Creating Online Posters

Posters have always been a common way for students to express what they have learned from a research project. However creating posters on poster board is not a skill that will often be asked of our students when they leave the classroom. Creating an digital image or an online poster, however is something that they will do in many different fields and positions. Business owners create images like these ad advertisements. Writers create images like these as book covers. These images can be a way to present information to a client or to spark interest in a new project. And of course graphic designers get paid simply to make images that could be classified as “online posters”.

 

The popularity of websites like Facebook and Pinterest has taught us that images are king in getting our ideas across. Graphic design is a skill that is often not taught until college, even though students could benefit from this knowledge much earlier in their careers. When I worked as a technology teacher for two years, I sponsored a Graphic Design Club for 1st – 5th graders. Students worked through a variety of projects, including making collages, flyers, brochures, presentations and online posters. When I started the club, I always told students that this was a subject that people studied in college and that they could use for a career later on. Creating images is a form of art, but the new technologies out there to create digital images allows students to take their design to a completely different level than they would be able to get with pen and paper

Online posters are one of my favorite forms of Graphic Design because they can be taken a step further than just an image. Students are challenged to create a great image, but they are also challenged to make it interactive. Online posters include links to additional information. Online posters can have links to other websites, videos or audio files. Some programs even allow you to embed videos within the poster. Another possible way to make posters interactive is to include QR codes instead of hyperlinks, making posters printable but still interactive. Or my favorite compromise, include QR codes, but make the QR code clickable so that the poster works in print form or online.

There are many programs that can be used to create online posters. Here are a few: 

Edu Glogster - When I first started having students create online posters, we used Edu Glogster. Of course this was in the days when Edu Glogster was free. When I first signed up I got 100 student accounts for free, later it was 20 and then 10. Now the people at Edu Glogster have realized what an amazing product they have and have started to charge for it. Students can now only create one glog for free on an account they sign up for. However, if the funds are there for your class to use Edu Glogster, I would completely recommend the program.

Prezi - Another great option for online posters is Prezi. This completely free program creates amazing presentations, but can also be used for online posters. Challenge students to create an amazing graphic that can then be made interactive by zooming in or out. Generally when using Prezi to create online posters, you do not want to create a path.

Power Point - Another option is to use Power Point or Google Slides to create your poster. Posters can be created within the program and then saved as a PDF to so that they can still be interactive. If posters are saved as an image file (.png or .jpg) the links will no longer work. This format also will not allow for embedded videos.

Poster Oven – Poster Oven is an online program that can be used to create posters with QR codes. This site gives you great backgrounds and the option to download your poster as a pdf, but the templates cannot be manipulated as easily as some of the other programs.

Online posters can be created about just about any topic that you would like your students to research. Here are a few projects that can be used to help your students create online posters:

Another reason to use online posters is the ability to share these posters digitally. Poster can be e-mailed to parents, showcased on class websites or included in digital portfolios. Paper posters generally get ripped up and thrown away when they can no longer be displayed, but online posters can be kept forever.

Revving Up for a Followers’ Choice Giveaway!!!

Today I stopped by my Teachers Pay Teachers store to update a few links on my Internet Scavenger Hunts and realized that I am only 97 followers from 3,000 followers in my Teachers Pay Teachers store! Once my store hits 3,000 followers I will be having a Followers’ Choice Giveaway. For this giveaway, I will take three priced items (no bundles) and make them free starting on the day I hit 3,000 followers and continuing for three days.

Now which items will be free you ask? Well, you tell me! I am asking my followers to tell me which items they would like to get for free. From now until I hit 3,000 followers, you can leave as many comments as you’d like telling me what you’d like for free. You can also ask your friends and colleagues to come and leave me comments. The three resources that get the most comments will be the resources that are free for the three days following when I hit 3,000 followers on my Teachers Pay Teachers store.

In addition to the giveaway, I will put my entire store on sale at 20% off during the three days of the giveaway. This way if your desired resource is not chosen as one of the free resources, you can at least get your desired resource at a discount! So, start the comment competition – which resource from my Teachers Pay Teachers store (no bundles) would YOU like to get for free?

Students Need to Work on the Writing Process Every Day

While some students are born communicators, few are born writers. Writing is an essential skill to be a successful student and to be a successful adult. Learning to write takes time, so we need to give students the opportunity to practice all steps of the writing process multiple times over the course of the school year. In fact, the Institute of Education Sciences advises that students should work on writing for at least an hour each and every day starting in First Grade. This time does not all have to be dedicated to writing for writing sake, it can be included in your content areas or be a response to a book you read. However, the Institute of Education Sciences also says that students need regular practice in the writing process. Students need to take their writing through all of the steps so that they can internalize the process. Students who have internalized the process will be more successful when it comes time to write college essays and professional papers.

 

 

In my classroom, the students work through all of these steps within any two week period. It is important that they work through all of these steps: 

Brainstorming – Students need time to think out their ideas before they begin to write. For young students this starts out as simply as a bubble map or a list of ideas. Older students can take it to the next step by adding an additional layer of detail bubbles, or by creating an outline.

 Drafting – Writing, sitting and getting the ideas in order is hard. This step takes a lot of time and energy for children. Putting it all down on paper is often the hardest part. Additionally students often think that once they are done writing, they are done and should not have to work on their story anymore. In reality we know that the drafting stage will often be revisited after revising. Realistically,drafting and revising is very circular. It is important to teach students about this circular process before they begin writing. Give them a heads up that they are not done just because they write “The end.”

 Revising – Both revising and editing happen after drafting, but it is important that students know the difference between revising and editing. Revising is the restructuring of wording and ideas, not the spelling and grammar. Revising works on story flow, sequencing, word choice and focus. When students have finished revising, they will probably need to go back to drafting. It can be a very circular process, but the ideas and words should be done to satisfaction before students begin editing.

 

 Editing – Editing is the process of fixing spelling and grammatical errors. This is the time to fix sentence structure, capitalization errors, punctuation errors, and spelling mistakes. Editing really should not happen until the revision/drafting cycle is complete. The only exception is in cases where the grammatical errors cause students to be unable to read their own work and are therefore unable to revise their work.

Conferencing – Before students publish any piece of writing, they should conference with peers and/or a teacher. This is a chance for students to get feedback about their work. Students should have already fixed the majority of their errors, but this is a time to help them continue to revise and edit. No matter who students are conferencing with, remarks should be made about both positives and negatives. I usually use the “Two glows and a grow” idea where so that students aren’t overwhelmed with a list of things they need to fix. After conferencing, students should go back to the revising and editing process. In some cases, they may also have to go back to drafting. This is still a working piece and they may conference on it multiple times.

 Publishing – I do not believe in having students publish every piece they write. Not everything that we write needs to be put on a blog or typed and hung in the hallway. Sometimes what we write is simply a way to practice skills or to help us remember something we learned. Instead of publishing each piece, I encourage students to learn from the mistakes they make in one piece when they write the next. Then, at the end of each genre of writing, they choose their “Prize Piece” and we do second round of revising and editing on this piece. We talk about the perfecting of the piece, and then they publish.

 

When teaching the writing process, it is important to teach students that the writing process is not linear, but circular. Some steps will get used multiple times for a single piece of writing. Building this process into our students helps encourage them to do their own revising, their own editing and their own “perfecting”. These skills are important, especially to students who will go on to write papers in high school and college, let alone at a professional level.

 

 

The Institute of Education Sciences also recommends that students write for a “variety of reasons”. Students need to know how to write in many different ways. This is why I teach students different genres. Writing a friendly letter is very different than writing an informational report which is very different from writing a poem. Students need to learn the techniques that are important in each specific genre. Just like students need to repeat the writing process multiple times, they also need to write multiple pieces in each genre. It is important for students to be able to take what they learned from writing one piece and use it to improve the next piece that they write in that genre. This is why I developed my genre based writing journals.

Each of my journals has nine possible writing prompts dedicated to one genre. Each prompt walks students through the entire writing process, including some form of reflection for conferencing. For primary students, that is a checklist form of rubric. For intermediate students, that is a category form of rubric. When I use these prompts with my students, not every student works on the same prompt at the same time. Instead, I let students choose the prompts that interest them and work at their own pace. Because each students’ drafting/revising circle may not end at the same time, this is a huge benefit to the children who need more time and the children who finish quickly. If a student completes their work work with quality work, they can move on to the next prompt without waiting around for their classmates. If a student needs more time, they can continue to work at their own pace. Some students will complete all nine prompts, but I always make it clear that you are not expected to. Instead I expect them to complete three to six quality writing pieces per genre. This gives students a good balance of structure and freedom.

 If you are interested in using my writing journals in your classroom, you can find both of these year long packets at my Teachers Pay Teachers store. Each journal is also sold separately if you need just one genre:

I’d love to hear about how you practice the writing process in your classroom. Feel free to leave me a comment! Happy Teaching!

Give More Feedback and Fewer Grades

What do grades provide to students? Does that number actually help students improve? In reality grades are nothing but a way to tell students where they stack up among other students. This is the reason there is a whole movement going on in education called Teachers Throwing Out Grades. I was first introduced to this group by a Cult of Pedagogy podcast, where the host, Jennifer Gonzalez interviewed Starr Sackstein, one of the teachers leading this movement. I have since joined the Teachers Throwing Out Grades Facebook Group.

Reading what these teachers have to say made me realize that I was doing a “no grades classroom” without realizing I was doing it. Even before I started working in a school with a standards based report card, I taught using rubrics and conferences and took as few grades as possible in order to give students as much time as possible to learn and grow. Once I started working in a school with standards based report cards, I graded less and conferenced more. Using rubrics instead of number grades allows you to give students real feedback on where they are strong and where they are weak. This information gives the students a roadmap as to what they need to do in order to get better. Rubrics should list out the most important skills that you want to assess. They can be extremely long or extremely short. Here are a few examples of rubrics I use with my students:


This rubric is from my 36 Week Reading Response Journal where students complete a written response to a student selected book each week of the school year. The students have all week to complete this during their literacy “stations” or as we call it “to do list time”. (For more information, see this blog post about why I don’t do center rotations.) Then for the last hour of Friday’s literacy time, I sit with each student. During this time, we do a fluency check recording (For more information on fluency check recordings, see this blog post about using Evernote to collect data.) and we conference about their reading response. At this time we fill out this rubric together.


This rubric is from my Problem Solving Path Math Journals. For each problem the students and I evaluate their work. We discuss from the beginning of the year that the rubric is specifically weighted so that work is more important than the correct answer because the skills that these journals should enhance is working out word problems.


This rubric is from my Primary Writing Journal. It’s actually two rubrics, one for the student to self reflect on their writing and a second one for the teacher to use during conference. When I taught first grade, these made such a huge difference for my students.


This rubric is from my Desert Research Project where students research one specific desert and create a presentation to teach the rest of the class about their desert. I filled out these rubrics while the students presented their projects and then sat down with each group to review where they were strong and where they were weak so that they could know where to focus on their next presentation.


This detailed rubric is from my Amazing Americans Technology Project. Students are expected to create an informational power point using the information they research about a specific person in American history. The rubric covers all of the pieces of solid writing, giving students a lot of information about their work.
When it is necessary to give a graded test, I sit down afterward with each student and conference about where they are strong and where they are weak. I tell them what we still need to work on. Then, I use the results to form small groups and work on re-teaching. The kids know that these groups are formed based on their needs and that we will work until they have mastered the topic to my satisfaction. This changes our focus from a specific grade to a learning goal with standards that we have to master.
At the end of each school year, my students spend time reflecting on their work. This use these reflections to build an online portfolio. They choose their own writing samples and projects that best reflect their capabilities. These portfolios also include written student reflections. Portfolios give a much clearer picture of where a student is than the numbers that come back from their standardized tests. For more information on how I help my students build their portfolios, you can check out the blog post:   or you can download my Student Created Portfolio Guide.

If it was up to me there would be no grades and no standardized testing. I would replace these things with rubrics and portfolios and discussions about the learning that is happening. Give students more feedback and less grades and see their focus turn towards learning and personal growth and away from competition and complaints. So what about you, do you prefer grades or rubrics? Please feel free to leave your point of view in the comments. Let’s start a discussion about what should be happening in classrooms.