In face to face instruction, I loved using simple white boards and having students show their answers to get a quick pulse on where everyone was or what they thought. In virtual instruction I have seen a strategy called Waterfall work in much the same way.

In the virtual world, where students and many adults are hesitant to turn their cameras on or unmute their microphone Waterfall gives them a chance to participate in a safe low stakes way. When everyone is contributing the focus is not on any one person. 

1. Ask a question
2. Students answer in the chat, but do not click send
3. Teacher says or projects an image “3-2-1 Waterfall!”
4. Students all press send together for a cascade of answers!

Waterfall can be used at the beginning of class, as a check for understanding during instruction, or as an exit ticket. It can also be a silly or personal question that fosters a sense of community. 

Make a copy of the template here. 

When you are designing your instruction plan where you will use the strategy. You can simply place the waterfall icon image in the corner of a slide to remind yourself to use the strategy, or you can insert a copy of the slide above to add a bit of color and sound to the strategy.  Press the Play button in the corner as students are typing in their answers and they'll hear a waterfall. (It's the little things like a sound that can make a difference, sometimes.)  Waterfall is a simple strategy that is effective.  

Pandemic problem - students were remote and we needed to send each student their report card at the end of a grading cycle. We did not want to use the U.S. Mail as it was expensive, non-eco friendly, and time consuming, Our solution, mass email individual files to student email addresses. We chose to send the emails and documents to student email addresses because we were confident that they were the most reliable address we had on file for any student, as the email addresses were created and assigned by the school district. In non-pandemic times, we would send the document home with the student. 

Early this year we learned how to send a mass email through mail merge using Word. Thank you Peerti Burns for teaching us how to do this first step! After we learned how to mail merge out a standard email we were met with a new challenge, attaching a specific pdf to each email. Sending each student a specific file took us a bit of time to figure out.  The steps below walk you through what we learned so that we could send individual pdfs to students.  

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There are two tools that I used to help make the process simpler and go faster. I reference them in the videos, but I am linking them here too.
Links to Plug-Ins
AutoSplit:   
https://www.evermap.com/AutoSplit.asp

Mail Merge Toolkit: (Remember to try trial and make sure the version you buy attaches your file.  I am not sure what the difference is between Personal Attachments and Personalized PDF in attachment. There were not two versions when I purchased the add-in). https://www.mapilab.com/outlook/mail_merge/#purchase  

Also, I used two formulas that you can copy and paste into your spreadsheet to help complete your data sheet.
Links to Formulas:

• Formula to remove characters from ID Number:     =LEFT(A1,LEN(A1)-4)    
• Formula for Vlookup to match file with ID Number  (Remember to change file to your file’s name.): 

          =VLOOKUP($A2,'[Report Cards Sample File.xlsx]Sheet1'!$A$1:$G$3193,7,FALSE)     

Learning to send documents individually to students has added an additional layer to  our communication channels. It's efficient, reliable, and cost effective.  The challenges we have faced during the pandemic have been immense, learning to leverage email to distribute unique student information is one way in which we have gotten better through the pandemic months.  I hope what we have learned helps you communicate with your community.