One of my main goals as an Instructional Technology TOSA is to help teachers see how technology can become a part of their lessons, instead of something extra they do with their students. Google slides is my favorite tool for helping with that. When I suggest Google slides to teachers they often think of it as a substitute for PowerPoint, which in their minds is always a presentation tool. However, Google Slides can be used for SO MUCH more!
The other day I was visiting a first grade class. I was there during math time, circulating, observing and helping out. I find that as a TOSA it is invaluable to spend a few minutes in the class to see what the teacher and students are working on. That helps me know what direction to go when we begin to integrate technology. This particular day the students were working on tens and ones place. As I was planning for the next computer session with the teacher she told me that the students need help putting the cursor in the middle of their login and using backspace to correct a mistake. Currently, if they typed something wrong, they were deleting the whole thing and starting over. At first grade typing speed, that is a big loss of time.
I immediately thought of using a Google Slide deck to work on this skill. Based on the work they were doing in math, I created this lesson for them.
We shared the lesson with the students through Google Classroom, gave the students a quick demo on how to put the cursor inside the text box and use the backspace button to delete the numbers. Then the students got to work.
The slide deck started with having the students simply delete certain numbers. Then they were asked to replace digits either in the tens or the ones place. This lesson reinforced the math they were working on in class, while also helping them practice putting the cursor in the correct place and use backspace to correct mistakes. The students had a good time as they worked through the slide show. One student let us know that he was already on “Level 6” as he moved from slide to slide.
The last few slides also reinforce a skill we had worked on previously, using Ctrl + D to duplicate an image. Students had to delete the line and fill in the correct number to complete the sentence and them duplicate the number blocks to represent the number.
This is just one example of how to use Google Slides to create an interactive learning experience for students. How are your students using Google Slides?
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