Hello and welcome back to my blog! As a teacher, I have been using Google Docs for over a decade now. So today I am going to show you my favourite Google Docs tricks and features for inside and outside of the classroom.
Plus, at the end of this Google Docs for teachers post, we’ll look at a top tip to make editing your documents much easier.
1. 60 Minute Lesson Planning
Firstly, let’s look at how we can use Google Docs to plan our lessons. We can either do this via the Google Apps in the top right corner of our Chrome browser screen or in Google Drive. If we use the Apps menu then we can click, hold and move around our Apps to prioritise them in our line of sight.
If we select Drive, we just select the + Blank option and this is where we will write our lesson plan. Firstly, select File, Page Setup and select Landscape under Orientation, then Ok. This way we’ve got a wider canvas to work on.
Then select Insert and then Table. From the grid, let’s select say 4 columns x 1 row. In each of these columns, I will write Stage, Time, Content and Links for external resources. We can now include stages one to 10 for our hour long class by adding more rows.
As an example, let’s assume that we’re holding an adult class of 10 students on a Monday morning. The first thing that I’d usually do for the first row in my lesson plan is to ask them about their weekend.
So we can get them into pairs or groups, or ask them individually in front of the class to share their experience for about five minutes each and get them settled. This way we can also find out more about the students as we learn together throughout the academic year.
Next, I’d add a few more stages. For the second stage, we can review last week’s language, so to do this I will simply link to a set of Quizlet flashcards about a holiday that I took several years ago to India.
We can continue to complete the lesson plan until we feel like we’ve got enough support for the students to achieve the objectives for this class. I like having lots of different stages because I like my classes to have lots of variety and I like the changeover of activities to be nice and quick.
To use this lesson plan in the future, we can simply give it an appropriate name by clicking on the top left-hand document name and then save it. We can then make a copy of this plan, which we can then edit and leave the master copy alone.
2. Planning For The Academic Year Ahead
For a new group, I look through all of the units of our course book and think about the grammar, vocabulary, skills and functions that my students will need to learn this year. Now, I’ll insert a table with 3 columns (Date, Content and Materials or Resources) x around 80 rows for every lesson to cover the whole year.
This is because I usually see my students around twice a week. In the table, I’ll include also lesson durations for the entire year and include a summary of the content, as well as links to materials and resources.
In my course book Table Of Contents, there are 8 units. So I will now map these out and split the units between my classes for the year. I’ll also add additional materials or resources which I know will work well with those language areas.
Now, in this example, we can see that in a few weeks we’re looking at personality in unit one. I already am familiar with this website which is called FunGamery.com and there is a section on personality quizzes. So, I add this link to the resource column.
As I keep referring back to the document throughout the year, I can check off the activities in the areas that we have completed. We can do this by creating a Check List from the top bar.
If the class went exactly to plan and we completed all of the required tasks, then we can tick our lesson off and it will strike through the unit. But if it didn’t go completely to plan, we can move some of the content into a future lesson.
Alternatively, we can select the text, Format Text and Strikethrough, as in hindsight there might be some activities that I should have included.
3. Collaborating With Teachers
Let’s imagine that we are working in a school where more than one teacher is working with the same students. I can share it with the other teacher and by allowing them to edit the document we can collaborate on the plan together.
To do this, I select the blue Share button from the top right-hand corner and add that teacher to the document. This way, we can both edit the document or create a comment by selecting the text and then Open Comment History (next to Share) and then Add Comment. In our comments, we can ask questions of one another such as what we should cover for the month.
Alternatively, we can share with our colleagues via a PDF by selecting File, Download and PDF.
4. Student Collaborations
Now we will look at how we can collaborate with students and enable them to collaborate. There are a lot of options to explore with our students. Firstly, we simply create a new Blank Google Doc, name it and Share it via a link. You can do this via Google Classroom, ClassDojo, Seesaw or your alternative learning platform.
Now, I like to make what we are going to be working on clear to my students. So, for a group of four, we could create a new table with each student’s name at the top – let’s call them Pablo, Alicia, Hugo and Carmen. We can then enlarge the cells with our mouse to give them space to work inside.
Now I can Share a link to the document with them and they can fill it in as is appropriate for the task. We could ask our students to write a 100-word short story in class working together via the link using three adjectives or items of vocabulary that we have recently studied.
I can then use the word count, comments or strikethrough functions to provide them with feedback when I select the relevant text. I can search for this word by either selecting Edit and then Find and Replace, or by holding down Ctrl + F on my keyboard. We can then search for the word (e.g. ‘scared’) and we can now see how many times it has been used in the story.
There is also a Dictionary function that can be used by selecting the word ‘scared’ which provides us with a definition on the right-hand side. This also provides us with a phonetic script for pronunciation.
If you are working with a group and would like for them to draw something rather than write it, it is very simple. We select the area that we wish to draw in e.g. Pablo’s cell. We then go to Insert Drawing, select New and now we are in Google Drawings. We can then select Scribble, Save and Close. This now appears in Pablo’s cell.
The drawing function is ideal for asking students what they did on the weekend and we wish for them to draw it rather than writing it. Alicia may draw a picture of her house and write underneath: “Teacher, on the weekend I stayed at home.”
5. Voice Typing On My Mobile Phone
My fifth and final tip is how I use my phone to write using Google Docs while I’m on the go. If I open up the academic year document and something new springs to mind. Firstly, I select Edit and on the right-hand side, I select Voice.
Now, I might say: “So, an activity where students have to describe something but they can’t say the word and the other students have to guess.” I click the tick button and now the text is saved onto the same document.
We’ve seen five ways that we can use Google Docs as a teacher both inside and outside of the classroom. If you use Google Docs with your students in your school and you have some other ways that you use Google Docs then let me know in the comments below. Once again, thank-you for reading and I’ll see you next time!