Welcome to my YouTube channel for The New EdTech Classroom. My name is Sam
Kary, I'm a middle school teacher in San Francisco, and on this channel I share
tips and ideas for how to use education technology. Today I'm going to show you
how I use Google Slides to create lesson plans. Using Google Slides helps me make
sure I'm touching on all the important parts of the lesson, helps me visually
reinforce instructions, and helps me present material in a more engaging way.
Plus, Google Slides can be shared with students on Google Classroom so if a
student is absent, misses a part of your class, or simply needs to go back and
look over at something again, they can easily do that by looking at the Google
Slides you created. The first important step when creating a lesson plan with
Google Slides is that you first identify a lesson plan framework that you're
gonna use to structure your lesson. Now I like to structure my lessons with the
five Es lesson plan. If you're not familiar with that I definitely
recommend that you check it out. What's important is that you're using some sort
of framework to inform your instruction. Just so you know, this Google Slides
template is available on my website if you'd like to take it and use it for
yourself. I start my slide with the teacher facing slide that reminds me of
all the different components of my lesson. Now I'm not gonna touch on all
the five Es in a single day, but I want to make sure that over the course
of the week I engage students by activating their prior knowledge, that I
explore a topic with students, we're gonna build knowledge together. Then
students will need to explain by synthesizing their knowledge. In the
'Elaborate' stage, students will create something to apply what they've learned.
For the 'Evaluate' stage, there's either a formative or summative assessment to
determine what students have learned. Everyday when students come into my class,
they see this slide that shows them what they will need to complete for
independent practice. You'll notice that I also include what students need to
take out. This is usually an assignment the previous week or previous evening
and then I include a 'Do Now' to engage my learners to activate prior knowledge or
to review something that we learned the previous day. Lastly, you'll see that I've
included movement, voice, and participation. This is just to remind my
students of expectations during this activity and I've also included a video
timer so they know how much time they have to complete this activity. Before
the 'Do Now,' students will be creating a KWL chart to show what they know and
what they want to know about early humans. Then we'll continue that 'Engage'
phase of the lesson and record all together as a class what students know
and what they want to know. And if I record these notes directly into my
Google Slides, then if a student was absent or missed that part of class, they
can still see the notes that their classmates made. The next important part
of any Google Slides lesson plan, regardless of the framework that you use,
is that you include an agenda as well as learning targets for the agenda. I let
students know what we're going to be doing for the day and then for the
learning targets we discuss all the important things that they're going to
be learning over the course of the week. You'll notice that here I break it down
into content learning targets read and write learning targets, process of
learning learning targets, which are really just skills that you need to have
as a learner, and then I let students know what final product they are going
to be creating to show that they have developed this knowledge. After the
agenda and learning target slides, I always bring students back to the
essential question for the week so that they know that bigger picture question
that connects to the world outside of them
that we're learning about. After I've engaged my learners and let them know
where we're going, it's time to explore and gather information. Here we're going
to start with the video, which is one of my favorite ways to introduce a lesson.
That could be Brain Pop vocabulary, a YouTube video. In this case, I pulled a video from
Brain Pop about evolution. I included a hyperlink. You can also embed
videos directly into Google Slides, it's just a little bit more complicated when
you use a subscription service, so in this case I'm linking to an outside page.
Below, I have instructions about what students will do after they're watching
the video so they know what to be looking for while they're watching it.
Then we're going to continue with the gather information stage. On this Google
slide you'll notice that I have put our weekly objectives for content and
reading and writing in the corner. I have included directions that students will
need to follow for this next part of the lesson when they're going to go to
Newsela. I've also included some images for visual reinforcement, a timer, as well
as the MVP expectations for this particular assignment. Now this is one of
my more text-heavy slides. I do recommend that you minimize text to the best of
your ability. After students have explored the topic on Newsela and
practice the skill of identifying unknown words and figuring out their
meanings using context clues, we'll move into the 'Explain' phase. In this phase
of the lesson we're going to be working on a content objective as well as a
process of learning objective, which will involve students sharing information
with each other. Here I'm going to have a musical share. I include all the
directions for the expectations for the musical share, which I'll make sure to
review with students, and then I also remind students of the different MVP
expectations for this particular activity. You'll notice on all my slides I
have some sort of picture that also acts as a visual reinforcement. At the end of
class, I always include a closure in the form of a reflection where students
reflect on something that they learned during that class period. Now obviously
the lesson is going to change depending on the different activities that you do,
but I pretty much just copy and paste the same structure over and over to make
sure that I'm hitting on all the key components of a successful lesson plan.
Now I want to show you some of the technical aspects of how I make my
Google Slides presentations so that you're able to go out and make them on
your own. I'm going to show you how I created this
slide which has a lot of the different components that I suggest that you use
to create a basic lesson plan. Okay so I created this slide using this basic
template and the first thing that I'm going to do is go back to my objectives
and copy the objectives that I want to use. I will size that down so that it
fits.
Then I'm going to insert a text box by going to 'Insert>Text Box.' I'll draw where I
want my text box to be. I'm going to fill in the back. I almost always change the
font, which you can do up top, to customize it the way that I want. The
next step is to include the directions. If you want to add a border you go up to
the 'Border Weight,' I choose a heavier weight like 4. Now, since I'm going to
share these slides with students through Google Classroom, I want to make sure
that these are hyperlinked, so that students can go directly to their
Newsela binder. So the way I do that is by copying the link to the web page
where I want it to go, then I highlight the words that I want to hyperlink, click
the 'Hyperlink' button, insert the link, here I can change what I want the text
to say, apply it, and now that will be a link to their binder. What I often do
with my Google Slides is screenshot different images from websites. So here
I'm going to grab a screenshot from Newsela,
I'll click 'Insert>Image,'
'Upload from Computer.' I'll find that image on my desktop, add it
to the top, and I'm also going to want to make this a hyperlink so students could
click on the picture directly and that would also take them to Newsela. The way
I do that is by again selecting the 'Insert Link' button, I can paste the link
again, hit 'Apply,' and now both the words and the image are hyperlinks. The next
piece that I added was an image directly from Newsela. So I did that by
screenshotting. Another option is that you go to Insert>Image>Search the Web. If
you want it to look for an image of a hominid here, you can do that, drag the
picture where you want it, and now you'll have an image to reinforce what students
are learning. The next important piece is that I almost always have timers for
when we do specific activities. The way you add a timer is by going to Insert>
Video. You can search for the amount of time you're looking for. I don't like
this top one because it's got a loud beeping sound. I prefer the rainbow timer
because when it goes off the sound is a little bit more pleasant. Here you can
also size that video down, as necessary, and move it around your Google Slide. The
last part that I included was a table. I did that by going Insert>Table. I knew
that I wanted six boxes, I'm going to make the outline thicker,
black. I'm going to size it down, drag it where I want it to go, I backfill the
color so that it's easier to read, and then you can type in your text. So that's
it. I highly recommend that you use Google Slides to implement your lessons
because it allows you to organize your lesson, it visually reinforces
instructions for students, and allows you to put multimedia in to engage students
a little bit more. If you're interested in taking your Google Slides to the next
level, check out my other tutorial about 4
expert tips that are really going to set your Google presentations apart. Thank
you so much for watching my video. If you found it helpful, please hit the like
button, and if you'd like to see more of my education technology tutorials, check
out those other videos and subscribe to my channel. Thanks and have a great week!