Googley Poetry Projects and Tools

April is the time of year

For kids to write a poem.
There's loads of fun activities
Here for you to show 'em.

Google tools can be used
To make the perfect rhyme,
With templates, tools, and writing prompts
To save your students time.

Draggable Drawings, random Sheets,
And Google Docs highlighting
Will give your students inspiration
For their creative writing.

So look below to find out more,
Then get your students on it,
Writing their ode, haiku, free verse,
Their ballad or their sonnet.

Google Sheets Pi Day Projects

Pi Day is March 14th each year (since the date is 3/14 and Pi starts out with 3.14). As a previous middle school math teacher, this is always a fun day to be a math nerd, do Pi-themed educational activities, and of course eat some real pie!

Over the years I have shared several technology activities for celebrating Pi Day in separate posts. This year I have pulled all those together in one place including:

📈 Discovering Pi with Google Sheets

✍️ Create "Pi Poems" with Google Sheets

🏙️ Graph a Pi-Line Skyline with Google Sheets

See below for this great collection of technology activities to help students explore, understand, and create with Pi!

Google Sheets for Educators (or Anyone)

Google Sheets is easily one of the most powerful tools in the Google Workspace suite of programs. I use it every day in one way or another.

It can be used for many tasks such as:

• Analyzing student data to identify at-risk students
• Tracking student behavior
• Managing inventory
• Collecting attendance from a PD session and generating certificates
• Providing conditional formatting feedback in learning activities
• Building a learning database for students to draw conclusions from
• Making pixel art
• Creating interactive learning games and activities
• And much more!

Unfortunately many people can feel intimidated by spreadsheets and not be sure where to begin. I want to take that fear away and help ease you into the wonderful world of spreadsheets!

To help with, below you will find an 80-minute recorded webinar on Google Sheets where we cover topics including view options, freezing rows and columns, sorting data, filtering data, formulas, charts and graphs, sparklines, conditional formatting, data validation, and even pivot tables.

You will also find templates you can make copies of to follow along and try out each of the features demonstrated. I am excited to see what you do with these skills, and welcome any questions you have as you learn!

4 Googley Halloween Learning Activities

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. I already love the Fall with the change in temperature, beautiful leaves, and the smell of logs in our fireplace.

And Halloween is one of the high points. I love walking my grandkids around their neighborhood as we go trick-or-treating, and try my best not to eat too much of their candy.

Most years I even try to dress up for the occasion, although having a beard does somewhat limit my options. My go-to costume recently has been none other than Bob Ross!

Another favorite thing I have done is to create Halloween-themed educational activities with Google tools including:

🎃 Build a Jack-O-Lantern with Google Slides

👻 Halloween Rebus Stories with Emojis and Google Docs

🦇 Halloween Drag and Drop Poetry with Google Drawings

💀 Skittles and Google Sheets Math Activities


For convenience I decided to pull all of them together in one blog post. See below for details on each activity and links to the resources and templates.

Recorded Webinar - Storytelling Activities with Google Tools

I recently had the pleasure to present sessions at the High Impact Conference for Educators, which is an event we put on through the Educational Service Center where I work. All of my sessions were recorded, and over time I hope to share several of the videos.

Please note that the recordings are a lot more casual than some of my other videos, as this is from an in-person conference with a room full of attendees, so there is some chatting and questions and such. Hopefully though you will still find the content helpful.

For this recording, this is the session:

Once Upon a Google: Innovative Storytelling with Google Tools

Google tools provide many ways for students and educators to create and share stories. Slides can be used to create storybooks, e-books, comic strips, stop-motion animation, and story soundboards; Docs can be used for "Choose Your Own Adventure" stories, emoji rebus stories, and black-out poetry; Sheets can be used to create random writing prompts for inspiration, and more!

See below for the full recording, as well as the resources from the session. Please feel free to reach out with any questions, feedback, or suggestions you have on this topic.

Googley Poetry Projects and Tools

April is the time of year

For kids to write a poem.
There's loads of fun activities
Here for you to show 'em.

Google tools can be used
To make the perfect rhyme,
With templates, tools, and writing prompts
To save your students time.

Draggable Drawings, random Sheets,
And Google Docs highlighting
Will give your students inspiration
For their creative writing.

So look below to find out more,
Then get your students on it,
Writing their ode, haiku, free verse,
Their ballad or their sonnet.

Flippity "March Madness" Bracket Template

Although I am not much of a sports fan, I can't help but notice the building excitement surrounding college basketball this time of year. With March Madness beginning, people everywhere are studying the tournament bracket and making their predictions.

Beyond sports though, the bracket format actually has a lot of educational applications for student learning. Besides college basketball teams, a wide range of topics can be placed into a bracket and then the students can compare each item to determine which they think best meets a criteria.

This can be a fun activity that ties into something they are already familiar with, while encouraging critical thinking skills and content knowledge.

There are many tools and templates for creating such a tournament bracket activity, but one excellent option is the free template provided by the Flippity website. In this blog post we will take a look at how to use the Flippity template for a March Madness style learning activity.

Googley Valentine Activities

With Valentine's Day coming up, this is a great time to highlight some activities I really love! In this case I am talking about technology activities for students that tie into the holiday theme while also promoting creativity, math, and writing.

I this blog post I will be sharing four Valentine-themed projects that use Google tools. Each of these are ideas I have shared in the past, but I thought it would be helpful to bring them all together in one place.

• 📊 Hearts and Charts Google Sheets Math Activities
• 😍 Valentine Emoji Rebus Stories in Google Docs
• 🧲 Valentine Magnetic Poetry with Google Drawings
• 💌 Valentine Cards with Google Drawings

Hopefully you find all of them to be fun ways to engage your students, while working on practical skills.

See below for a description of each activity, access to all the templates, and links to the original blog posts for the projects I am re-sharing. Hope you love them!

8 Googley Wintertime Activities for Kids

As we get closer to the holiday break, it is expected and understandable that our students start getting a little distracted. They are looking forward to lots of days off, holiday celebrations, gifts, and more. Let's be honest … we may be a little distracted as well.

 
This is a time of year when we look for some fun activities to keep our students focused and active. But we don't just want busy work. If possible it is great to find projects that are fun, tie into wintertime themes, and still provide our students with a chance to be creative, write, or improve some content area skills.

To help out with that, I have put together eight wintertime-themed activities that use free Google tools, including Docs, Slides, Sheets, and Drawings:

⛄ Activity #1 - Build a Snowman with Google Slides

🎄 Activity #2 - Decorate a Holiday Tree with Google Slides

🧲 Activity #3 - Wintertime Magnetic Poetry with Google Drawings

📬 Activity #4 - Holiday Greeting Cards with Google Drawings

🎁 Activity #5 - "12 Days of Christmas" Guided Google Sheets Math Activity

🌟 Activity #6 - Pixel Art Ornaments with Google Sheets

❄️ Activity #7 - Wintertime Emoji Rebus Stories with Google Docs

💡 Activity #8 - Holiday Lights Writing with Google Docs

Some of these are projects I have shared in the past, while others are new twists on previous posts. Hopefully some of these will be a good match for your students to keep them busy AND learning as we head into the holidays.

National Poetry Month Competition and Resources

April is the time of year

For kids to write a poem.

There's loads of fun activities
Here for you to show 'em.

Technology can be used
To make the perfect rhyme,
With templates, tools, and writing prompts
To save your students time.

Draggable Drawings, random Sheets,
And Google Docs highlighting
Will give your students inspiration
For their creative writing.

So look below to find out more,
Then get your students on it,
Writing their ode, haiku, free verse,
Their ballad or their sonnet.

Google Sheets for Educators

Google Sheets is easily one of the most powerful tools in the Google Workspace suite of programs. I use it every day in one way or another.

It can be used for many tasks such as:

• Analyzing student data to identify at-risk students
• Tracking student behavior
• Managing inventory
• Collecting attendance from a PD session and generating certificates
• Providing conditional formatting feedback in learning activities
• Building a learning database for students to draw conclusions from
• Making pixel art
• Creating interactive learning games and activities
• And much more!

Unfortunately many people can feel intimidated by spreadsheets and not be sure where to begin. I want to take that fear away and help ease you into the wonderful world of spreadsheets!

To help with, below you will find a 50-minute recorded webinar on Google Sheets where we cover topics including view options, freezing rows and columns, sorting data, filtering data, formulas, charts and graphs, sparklines, conditional formatting, and even pivot tables.

You will also find templates you can make copies of to follow along and try out each of the features demonstrated. I am excited to see what you do with these skills, and welcome any questions you have as you learn!

Hearts and Charts Google Sheets Math Activities

In an earlier blog post I shared a fun math activity using Google Sheets and Skittles candy as a project students could do to tie in with Halloween, but it could certainly be done any time of the year.

With Valentine's Day coming up, I was asked if I had a similar version of the activity using Valentine Conversation Heart candies. That sounded like a terrific idea, so I made a new version of the project that uses the seasonal heart candies with little messages on them.

Very much like the earlier Skittles activity, this "Hearts and Charts" Google Sheets project allows students to practice skills including:

🤔 Estimating

🖐 Counting

⚖️ Comparing

➕ Adding

➗ Dividing

📊 And Graphing

And the Sheet is self-checking, so it provides feedback to the students as they work through each problem, letting them know if that got it correct or not.

See below to get your copy of the template, as well as written directions on how your students can do the activity.

8 Googley Wintertime Activities for Kids

As we get closer to the holiday break, it is expected and understandable that our students start getting a little distracted. They are looking forward to lots of days off, holiday celebrations, gifts, and more. Let's be honest … we may be a little distracted as well.

 
This is a time of year when we look for some fun activities to keep our students focused and active. But we don't just want busy work. If possible it is great to find projects that are fun, tie into wintertime themes, and still provide our students with a chance to be creative, write, or improve some content area skills.

To help out with that, I have put together eight wintertime-themed activities that use free Google tools, including Docs, Slides, Sheets, and Drawings:

⛄ Activity #1 - Build a Snowman with Google Slides

🎄 Activity #2 - Decorate a Holiday Tree with Google Slides

🧲 Activity #3 - Wintertime Magnetic Poetry with Google Drawings

📬 Activity #4 - Holiday Greeting Cards with Google Drawings

🎁 Activity #5 - "12 Days of Christmas" Guided Google Sheets Math Activity

🌟 Activity #6 - Pixel Art Ornaments with Google Sheets

❄️ Activity #7 - Wintertime Emoji Rebus Stories with Google Docs

💡 Activity #8 - Holiday Lights Writing with Google Docs

Some of these are projects I have shared in the past, while others are new twists on previous posts. Hopefully some of these will be a good match for your students to keep them busy AND learning as we head into the holidays.

New Google Sheets Timeline Creator

Creating a timeline is a great project for students. Timelines can be used to show historical events, or things that happened in the student's own life, or stages in scientific processes, or details about a character's journey in a book, and so much more.

Thankfully there are lots of excellent tools out there for creating timelines. Some good recommendations include:

• The timeline template from Flippity - www.flippity.net/Timeline.htm
• The "diagram" tool in Google Slides and Drawings which has a timeline template
• Timeline JS from Knight Lab - timeline.knightlab.com/
• The timeline template from Sutori - www.sutori.com/en/blog/timeline-template
• And many more!

Well now there is one more to add to that list. Google Sheets has now added an official timeline creation tool!

With this new feature it is super easy for students to create and share interactive timelines right in Google Sheets that include titles, descriptions, dates, links, colors, groups and more.

See below for a tutorial video on how to use this new timeline tool, as well as written directions. As always, I would love to see what your students create, and learn from you with new ideas on how this could be used.

Note: The timeline tool is available for anyone with a school account (or work account) but not for personal accounts. This is a new feature, so it is still rolling out for some schools. According to Google, the rollout schedule is:

• Rapid Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on November 2, 2022 
• Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on November 16, 2022 

4 Googley Halloween Activities

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. I already love the Fall with the change in temperature, beautiful leaves, and the smell of logs in our fireplace.

And Halloween is one of the high points. I love walking my grandkids around their neighborhood as we go trick-or-treating, and try my best not to eat too much of their candy.

Most years I even try to dress up for the occasion, although having a beard does somewhat limit my options. My go-to costume recently has been none other than Bob Ross!

Another favorite thing I have done is to create Halloween-themed educational activities with Google tools including:

🎃 Build a Jack-O-Lantern with Google Slides

👻 Halloween Rebus Stories with Emojis and Google Docs

🦇 Halloween Drag and Drop Poetry with Google Drawings

💀 Skittles and Google Sheets Math Activities


For convenience I decided to pull all of them together in one blog post. See below for details on each activity and links to the resources and templates.

Skittles and Google Sheets Math Activities

As a previous middle school math teacher, I always loved using practical, hands-on items to model and teach mathematical concepts. This included activities with bubble gum for percentages, ice cubes for equations, pancakes for mixed numbers, and helium balloons for integers.

Another classic favorite physical manipulative has always been candy, specifically Skittles. These red, orange, yellow, green, and purple candies have been used in many classrooms for students to explore math concepts.

Inspired by this, I have created an interactive, self-checking Google Sheets template called "Skittles and Sheets" which allows students to practice skills including:

🤔 Estimating

🖐 Counting

⚖️ Comparing

➕ Adding

➗ Dividing

📊 And Graphing

And the Sheet is self-checking, so it provides feedback to the students as they work through each problem, letting them know if that got it correct or not.

See below to get your copy of the template, as well as access a short recorded tutorial video on how it works, and also written directions.

Google Sheets in 20 Minutes

Google Sheets is easily one of the most powerful tools in the Google Workspace suite of programs. I use it every day in one way or another.

It can be used for many tasks such as:

• Analyzing student data to identify at-risk students
• Tracking student behavior
• Managing inventory
• Collecting attendance from a PD session and generating certificates
• Providing conditional formatting feedback in learning activities
• Building a learning database for students to draw conclusions from
• Making pixel art
• Creating interactive learning games and activities
• And much more!

Unfortunately many people can feel intimidated by spreadsheets and not be sure where to begin. I want to take that fear away and help ease you into the wonderful world of spreadsheets!

To help with, below you will find a 20-minute crash course video on Google Sheets where we cover topics including view options, freezing rows and columns, sorting data, filtering data, formulas, charts and graphs, sparklines, conditional formatting, and even pivot tables.

You will also find templates you can make copies of to follow along and try out each of the features demonstrated. I am excited to see what you do with these skills, and welcome any questions you have as you learn!

You can do that with Docs, Slides, and Sheets?!

I recently had the privilege to present a session for Google's series of "Did You Know?" webinars. These are a collection of 8 sessions covering a wide range of Google tools for schools. 

You can learn more about the entire "Did You Know?" series in my earlier blog post here: Free Google Webinars - "Did You Know" Series

For my first session I presented the following webinar:

You can do that with Docs, Slides, and Sheets?!

Description: We use Docs, Slides, and Sheets everyday, but may not be taking advantage of all the impactful features available. In this session we will explore many of their lesser-known features such as default font, video previews, embedded Drawings, maximizing space, live captions, publishing to the web, splitting text, pivot tables, conditional formatting, and more!

See below to watch the recorded webinar, as well as access the session slideshow and resources.

Self-Checking Translation Quiz in Google Sheets

I have always wanted to improve my proficiency in other languages. Back in high school (many, many years ago) I took four years of French. I can still say "I have a red pencil" … "J'ai un crayon rouge" … but not a whole lot more.

Thankfully Google has a lot of great translation tools that can help you when learning a new language, from the Google Translate website, to the Google Translate extension, to the Google Translate mobile app (Android or iOS), and on and on.

However, I was wanting to find a tool that could be used as a self-checking translation quiz when practicing a different language. I ended up creating this tool with Google Sheets. This sheet allows you to test yourself on translating words or sentences into a different language, and gives you hints as needed if you get stuck.

This could be helpful for an English Language Learner to enter words in their language and then practice translating into English, or for an English-speaking student to test themselves on a language they are learning in school, or for anyone to practice any other language.

See below to get your own free copy of this self-checking translation quiz template, as well as a short 9-minute video tutorial on how to use it, and some written directions.

Google Sheets Emoji Math - Addition and Subtraction

Emojis can be a fun and creative tool for educational activities. In the past I have shared lots of ideas on how emojis can be used in your classroom for student creativity and learning. Some of these projects have included:

• Emoji Writing Prompt Generator with Google Sheets - Resource link
• Emoji Rebus Stories with Google Docs - Halloween-themed, Valentine-themed, Winter-themed
• Character Emoji Template - Resource link
• Pictographs - Resource link
• And more - Resource link

Another use for emojis is teaching math concepts. Emojis can be used to model quantities so students can learn about, explore, and practice addition and subtraction with concrete representations of the numbers.

Adding 2 smiley faces to 3 smiley faces, or subtracting 4 rocket ships from 7 rocket ships, can make the math more understandable for students.

To help with this, I have created a Google Sheet template that lets students choose the emoji they want to work with, and then practice addition and subtraction problems, while at the same time getting conditional formatting feedback to let them know if they have the correct answer or not.

See below for a short 7-minute video showing how to use this template, as well as written directions, and a link to get your own copy of the template to use with your students.