A Teacher's Favorite Things in SMART Lumio

 by Sarah Morin, SMART Ambassador and HS Math Teacher, Washington County Public Schools

Imagine you’re sitting in a high school math class just after returning from break, and experiencing several snow day interruptions. This is a stressful time of year for kids and teachers alike. We’re all tired. Keeping students engaged in my class around this time of year is tricky. Thanks to Lumio, formerly SMART Learning Suite Online, this task is much easier than it once was.

 Lumio has amazing features to make any lesson engaging; graphic organizers, templates for notes and quick checks for understanding, direct access to outside platforms such as YouTube and Desmos. While it’s possible to create content in the Lumio platform, my FAVORITE way to engage my students and save time is to simply add something engaging to lessons I’ve already created. I start by importing an existing Google Slides, PDF or other file; and that’s when the magic begins. Let me share my top three tools I use to increase student collaboration, engagement, and confidence in my classroom.

Shout it Out

How often do you ask your students a question only to be met with blank stares and the hands of two volunteers?  We all ask quick questions to gauge the level of student understanding or to see if students have made connections. Instead of asking students to raise their hands and hearing from the same one or two students, the Shout it Out tool (aptly named) gives ALL students the opportunity to answer quickly. Lumio settings provide teachers with options: how many responses each student can submit, whether student responses are anonymous, and to accept responses as text or images. This tool can also be used at any point during the class. With just a few clicks, a Shout it Out can be added to your lesson before you start teaching or on the fly during class. Teachers can delete, categorize, and display student responses. I use this tool as a warmup, during transitions, or to activate prior knowledge. Sometimes I just want to hear what my students are thinking in the moment, which is ALWAYS entertaining.

 Monster Quiz

This is, by far, my favorite Lumio tool. Do you remember when we had to download a PowerPoint template for a Jeopardy-style review game? It took me forever to make a game that would last 15 minutes. The Monster Quiz takes no more than 5 minutes to create (as long as you know what you want to ask), offers true/false and multiple-choice questions, and provides class feedback at the end. Not to mention, this quiz is absolutely adorable with its music and characters, and kids of all ages LOVE it! Even kids in my high school math class who are “too cool for school” get into the game. I like to find a place in my lesson where the kids would start to lose interest and pop one of these in there. It automatically sorts my students into same-sized teams, but I can move kids around from team to team if I don’t like where the sorting hat put them (Ravenclaw is the best, by the way). After the game, we review commonly missed questions, look at score breakdowns, and award winners the appropriate brownie points.

Collaborative Workspace

Do you have trouble getting your students to work productively with each other? I definitely don’t… said no teacher ever. The collaborative workspace is an awesome tool that engages a group of students in a task. Similar to the monster quiz, when you start the collaborative workspace, Lumio automatically sorts your students into same-sized groups (also adjustable). All students in the group have access to multiple annotation tools like pen and text, images, YouTube, Desmos, and can work simultaneously on the task. This is an excellent tool for my shy students who aren’t keen on verbal collaboration. Best part—I can see the work from every group, and I can annotate on it in real time to provide immediate feedback (or delete inappropriate items).

This school year is proving rough for teachers. Keeping kids in the zone is not an easy task. Lumio has changed the way I teach with a few simple tools. It only takes a few minutes to jazz up my pre-existing lessons. My students love it, I love it, and the stretch between winter and spring break goes a lot smoother because of it.