Question and review example essay responses  Essay Questions Part C - what's needed 
• Complete the  A3 Revision Posters 
• Adapt the  Revision Ideas 
• Prepare  Sketch Notes 
• Send your students exam questions to practice via your VLE (Virtual Learning Environment) and have them send you their responses. Ask them to time themselves.
• For slower review strategies, follow through on the review podcasts and videos  Review Podcasts and Videos  
• A selection of the best pages can easily be found here

Chris Wright has an excellent blog on his IB School Leadership site: Covid-19: What happens when school is closed?  I highly recommend the posting as it has a lot of good information for schools to think about.  For me, the most important part of the posting is the following graphic from Jennifer Chang Watall. This graphic suggests what a week of distance learning might look like.