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For this module, I designed a Google Form to review a lesson on St. Brigid, focusing on her life, the traditions surrounding her feast day, and making the St. Brigid’s cross.
This approach promotes inclusion by giving all pupils an equal, pressure-free platform to demonstrate their learning. Including visual options—like diagrams of rushes or historical pictures—helps scaffold the task, while tools like Voice Typing assist children who struggle with written expression. The automated response summaries immediately show me which concepts resonated and where extra guidance is required, giving every child a clear voice in their own assessment.
For School Self-Evaluation (SSE), Google Workspace provides a streamlined way to collect digital evidence. Using Forms allows schools to gather genuine input from pupils, parents, and teachers. Analyzing these responses in Google Sheets makes tracking educational trends straightforward, helping us support diverse learning needs and drive ongoing improvement under the Looking At Our School framework.
Hi Lorna,
This is such a fantastic and practical SSE focus! Working with 1st and 2nd class EAL pupils on their oral language—especially sentence structure and vocabulary—is such a vital foundation for their overall literacy development.
I really love your idea of using Google Slides as a visual anchor. Pairing clear pictures with key vocabulary and sentence starters is an amazing way to lower the pressure for young EAL learners during partner talk and games. It gives them the exact scaffold they need to feel successful right away.
Your approach to gathering digital evidence is spot-on, too. Combining Google Forms with simple teacher observation and audio recordings is brilliant—hearing their actual voice progress on tape over time gives you genuine evidence that written work just can’t capture!
Your next steps around gradually fading out those sentence supports as their independence grows shows such a clear understanding of language acquisition. Best of luck with this in your classroom.
SSE Focus & Assessment Approach
Our School Self-Evaluation (SSE) focus evaluates how digital feedback tools can strengthen formative assessment, clarify student thinking, and promote greater self-regulation. To measure this, we are using a brief “3-2-1” exit ticket built in Google Forms and assigned directly through Google Classroom at the end of key learning units. Students quickly outline three main takeaways, two remaining questions or areas of confusion, and rate their overall understanding on a simple 1-to-5 confidence scale.Supporting Tools & Evidence
Google Forms acts as our primary gathering tool, generating instant summary charts that highlight common misconceptions across the group. Google Classroom helps manage individual tasks while providing a private space to leave personalized, direct comments for students who log low confidence scores. Finally, all form responses automatically sync into Google Sheets, giving us a clean spreadsheet dataset to track growth, spot trends, and measure topic mastery over time.Planned Actions & Next Steps
Immediate Re-Teaching: Review automated Forms summary graphs right after submission to adjust the very next lesson plan and target widespread gaps.
Direct Interventions: Send targeted, private feedback through Google Classroom to quickly support students flagging high confusion levels.
Department Collaboration: Export collected Sheets data to team folders for quarterly department reviews, using empirical evidence to refine assessment strategies across subjects.
This is such a fantastic example of using a Gem for focused, high-impact lesson design!
Your application of teacher judgment here is spot on. Filtering out the mirror fogging activity because it didn’t directly align with your core learning objective highlights exactly why AI is a partner in planning rather than a replacement for professional insight. It’s so easy for activities to be “fun,” but keeping the focus sharp on the actual Science concepts makes all the difference.
Using the Pulse Check as a quiet, active starter sounds like a brilliant way to build immediate self-awareness and practical data collection into a respiration lesson. Plus, your careful attention to safeguarding and keeping pupil data completely anonymous shows a really strong grasp of digital safety standards.
Out of curiosity, did the pupils find any unexpected patterns in their breath counts during the Pulse Check, or did it lead into a nice discussion on how our bodies adapt during physical activity vs. rest?
Great work using the tool to save prep time while keeping high pedagogical standards at the centre!
Reflection Post: Using a Custom Idea-Generator Gem for Primary History
Class Level & Curriculum Context:
5th Class | SESE History (Strand: Early Peoples and Ancient Societies, Strand Unit: The Vikings / Working as a Historian).
Limited Task Supported:
I used a custom “Lesson Strategy Gem” for a narrow brainstorming task: generating three active, inquiry-based lesson starter hooks focused on everyday Viking trade, settlement, and navigation in Ireland (specifically looking at longphorts like Dublin/Waterford).
Output Check & Adaptation:
I evaluated the Gem’s draft against the primary history curriculum guidelines. The AI initially suggested a horned-helmet art activity and a glorified raid scenario. I rejected the horned helmets (mythology vs. evidence) and adapted the raid scenario into a balanced comparative diary entry—exploring both an Irish monk’s perspective and a Viking trader’s journey along Irish riverways. I retained a brilliant suggestion using map work to locate Viking settlements.
Safeguarding & Professional Boundaries:
I ensured zero Pupil Identifiable Information (PII) was used. The prompt focused strictly on general pedagogical ideas and curriculum outcomes.
Value Added:
The Gem saved valuable prep time by offering a fast foundation for active learning. However, professional teacher judgment remains essential to filter out historical myths and align activities with true historical enquiry.
Google Workspace & Gems for School Self-Evaluation (SSE)
Google Workspace and custom Gems can streamline the School Self-Evaluation (SSE) process across the six-step review cycle aligned with Looking at Our School:
Evidence Gathering (Google Forms & Sheets): Google Forms can collect anonymous baseline data from pupils, staff, and parents regarding digital learning, literacy, or well-being. Responses automatically populate Google Sheets, allowing SSE coordinators to analyze trends with clean charts.
Data Synthesis & SIP Drafting (Custom Gems): A dedicated “SSE Analysis Gem” can be created by inputting anonymized feedback summary points alongside Looking at Our School quality indicators. The Gem can assist in drafting clear targets, actions, and success criteria for the School Improvement Plan (SIP).
Collaborative Review (Google Docs & Drive): Staff can collaboratively refine the SIP in real-time, leaving comments and tracking changes on shared Google Docs, creating a live, transparent folder in Google Drive for all SSE documentation.
It sounds like this module gave you some brilliant, practical takeaways to bring straight into your autism classroom!
Learner variability is such an important focus, and it’s great to hear how tools like Voice Typing and Alt Text stood out to you. Features like those are real game-changers for lowering the barrier to entry and giving pupils alternative pathways to demonstrate their understanding without feeling overwhelmed by mechanical barriers like writing or typing mechanics.
Your use of Google Forms is a fantastic example of inclusive digital practice in action. Combining visual prompts with immediate response tracking—and having all that assessment data automatically exported to a spreadsheet—is an incredible time-saver for tracking progress over time.
I especially resonated with your point about reducing reliance on repeated teacher instruction. Digital resources give pupils that valuable sense of autonomy, allowing them to process information at their own pace and build independence in a way that feels safe and structured.
Great job putting the course ideas into immediate practice—your students are going to benefit so much from these additions!
Thank you Dee for sharing such a creative reflection! The “Super-Adapted Creature” challenge for an alien planet covered in mud and freezing winds is a fantastic hook for 5th Class. It takes the concept of animal adaptations and applies it in a fun, high-interest way that naturally boosts student engagement.
Your inclusive adaptations—such as word banks, visual sentence completion, and oral recording for reluctant writers—demonstrate how Google Workspace can make complex science topics accessible to all learning profiles. Incorporating Google Forms for the exit ticket and leveraging read-aloud tools is a great way to capture reliable assessment data without reading barriers getting in the way.
In terms of School Self-Evaluation (SSE), using Google Forms exit tickets across year groups offers a brilliant mechanism for gathering baseline data on student self-assessment and learning retention. Analyzing these response sheets in Google Drive provides clear evidence of teaching impact when monitoring targets in your school’s Digital Learning Plan.
Topic: Scientific Inquiry / Environmental Science
Class Level: 5th Class
For this module, I designed a collaborative lesson using Google Slides where pupils worked in small groups to research local habitats and present their findings.
To support inclusion, I incorporated inbuilt accessibility tools like Google Voice Typing and screen readers (Read&Write for Google Chrome). This allowed reluctant writers and EAL pupils to draft text verbally, removing literacy barriers and ensuring equitable participation.
To drive pupil engagement, students embedded multimedia elements—such as recorded audio captions and YouTube clips—directly into their shared presentation slides.
For feedback and next steps, I utilized the inline comment feature in Google Slides during the activity. Leaving real-time, constructive prompts (“Can you add a visual example here?”) provided immediate formative assessment. Pupils acted on these suggestions right away and used a short self-assessment rubric in Google Forms to determine their next steps for revision.
Regarding School Self-Evaluation (SSE), inbuilt accessibility features offer significant potential. Google Forms with voice-typing enabled allows all pupils—including those with SEN—to share authentic feedback during SSE data collection. Furthermore, aggregated data on how widely pupils utilize accessibility features can inform our Digital Learning Plan, ensuring our target interventions genuinely foster an inclusive learning environment across all year groups.
Thank you Kevin for sharing such a insightful reflection! Designing interactive, clickable slide decks for addition and subtraction up to 20 is a fantastic approach, especially in a Special School context where visual clarity, routine, and predictable layouts are so vital for reducing anxiety and supporting learning.
I completely agree with your point about consistency. Establishing a familiar slide structure allows students to focus on the actual mathematical concepts rather than trying to navigate a new format every time. Your realization about refining AI image prompts is very relatable—getting precise visual outputs often takes a few attempts!
Regarding School Self-Evaluation (SSE), your focus on Assessment and Progress aligns brilliantly with Google Workspace. Using standardized digital slide decks across classes creates a consistent baseline for tracking progress over time. Work samples and video/audio clips of students completing these tasks can easily be stored in a shared SSE Google Drive folder to showcase distance travelled.
Topic: Scientific Inquiry & Plant Biology
Class Level: 5th Class
Course Reflection
In designing this learning sequence, I created a central Google Slides hyperdoc paired with direct links to Google Classroom assignments for each step of the investigation.
My primary design choice was using a single, visual hyperdoc as a central navigation hub. This choice significantly supports clarity and consistency, as students have a predictable structure for every lesson. It reduces cognitive load by eliminating the need to search through multiple attachments, allowing students to focus directly on learning tasks.
One adjustment I would make is embedding short audio instructions within the Google Slides. This would offer better accessibility for reluctant readers and support independent learning.
Looking ahead, Google Workspace and Classroom offer immense value for School Self-Evaluation (SSE). Digital portfolios saved in Google Drive can serve as authentic evidence of student progress over time. Furthermore, teachers can use Google Forms and Sheets to gather and analyze baseline data on teaching methodologies, helping staff collaboratively track targets in our SSE action plan.
Eva thank you for sharing such a practical reflection! Using Gemini to design station-teaching for 6th Class Maths is a brilliant application, especially for revision and assessment.
Your point about differentiation and timing is spot on. AI often provides a standardized “ideal scenario,” but in a primary classroom, flexibility is essential. I really liked how Gemini broke down the four key domains, but your proactive approach to adjusting the station timings and tailoring the task difficulty shows just how crucial the teacher’s judgment remains.
Regarding your privacy boundary, you handled it perfectly. Framing prompts with general parameters (e.g., “tier 3 support strategies” or “mixed-ability extension tasks”) allows Gemini to offer differentiated options without needing specific student details.
For School Self-Evaluation (SSE), this approach could be really valuable. Staff could use Gemini in Google Docs to quickly generate differentiated assessment rubrics or analyze anonymized maths attainment data to track target outcomes across year groups.
Have you considered asking Gemini to provide three tiered variations of each station task in your initial prompt to save extra adaptation time?
Topic: Scientific Inquiry / Forces
Class Level: 5th Class
Course Reflection
Reflecting on my experience incorporating Gemini into my teaching, I found its ability to generate differentiated reading passages and comprehension questions based on a single core text to be exceptionally useful. It saved significant planning time while ensuring all ability groups could access the lesson material.However, one adaptation I found necessary was refining the complexity of the initial output. AI-generated prompts often required tweaking to match the exact vocabulary level and curriculum objectives appropriate for primary students. Additionally, a major boundary I enforce for responsible AI use is ensuring that student data remains completely anonymized; no personal details, names, or identifying work are ever entered into AI prompts.
Looking ahead, Google Workspace and Gemini offer brilliant potential for School Self-Evaluation (SSE). Gemini can help synthesize staff survey responses, identify key themes in student learning data, and streamline the drafting of SSE action plans directly within Google Docs, allowing our team to focus more on reflective dialogue and implementation.
