Roxi Thompson

One of my favorite ways to use Google Slides in the classroom is to have students create collaborative slide decks together. I originally learned about this idea from Alice Keeler ( @alicekeeler ) in one of her "Go Slow" classes. She  also wrote a blog post earlier this year about using Google Slides to create Frayer Model templates. I took her idea and changed it up in order to use it for a geography activity.  I created an assignment with the directions and the Google Slide decks (one deck for each rotation): Here are the directions I added to the assignment: I used the grid view in Google Slides to watch as students started adding to the slide deck. My students have really improved in their ability to work collaboratively within a single slide deck. The first time we did this there were some students who were messing with other students' slides or changing the backgrounds for all the slides instead of just their own. I try to treat each of th

About a year ago, I read a Twitter post from Tara Martin ( @TaraMartineEDU ) about using #BookSnaps as a learning strategy in the classroom. She also has a website with some AMAZING resources about this activity, including How-To-Videos and examples of how to create #BookSnaps using different digital tools.  Because I teach Science and Social Studies, I typically use this strategy with news articles and we call them #ScienceSnaps and #HistorySnaps, depending on the topic. For the lesson below, students chose a Native American region to research. I used articles from Newsela  to put together a text set for students to utilize in their research. They used the article to create #HistorySnaps to create a visual representation of their thinking about the text and share that thinking with their classmates. Here are the directions I gave students:  Here are some student examples: Student Example #1 Student Example #2 Student Example #3 Student Example #4 Have you tri

I recently saw a post from Marshall Beyer ( @MarshallBeyer29 ) about an activity he did with students in which they created scenes in Google Drawings to demonstrate their learning. It looked really awesome, so I decided to try it in my classroom! A few weeks ago, students chose a Native American region to research. One of the resources they used was an article from Newsela. I created an assignment in which they were challenged to use Google Drawings to create a scene that demonstrated what they learned about the Native American region from the article.  I gave my students a set of directions that included an example of a scene that I created. Here are the directions: One of the things I'm working on this year is letting students explore the digital tools we use instead of showing them how to use them step-by-step. It's challenging at first, but they are so proud of themselves when they discover all the different ways they can create! I also love how eager they