In case you are still wondering how to add some fun to your choice boards, a gif of yourself can never go wrong!
I am now creating videos, making choice boards, and asynchronous lessons while the school is slowly transitioning to in-person classes. I know! It sounds like a backwards plan, but I think it is the best the school can do right now to support students who are in the classroom and those who continue with home learning.
That said, adding GIF’s to my choice boards has been something my younger students love seeing.
Here are the steps:
Make a short video of yourself.
Upload it to the Unscreen.com website to remove the background. It will only allow 6 seconds. Download the short gif to your computer (gif = graphics interchange format).
Create a background with Canva. You can use animated images. Educators can use Canva for free!
Upload your gif to Canva and place it on the background you created.
Download it again from Canva as a gif.
Place it on your choice boards and have fun!
I am sure there are other faster ways to do this, but this works great for me. If you know of another way to do it, please share it with us all in the comments.
Over the summer I saw so many teachers sharing their Bitmoji classrooms that I had to give it a try. Of course, this is something that is not necessary, but I thought it would be fun to make one. Sometimes it’s these little unnecessary touches that make my work fun!
How Can You Use Bitmoji Classrooms?
First, I think it adds some fun to your virtual class. Even if you are back in the classroom, it will be fun for your students to see. Bitmoji classrooms can be used as:
A way to display your schedule.
A way to greet your classes.
A way to place links you can use during your lesson.
As a choice board for students to use and explore on their own
And many more!
There are so many tutorials on YouTube that it doesn’t make sense for me to recreate the wheel. Here is one video that I think explains the process in simple steps:
Don’t have time to watch the video? Don’t worry! I’ve got you covered. I took some screenshots of the process I went through while creating my virtual classroom;
I opened Google Slides:
I clicked on “Background” to add my first image:
I chose “Insert background image” and clicked on “Choose image”:
I clicked on “Google image search” because I was looking for images on Google. You can also click on any of the other options if you are uploading your images from somewhere else:
In this case, I wanted to look for an image of the “floor and wall background together.” I made sure to search for a picture of a transparent background or a png image:
I clicked on the picture that I liked and hit “Insert”:
I really liked the white walls and colorful floors in this picture!
Next, it was time to add more items to my classroom! It didn’t need to add more background images. (If I’d done that, it would have replaced the ones I already had). I just needed to click on “Insert image” and then choose where I was going to upload it from. (Note that if you don’t have any images yet, you can do a web search. Just remember that you need to look for images with transparent background or png images.):
Next I went “shopping” for a whiteboard:
I found the one I liked, clicked on it, and inserted it into my slide:
My classroom has a whiteboard now! Just follow the same steps to add more exciting things to your classroom.
How to Add a Bitmoji?
You will need to download the Bitmoji chrome extension to your computer and design your own little persona. Once you are ready, on your Google slide, click on the Bitmoji extension and search in the space bar how you want your Bitmoji to look.
Don’t’ have time to create a Bitmoji classroom? Feel free to click on this image, drag it to your computer desktop, open Google Slides, and add this image as a background. Now you are ready to add your own Bitmoji!
Seesaw is one of the most valuable teaching tools I have used during Distance Teaching. I have been using it for over three years, but I’d always limited myself to asking students to retell stories or to send them messages with links they would need during class. I have also used Seesaw as a backup plan for third grade and up when I had a sub that didn’t know Spanish. Seesaw is a wonderful portfolio that allows students to see their progress. It has also been a tool that has replaced paper assessments (Yay for the trees!). So I realized that I really needed to learn more about Seesaw during Distance Teaching. I feel that I now have created a bank of resources that I can use as emergency lessons or reuse if we continue with online teaching.
If you want to learn more about Seesaw, they have been offering different types of professional development (PD) and also have a lot of information on their website.
These are two activities that I created during Distance Teaching. Feel free to copy them to your library and make the changes you need to make them work for your students. You will need to have access to a premium Seesaw account to make changes to it. If your school is using Seesaw, you likely already have access to it. If you or your school have a free account, you can assign it to your students as is.
The first activity is based on the story “La vaca que decía oink”*** by Bernard Most. I read this story to my kinder and first grade students and used this activity as a way to review key vocabulary.
This second activity is a retelling of the story “La gallinita roja”*** in a much simpler way. Just like the activity above, you can edit it to make it fit the needs of your students.
I hope you and your students enjoy these activities!
I miss my classroom so much and also miss being able to see my students in person. One of the hardest things about transitioning to online school was finding ways to keep some of the routines I had in my classroom and adapting them to this new way of teaching that I refuse to call “normal.” I wanted to bring to my “home classroom” (which is now a table in my bedroom) some things that I had in my regular classroom for the children to feel connected, especially our kindergarteners and first graders. I brought home our class pets, and sometimes they make their appearance during our classes. I continue teaching my classes by first greeting them, then sharing the plan for the day’s class, singing a song, engaging in the main activities, doing a game and a closing song or phrase to end the class.
Of course, the greeting that I used with my younger students needed some adaptation to work in a virtual setting so I introduced new ones, and the children seemed excited. The most popular greeting has been the “baile,” since they can get silly and creative. Here are some greetings I use. Please notice that all the greetings are on the left side of the picture to let you place the Zoom video (or any online communication platform you and your students are using) on the right, as shown in the example below.
Click on each picture to save or drag them to your computer’s desktop. Place them in a PowerPoint or Google Slide widescreen, and you are ready to greet your students in your virtual meeting.
Have fun greeting your students in your virtual classes!
