G2 Poetry Unit - Publishing With Google Draw

Teachers Involved:  
Colleen Hoskin, Heather Wirch, Tae Yi (Grade 2 team)
Sarah Carpenter

Grade/Year level: Grade 2

Curriculum Links: Language Arts - poetry unit

SAMR: Substitution moving to augmentation ...

** could be moved to augmentation or modification by using comment features, taking a poem and making a multimedia presentation of it, focusing on poetry with expression.

Description:

Students publish their poetry anthologies using Google Draw

Tips and Tricks:

When students are new to Google Draw, it is important to layer skills in short bursts, and then practice them again and again creating poems.  When they are set with their skills, teach them a little more and have them go back through created poems, adding in the skill.  We have found the sequence of skills works best as follows:

Lesson One:  Setting Up

• concept of layering (moving forward and back) and the importance of the order in which you do things
• custom page set up
• Inserting borders
• Inserting text boxes
• the enter and delete keys

Students should create 4 - 5 poems before going onto next stage

Lesson Two:  Spicing Up!

• fonts, size and colours and how to choose and change
• text alignment and centering

Students apply these skills to all poems created to date and continue to expand their anthology

Lesson Three:  Adding Pictures

• how to use the google safesearch filters
• using google search
• balancing pictures with text
• how to center
• how to resize (by corners only)

Students apply these skills to all poems created to date and continue to expand their anthology

Challenges:

Short Attention Spans of Young Students:

• break steps down into very short tasks
• have a poster with each step for students to refer back to.  This will encourage them to be independent and frees you up so you can help with the major issues.

Keyboarding Skills:

• we recommend students have had at least a trimester of keyboarding before they do this unit
• have students create poems first on paper and then just use draw to publish the finished work

Resources needed:

• Help Charts
• Google draw

Time involved

• Each lesson is an hour.  Time must be given between lessons for students to practice the skills they have learnt.  If they do not practice multiple times and additional skills are added in too quickly, they will not retain the skills and sequencing needed to build quickly and successfully.  It is good to have additional support if available whilst students are practicing.

Contact information

sarah.carpenter@seoulforeign.org