April 11

Week 4 Student Blogging Challenge

Running Totals after 3 weeks of competition:

1st period           5 pts.

4th period          7 pts.

6th period          6 pts.

Springtime Magnetic Poetry with Google Drawings

Spring is here, and April is National Poetry Month, so what better time to have your students work on their creative writing skills with a Springtime-themed writing activity.

This week each student must do an individual assignment. The class ranking for this week will be determined by the highest average grade percentage from all assignments for each class period.

Doing this activity with technology such as Google Drawings provides many benefits:

  • No limit on the quantity of words provided. Just copy and paste more of them as needed.
  • Great tech skills practice with dragging and dropping and copying and pasting.
  • Ability to edit the words provided if needed.
  • Ability to add your own words.
  • Easy collaboration with others.
  • Easy to share or download your final creation.
  • No pieces to get lost.
  • It’s free!

See below to get your free copy of the Springtime Magnetic Poetry template to use for this assignment.

Template Layout

Here is the basic layout of the template:

Middle

In the middle of the template is the canvas where the students will add the words for their poem, story, greeting card, or creative writing piece. At the bottom of the work area is a text box where the student can type in their name.

Left Side

On the left side of the template are 100 standard (non-themed) words in alphabetical order. These include the typical words needed to create sentences and phrases. I pulled these words primarily from the Dolch Word List, based on the words I felt would be the most familiar, needed, useful, and versatile. In addition to words, this list also includes some word fragments, such as “ed”, “ing”, and such, that can be added to other words to modify them.

Right Side

On the right side of the template are the 78 Springtime-themed words in alphabetical order. I tried to include a variety of words related to Spring, but if you need more there are also some blank tiles of various sizes at the bottom that can be used to type in your own words as needed.

By laying out the template this way, students are able to see all of the words at once, and quickly find the words they want to use.

Using the Template

Once you have your own copy of the template, you and your students can create your poem or other writing as follows:

  • Drag and drop words from the left and right sides onto the middle work area. Drag around the words as needed to place them where you want.
  • If you need more than one copy of a word, simply copy and paste it. You can select the text box for the word, then choose “Edit” and “Copy” and “Paste”, or right click and “Copy” and “Paste”, or press Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V.
  • If you need to edit an existing word, just double-click inside the text box and make the changes you want, such as capitalizing the word, changing the tense, making it plural, or such.
  • Note: If you change an existing word so that the new word is longer, you will likely need to click and drag the edge of the text box to make it bigger to contain the new word.
  • If you want to add your own wordsdouble-click inside of any of the blank text boxes and type in the word you want.

Sharing your creation

When you are all done (or at any point in the process) you can share your Google Drawing using the blue “Share” button just like any Google file.

However, another option when done is to download your creation as an image. This will allow you to take that image and use it in many ways:

  1. Print it out.
  2. Insert it into a Google Doc or a Google Slideshow.
  3. Post it on your blog or class website.
  4. Share it on social media such as Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
  5. Make a greeting card out of it by putting into a desktop publishing program or even a Google Drawings greeting card template.

 

To download an image version of your Google Drawing, do the following:

  • Click “File
  • Choose “Download as
  • Select “PNG image (.png)
  • Google Drawings will only download the work area of the Drawing, not the word banks on the left and right sides of the main canvas.
  • Your image will now be downloaded and ready to use.

 

 Instructions provided by Eric Curts blog post on WEDNESDAY, APRIL 4, 2018, Control Alt Achieve: transforming education with technology  Springtime Magnetic Poetry