Adding a Background in Google Drawings

Happy Thanksgiving!  This week our class read the book Run, Turkey, Run! by Diane Mayr.  After reading the book, I taught the students how to write a super sentence.  We start with the sentence: The turkey ran.  After we discuss how boring this sentence is to the reader, we add more details to the sentence to make the sentence more exciting.

Once the students have written their super sentence, it is time to publish their work.  In the past, we have made a turkey out of construction paper and displayed the writing in the hallway.  However, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to teach the students how to insert a background into Google Drawings because each sentence contained a setting.  The purpose of using technology in the classroom is not to invent new lessons but insert technology into lessons that you are already teaching.

I love adding backgrounds to Google Drawings because it adds a lot of visual appeal to student projects.  The background is simply a regular image that is enlarged to fit the entire page.  Therefore, any image can be used as a background.

When inserting a background, always insert the picture first.  This is also a good time to teach students about the undo button.  There will be many times when the student will accidentally move their background, and the students quickly learn that the undo button is their friend.

The cool fat turkey ran to the trees to hid in the trees at 12 o'clock.

The students were told to insert a background that went with their setting, insert an image of a turkey that looked like their adjective, and write their super sentence.  One of my favorite features of Google Drawings is the ability to insert pictures right into the project without even leaving the program.  When the student searches for their image, there are a lot of images available.  This gives the students a lot of choice when picking the image that works best for their project.

What is Inside Your Head? An Introduction to Inserting Pictures into Google Drawings

This week we talked about schema.  Schema is the background knowledge that we use to make connections.  We use our schema in both reading and writing; therefore, it is important for students to recognize their own schema.

Usually, I introduce the topic of schema by asking students to reflect on what is in their head.  This project includes a picture of a large head in which students draw pictures of things that they are "experts" on.  I thought this would be the perfect opportunity for students to learn how to insert pictures on the Chromebook.  Therefore, I assigned the students a picture of an empty head in which they could fill with pictures of things that were important to them.  This template was created in Google Drawings.

One of the best features of Google Drawings is the ability to search for images without leaving the program.  When you insert an image, choose the search tab, and you are able to search through a large amount of images.  Students love this feature because they are able to pick the picture that is best for their project.

Here are a few pointers when teaching students to insert pictures into Google Drawings:

1. Spelling is important when searching images.  Sometimes if the word is close to the correct spelling, it will work.  However, students usually have to spell the word correctly to find their image.

2. Students struggle with resizing the image.  When you insert an image into Google Drawings, the image is usually very large.  Resizing the image is a task that needs to be modeled constantly for the student.  However, by the end of the lesson, the students are successful with this task.

3.  The undo button is your friend.  Sometimes I would check in on a student and the head would be missing.  Usually, we were able to undo enough times to find the head again.  Sometimes I had to restore the project to the original version if using the undo feature was not successful.

You can download a copy of schema template here.