Have you joined the Google Slides craze? Or are you wondering why teachers are so excited about these online presentations, and just how they incorporate them into their daily instruction? Let us answer those questions and give a glimpse at our newly created Google Slides templates for teachers. Get ready to take your technology integration up a notch!
Why use Google Slides templates instead of Powerpoint or Keynote?
When it comes to using digital presentations to smoothly guide instruction, there are a couple of options. While many teachers go with Google Slides, others stick with PowerPoint or Keynote. Although all three platforms are great, Google Slides does have a big advantage… Online storage. Google stores all of your daily presentations online, not taking up memory on your computer like PowerPoint or Keynote would.
Storage space is not the only way Google Slides differs. It is an extremely user-friendly platform with lots of design features. However, creating and designing your own slides presentation daily can be too much on an already overflowing teacher plate. That's why we've created a Google Slides template for you to use! All you have to do is pop in your curriculum resources and, voila! The school day plan is set.
A Day in the Life of a Google Slides Teacher
You may be wondering just how to use these slides? A daily Google Slides presentation can help you stay on track with your lessons and serve as a reminder of the daily schedule. Let's take a walk through a day in the life of a Google Slides Teacher, looking at each section of the school day. We will also discuss possible additions from your curriculum to each subject area.
Note that you can reorder the slides to match your daily schedule, and include/not include anything I have through my example. Google Slides templates for teachers are easy to customize and make your own.
1. Morning Work
When my students enter the classroom, I like to have something prepared to keep them engaged and calm. I call this part of the school day morning work and have taught my students the routine of checking what's projected to get started.
I like to put in screenshots of my daily work (in the video, I walk through a how to on this) on the morning work slide to prevent any, “I don't know what to do” students.
Morning Meeting
Once all students are in the classroom and ready to go, we circle up front for our daily morning meeting.They know it is time for this as I switch our Google Slides presentation to the “Morning Meeting” and ring my wind chime. During our morning meeting we have a greeting, share/discussion time (which is themed by day) and an activity (either a game or a brain break video). This is a time of day students look forward to, and is a great time to take a measure on how students are feeling/acting that day.
Our discussion prompts by day are:
- Math Monday
- Task Tuesday
- Theory Thursday
- Funny Friday
Download Morning Meeting Slides Here
Read more about morning meetings:
Why Morning Meetings Are More Important Than Ever
Classroom Morning Routine Ideas
2. Literacy
Reading Whole Group
My school mornings kickoff with whole group reading lessons. I use an overview slide to show students our daily read aloud, and what is to come during the reading block.
Phonemic Awareness & Phonics
We then quickly kickoff into our phonics lessons. I use a Word Work title slide to encompass all of our Science of Reading aligned lessons. Using slides for these phonics and phonemic awareness activities allows me to walk around the classroom and monitor how students are doing at their word building and stretching.
To make the most of this word building time, my students have “word building bags” in their desks. They know to get them out right when the Word Work slide shows up.
What's inside the word building bags?
- Counters to sound out words
- Heart cutout (for heart words)
- Highlighter
- White board marker & eraser
- Mini play doh
Grammar
When word work is through, it is time for Grammar. Use slides to project anchor charts, show short educational songs/videos on the skill, and discuss independent work. Another fun tip: use Google Slides to do Mad Libs!
Reading Stations
At the beginning of the school year, students are not ready for independent stations. But once your procedures and routines are worked out, students are ready to try rotating through the stations. (If you are interested in creating Reading stations rotations slides presentation, you can learn how here.)
I put my group names right on my reading stations slides. This eliminates the, “What is my group doing?” question. Tip: Assign each reading group a color. This way, they can easily find their group name on the Google Slide.
Intervention Time
Whether intervention time is grade wide, or just in your classroom, you can definitely use Google Slides to help organize this transition. If students spread out throughout classroom during intervention time, perhaps projecting a list of groups would help remind students where to go. I also project the hallway behaviors anchor chart as a quick reminder.
Need intervention ideas?
Writing
Next in our schedule is writing. At this point in the year, we are still working on perfecting our sentence writing skills. One way to work on this is to project a picture and have students fill out a five senses organizer. This helps create five quick sentences. (The next day's lesson would talk about sentence word variety to get away from the “I see, I smell, I hear” word choices.) After the whole group modeling lesson is done, I will project the picture and walk around and help students as needed. I use a video timer, which taps into executive functioning skills and keeps kids on task.
3. Lunch
I use this slide just to remind students of the hallway behavior expectations.
4. Recess
For the most part, this slide is in the presentation just as a schedule placeholder. However, on inside recess days, I will add a slide listing appropriate free time choices, or will insert an indoor workout video.
5. Math
Math Lesson
Similar to reading, I use slides to conduct my math whole group lesson to keep me more hands free, and able to assist students around the room. Using Lucky to Learn Math has also assisted with this, as the lessons are all already in a digital slides format!
Math Stations
Math stations follow the same format as reading, using group colors for easy student use.
6. Snack
During snack, I read our novel, so this slide is for a placeholder to keep on schedule. I also put up a timer if I have snack slow pokes.
7. Science/Social Studies
Our Science curriculum includes a multitude of short and engaging clips, which I link to my slides presentation. When teaching Social Studies, I like to link to Google Earth to show exactly what part of the country or world we are learning about.
8. Specialists
I insert slides indicating which specialist classroom my students should walk to. It just serves as a good reminder and keeps up on track.
9. Dismissal
At the end of the day, I like to project our dismissal to dos. The end of the day can easily become chaotic, but with a to do list and a challenge to finish it before our song of the day ends, things go pretty smooth.
10. Specialty Slides
What would a Google Slides template for teachers be without slides for every special event you can think of?! Tacked onto the end of the template, copy and paste or slide these into your daily presentation when needed. Specialty slides included:
- Field trip
- Assembly
- Special Event
- STEAM
- Sharing
- Fun Friday
- Library
- Buddies
- Self Start
- Character
- Genius Hour
And, the extra individual slide templates and icons allow you to customize this template and really make it your own!
Get started!
Hopefully this post helps you take the leap into all things Google Slides! If you want a more in depth look at a day in my life as a Google Slides teacher, watch the video below.
Happy teaching!
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