3rd Graders Learn The Power Of Google Documents

This week 3rd grade students began working on writing letters.  This is an activity that I have been doing for many years because it gives me an opportunity to teach so many word processing skills while giving students an opportunity to write a letter to their family, friends and even Santa, if they wish.  I give them the choice to make the letter a holiday themed letter, end of the year letter, or just a simple "hi, how ya doin" letter.  This year, I moved the letter to the cloud, the Google cloud that is.  

Students began by linking to a letter template that I created in my Google Drive account.  They then copied the letter template, renamed it and saved it to their Google Drive account.  At one point during the transfer, students were able to see that they were all connected to the letter in my Google Drive.  They thought that was really cool!

Once the letter was in their own Google Drive, they began personalizing it.  Because the letter was in Google Drive, I had the opportunity to add messages in the margins as reminders to students.

In the coming weeks, students will finish writing and editing their letter.  When they are finished, they will be left with a letter that they will be proud to send!