Using Blogger to create blogs in Grades 5,6 and 7 - thanks to Google Apps!

This year I am very keen that all my classes from Grade 3 - 7 have their own blogs. I  have made the decision to use the following platforms:
Grades 3 and 4: Kidblog
Grades 5,6 and 7: Blogger blogs

One of the things I love about using Google Apps is that you can use Blogger with  Under 13s and have control over the blogs. I love the seeing how everything from Google works together! So far the Grade 6s and 7s have their blogs. They loved creating them I have to say! Tomorrow is the turn of the Grade 5s.

This is the presentation that I have created and added to Google Classroom as a guide should any of them not get finished creating their blog during my lesson with them.

Getting started with a collaborative Google Slides presentation in Grade 5

This year I wanted to introduce a Grade 5 class to Google Slides in a collaborative way. Last year, with this class, we did a lot of work using Microsoft PowerPoint. I have to say that Microsoft PowerPoint is still one of my favourite applications for all time mainly because of all the different ways you can use it - but using it collaboratively is really not easy at all. Google Slides offers that benefit - so it is becoming a firm favourite.

Lesson goals

I wanted the students to:

• experience how easy it is for a whole class to use one Google document at the same time 
• learn how to share the finished product to their own Google accounts 
• complete the task at home if they didn't finish 
• learn the inns and outs of images, fonts, and background colour

Giving the assignment

Naturally, I created the lesson using Google Classroom. The students opened their Google accounts and logged on to Google Classroom and away we went!

The task
The class had to open the slide presentation I had created and shared in Google Classroom. It had an example slide. Their task:

• add a slide and create something similar 
• write an acrostic poem description of themselves using adjectives 
• add an avatar image they had created in a previous lesson and crop it 
• add their names using WordArt 
• use colour for their selected fonts 
• colour the background

The results 
The class enjoyed this task and they loved looking at each others' completed slides.

Other collaborative lesson ideas for Google slides
Here are three ideas I want to try soon:

• Do a collaborative project in groups 
• Write a collaborative story using Google slides
• Learn how to organise research on a collaborative slide presentation (idea via Richard Byrne's blog)

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