3rd Grade Teacher, Sandra McCollough, came to me one morning searching for a digital idea that would work for their unit of study about Community Helpers. Sandra's class was just ending their unit and she wanted her students to be able to demonstrate their learning in a digital format. Last year Sandra and I collaborated on a lesson to help students create trading cards for Black History Month, and she remembered those and suggested we try that again for this topic. I found the perfect template to edit for our needs among the Google templates curated by tech teacher Darren Maltais at https://sites.google.com/a/gshare.blackgold.ca/engagingstudents/home. I've written about this site before on my blogs and newsletters. It is a collection of the best Google templates I've ever found! Thanks Darren!
I edited a trading card template so students would be required to share the information they had learned about community helpers. Students chose their favorite community helper. As all students love animals, there was a moment when I was sure they would all choose veterinarian! Surprisingly, we had some variety! I shared the link with students for the template using a google shortened link. I also made sure to change the end of the link from /edit to /copy so it would force a new copy for each student. This kept students from all trying to edit the same document. https://goo.gl/jyU79c Students added their information to the template with a few helpful hints from me. Adding images is particularly easy for students from within the open Google window using the "Replace image" option. Once students finished, they shared their trading card with their teacher via Google's share option.
In the end, Sandra decided the trading cards would look great on display in her classroom, so she printed little copies of each. They looked great on the wall. It would also work for students to partner trade their cards digitally if they wanted to actually trade them!
I edited a trading card template so students would be required to share the information they had learned about community helpers. Students chose their favorite community helper. As all students love animals, there was a moment when I was sure they would all choose veterinarian! Surprisingly, we had some variety! I shared the link with students for the template using a google shortened link. I also made sure to change the end of the link from /edit to /copy so it would force a new copy for each student. This kept students from all trying to edit the same document. https://goo.gl/jyU79c Students added their information to the template with a few helpful hints from me. Adding images is particularly easy for students from within the open Google window using the "Replace image" option. Once students finished, they shared their trading card with their teacher via Google's share option.
In the end, Sandra decided the trading cards would look great on display in her classroom, so she printed little copies of each. They looked great on the wall. It would also work for students to partner trade their cards digitally if they wanted to actually trade them!
