We spoke with Emily Adamsheck about how TeacherMade helps her team stay connected with collaborative assignments. She also uses TeacherMade to make their district-provided curriculum digital.

How has TeacherMade helped your team stay collaborative?

I teach 5th-grade reading and math. My 5th-grade team has found a system that works for us. One of the greatest parts of that system is sharing our TeacherMade work with each other. I’m very honored and appreciative to work on a team that collaborates with almost everything, including how we deliver instruction.

How do you use TeacherMade to get organized?

Not only is TeacherMade a true timesaver, but it also keeps us organized. We don’t have to feel like we’re starting completely over or trying to reinvent the wheel at the beginning of each year. We share homework assignments, assessments, reteach, and retests collaboratively. We have even gone through the easy process of making each other “Co-Teachers” on TeacherMade, so we’re connected that way as well. If I remember correctly, that was a comment I shared somewhere on the social media world, along with many others, I’m sure. And let me tell you, TeacherMade listens and gets better all the time!

How do you use TeacherMade and Google Classroom together in your school district?

Our district is a Google district, and we have a “5th Grade” shared drive. We have everything we could need within that drive, including subject folders. Within those subject folders are our TeacherMade goodies. For reading, we have a working document with the shared TeacherMade links in the order of assessments (Unit #, Week #, etc.). Those documents include reading assessments, reteach activities, and retests. We are then all able to make our own copy and assign it to our Google Classrooms via TeacherMade. If needed, we are able to edit/update and replace the shared link at any time, and it’s available for everyone. For math, we dig a little deeper by topic. For example, we have a “Topic 1: Place Value” folder with everything we use related to that topic. Inside that folder, we have a working document specifically for those homework assignments and assessments easily accessible for daily use.

How do you use TeacherMade with your district-provided curriculum?

Most of our math homework assignments are already premade PDFs found online, and it’s as quick as putting the answers on TeacherMade. Sometimes we have a vision that we can’t necessarily find, so we create those assignments ourselves, usually in a Google Doc, but Google Slides works just as well. We have made all of our own math assessments, including reteach and retest assignments. We didn’t start completely from scratch. We started with our curriculum-provided assessments and then shaped them into a way where it was assessing students at a level that we believe reflects our standards-based grading and in a way where it was also efficient for us to grade. This has definitely become a team effort. Don’t get me wrong, you can also use your district-provided curriculum. And we do! We use our reading program’s assessments. All we needed to do was upload the PDF into TeacherMade and make it digital. 

How has TeacherMade saved you time?

At first, it seemed like there was a lot of prep work to get all of our assessments loaded into TeacherMade. But it has saved us time on the back end when we would have graded those assessments by hand. Once you start to get the hang of your system, you’re coming back to an assignment already made, and you can simply reuse it by making a copy of it, or you can tweak it, which seems to be the case for us. It only takes a few minutes to update your worksheet to your liking.

How does TeacherMade help with PLCs?

Our organization system helps build PLC goals of delivering common assessments amongst the grade level. With the help of TeacherMade, I guess you could say we work smarter, not harder!

What type of teacher can benefit from using TeachMade?

Teachers can make this system work with any grade level or subject. Even if a teacher didn’t have the opportunity to collaborate with others, teachers could still keep themselves organized with this system all on their own. Any system you use, you have to put work into it. Even if the system is just stuffing the master paper copy into a filing cabinet and not looking at it until the following year, you have a system. The system my team and I were able to create with Teachermade has been worth it.

TeacherMade gives you the ability to share digital worksheets and interactive activities with other teachers. Share anything you make on TeacherMade with other teachers and colleagues.