Tag: Google Slides

GSuite, Science

Observation vs. Inference: A learning adventure

Mari Venturino

Over spring break, I have been doing a lot of relaxing AND a lot of fun work. For me, creating and planning is fun, so I don’t always mind it when I’m on a break. That being said, I constantly check in with myself to see if this is something I want to be doing or I feel like I should be doing. As soon as this fun work feels like a burden, then I stop and find something different to do–it is a break, after all! Lots of making observations and inferences on the personal level.

I designed this lesson while sitting on my patio furniture (I bought myself new cushions, a little physical distancing gift to myself), enjoying the fresh air and sunshine. Throughout spring break, I’ve been thinking about what types of skill-building activities I can do with my students when we begin distance learning. In the past, I haven’t done a great job of teaching observations and inferences, so I decided to dig in and create a better lesson I can use with my students in the coming weeks. As I was creating this lesson, I had both in-person and distance learning in mind.

5E Lesson Model

The 5E lesson model is frequently used in science classes, and has application for all content areas. Lessons are broken down into five phases: Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate. A 5E lesson could take a single class period or span a couple days or weeks. You can read more about the 5E model of instruction here.

For this particular lesson, I chose to use Google Slides because it makes each distinct lesson phase its own slide. I have found this helps to keep my students focused when the activities are chunked into smaller pieces. Here’s a 5E Slides template I created. Or, if you prefer Google Docs, there are some amazing 5E Hyperdocs templates here.

Observations vs. Inferences Lesson

First, check out the Observation vs. Inference lesson. If you like it, click “use template” in the top right corner. If you don’t like it, click “use template,” make changes, then share it back to me. I always appreciate the feedback!

For distance learning: I plan to send out these Slides to my students on Monday, check in with them mid-week, and have everything completed by Friday. Students can choose to complete one slide per day, or do it all in one sitting. Either way, the focus is on building skills rather than new knowledge.

For in-person learning: I predict this lesson will take an entire 100 minute block, and potentially need to extend into another period. I would also see the value of including a peer-review cycle using Google Forms and/or TAG feedback. However, I will not have the opportunity to try this live with my students until next school year! Sad face.

When you try this with your students, let me know how it goes! Leave a comment or send me an email 🙂

 

 

Classroom Strategies, Technology

Creating a Class Learning Journey with Slides

Mari Venturino

Each May, our science department hosts Science Night. It has been a lot of fun to involve our school, local high schools, and community in science! Many students bring their families, and participate in labs and activities together. Additionally, we invite local museums and science organizations to set up interactive displays. I love science night!

Science Night in my classroom. Students, teachers, and families are checking out the displays and learning from student presenters. 

Since most of the work we do is digital, there isn’t a ton of student work to physically display. Instead, we display interactive labs. To show off student work, I have them each create a slide in a collaborative deck to showcase their work. Then, this is projected as a slideshow all night.

This is a perfect way to have students reflect on their learning or on a particular assignment. Each student claims a slide, adds in a piece of work they are proud of, and reflects on it.

Here is a template you can try with your class! Duplicate the portfolio slide x # of kids in your class.

A few tips for getting started:

  • This is a perfect time to talk about digital citizenship, especially not intentionally editing someone else’s slide. No matter the age level, everyone needs this reminder.
  • Encourage students to get all the content on their slide first, before decorating. Otherwise, a student may spend 2 hours finding the perfect font for their name.
  • Do a virtual gallery walk! Play some music, and have students scroll through the slides. When the music stops, they add in a comment (try using TAG feedback!) where they stopped.

If you have a school or class open house or display night, play these reflection slides in the background. On Slides: File > Publish to the web > pick your settings, including “restart slideshow after the last slide” > publish > paste the link in the address bar. 

MVA Science Night 2017-2018
One student’s slide from our collaborative science night slide deck!

Try using this same idea for an introduction slide deck for all your students! Replace the work section with a selfie, and answer a few basic questions, such as what are your hobbies?

Out of the classroom? I’ve seen schools/districts with a tv in the front office. Have each teacher create a spotlight slide to sprinkle between announcements and important information.

PS. When you iterate on this and make it better, I’d love to see your example! Add it in the comments below, or share it with me and I’ll link it in this post.

GSuite, Science, Technology

Slide into Science Fun

Mari Venturino

A while back I blogged about my newfound love for Google Slides. Slides has been such a versatile tool–it is very easy for my students to edit and insert photos/screenshots on their iPads, and simple for me to walk around and see we’re all on the same page (literally).

Getting our heart rate up during the Heart Rate Lab!

I’m slowly transitioning our labs to Slides. I push out everything with Google Classroom, and I love that I can pop in and see students’ progress as they are working (or not working…).

As you read more about the following three examples, I encourage you to not get hung up on the specifics of the content, but instead focus on how Slides can work in your classroom to build skills and assess mastery.

Insert pictures and selfies

Our first lab of the school year is the Paper Airplane Lab, where we review measurement and the engineering design process by building and testing paper airplanes. This lab also helped us teach and reinforce key skills with Slides, such as how to add text in a text box (already created, in this case) and inserting images.

Ms. V photobomb on design selfies!

One of my favorite parts of this lab is Step 4, where students had to insert a selfie with their chosen design. With permission, some used Snapchat on their phone to jazz up their selfies. Others earned themselves a Ms. V photobomb!

Analyze data and create graphs

Another lab we love is the Heart Rate Lab! My favorite part about these Slides is the averages graph. The bars are already created, and students just had to drag the bars up to the right size. We also used this lab to reinforce average. If we were solid on calculating average, I would use this version to teach students how to analyze data in Sheets. There are benefits to both versions, it just depends on what skills we’re working on.

Heart Rate Lab Data
Heart Rate Lab Graph

 

 

 

 

 

Screenshots of learning evidence

Our Math 7 team has been using Slides for each CPM lesson. One idea I’ve borrowed from them is inserting a screenshot or picture of work at various stages of learning. We use Phet Simulations to teach or reinforce different concepts, such as in the Atom Builder Lab. Students explore the Phet simulation, and insert screenshots of the atoms they create as learning evidence.

Extend the learning

I’d love to see examples of how you use Slides in your classroom! What are some of your favorite tips & tricks?

GSuite

Fun with Google Slides

Mari Venturino

You may have noticed a pattern that I absolutely adore and love Google Forms and use them daily in my classroom. In the last year, I’ve discovered a deep admiration for Google Slides. Not only are Slides my go-to for projecting the warm-up questions, posting instructions during class, and direct instruction (sometimes I use screencastify to create in-class flip videos!), but also I’ve transitioned quite a few student assignments over to Slides.

We are 1:1 iPad, and the Google Slides iOS app is easy to use. It doesn’t have all the features of the web version, but it has just enough that we need on a regular basis.

Slides with Students
This year, I’ve transitioned all of my science labs to Slides. Instead of giving students a Google Doc to edit, or a PDF to work on in Notability, I’ve moved everything to Slides.

I love using Slides because it chunks down the lab into manageable parts. Instead of students staring at a long Google Doc, feeling overwhelmed at everything they are being asked to do, we can focus on one slide at a time. Bonus: I’ve noticed a positive difference in my students’ lab behavior–they are more on-task because they know exactly what they need to get done!

I was using Docs last year, and we had trouble when trying to insert pictures, especially in data tables. Students had trouble cropping images or making them easy to see. Slides is an excellent solution!

If we were on Chromebooks, I would extend this by using the Screencastify extension to have students explain what they did and what they learned in the lab.

Here’s an example of a Heart Rate Lab and Paper Airplane Lab we did using Slides. On the Heart Rate Lab, you can see I color-coded the different steps, making it easy for me to quickly check that we’re all on the same slide.

Slides for Teacher Creation
A few months ago, I blogged about Virtual Vikings, my #BathroomPD newsletter I create for the staff bathrooms at school. I change the page setup (File > Page Setup > Custom > 8.5 x 11) to make it printer paper size.

I use Slides to create handouts for class, including Cornell Notes (here’s my template!), I love how easy it is to add in and format text and images. It also makes it quick to print class handouts (I use analog interactive notebooks).

Master Slides
I’ve just started diving into master slides, thanks to inspiration from friends like Michele Osinski who is a pro! I’m still figuring it all out, but I love that I can customize my Slides templates to make it easy for specific layouts and formats. Here’s a quick video (I didn’t make this one) that explains more.

What are your favorite ways to use Slides?

Classroom Strategies, GSuite

Virtual Vikings — tech learning made convenient!

Mari Venturino
One of my hats at school is .2 (one class period) as a Blended Learning Specialist. I work with teachers to do purposeful integration of technology into our classroom. As I try to encourage my colleagues beyond simple substitution with our 1:1 iPads, I’ve found that we’re all sort of stuck in the swamp of so much to do, and not enough time to implement everything.
Virtual Vikings Newsletter
Virtual Vikings Newsletter
I had to really sit down and consider what will work best for my teachers. They don’t need more PD or expansion of Tech Tuesday lunches. I post resources and ideas on Google Classroom, initiate discussions, and try to be present in classrooms as much as possible. We attend local conferences, such as Edcamp619 and the San Diego CUE Tech Fair. However, they didn’t need more of any of that.
It took me the better part of a year analyzing this challenge, talking with colleagues and mentors, and observing how our teachers go about learning.
When I visited Google Boulder for the Innovator Academy in June 2016 and the Googleplex in Mountain View in August 2016, I noticed they had newsletters in all the restroom stalls. This made for some very interesting and technical reading. (Sorry, didn’t take any pictures. Google’s rules!) And, it reminded me of freshman year of college when our RAs would post the weekly newsletter in the bathrooms–it was impossible to ignore.
Text from my friend!
A lightbulb went off, and Virtual Vikings was born.
I used Google Slides to create the monthly newsletter template (see template & example here), then added in new content for each month. When I see cool tech tips, ideas, or lesson spotlights, I add them to a list on Google Keep. My featured sections include: Tech Tip, Classroom Highlight, Spotlight, Monthly Challenge, Viking Tech Crew, and Upcoming Events.
The hardest part is getting classroom spotlights, since I can’t be in every classroom every day. I’ve recruited my Viking Tech Crew (tech club) students to share what they’re learning, and take pictures of lessons and activities they’d like to share.
I’m thankful my dear friend Deb, guardian of the color printer, happily prints me 12 copies each month.
In each staff bathroom plus the copy room, I used 3M Command Strips to hang up plastic sheet protectors on the wall or back of the stall door. Each month, I do a Tour De Bathroom and slip a new newsletter into the sheet protector.
I’ve intentionally chosen not to also email out a copy. I want to preserve the magic and excitement of the physical newsletter. In the future, I’m not opposed to posting a digital archive of past newsletters.
Missing...where did my Virtual Vikings go?
Missing newsletter!
Since starting this in March 2017, I have received extremely positive feedback on the Virtual Vikings newsletter! Each time a new one goes up, friends text me, email me, or stop me in the halls to share what they learned. They like that it’s short, colorful, visual, and convenient.
In fact, a few people love Virtual Vikings SO much that newsletters occasionally disappear from the sheet protectors!
I can’t wait to post our next Virtual Vikings newsletter when we go back to school in July!