A collaborative Google Drawings lesson with Grade 6

I have been wanting to get my Grade 6s to work on a collaborative Google document successfully for some time now! The first time I tried out the idea of a collaborative document with Grade 6, to my dismay, they starting deleting one another's work on purpose! It was rather a nightmare! So, after a few admonitions and discussions, I attempted the task again! This time it worked out very successfully.  I used Google Drawings for the lesson..

The origin of the lesson idea
The lesson idea was adapted from a lesson found on Chris Clementi's wonderful Google site. She created a  great Google Drawing lesson called Animal.

Lesson goals

• Work collaboratively on a Google Drawing template
• Add images and resize them
• Link the images to information about the animals
• Present a 1-2 minute oral report back on one of the animals researched

Giving the assignment
I used Google Classroom to assign this lesson. It is just so easy and seamless doing it this way.

The task
The class had already had a lesson on how to research using Google Drive. In this assignment they had to:

• Use a shared template in Google Drive
• Work on one animal at a time and negotiate the next animal they tavked with the rest of the class (it is a small class so this wasn't too chaotic).
• Find a suitable image, add it and resize it.
• Find a site containing simple factual information about the animal and link that to the image.
• Decide on one of the animals chosen and present five facts about that animal orally to the class namely description, habitat, breeding habits, food, and one other interesting fact. 

From Chris Clemeti's public animal template

The results
The students completed the task collaboratively with no hiccups, and they negotiated the division of animals amicably. This was a great lesson. There are a few errors on the final document that need to be corrected as you can see below:

Improvements for next time

• Next time I will use the filtered image search function in Google Drive so that students use only images with the Creative Commons license
• I would recreate the template so that the name can be linked to the facts while the image itself gives the right accreditation.

Further reading
8 Creative Uses of Google Drawings You Shouldn’t Ignore
10 Ways to Use Google Drawings in the Classroom