If you haven't heard of Blackout Poetry, please check out the Austin Kleon website and Newspaper Blackout website. The concept is simple, but loads of fun and I felt empowered after my poetry creation. You can preselect the newspaper article or allow students to find an article of their choosing. While I am all about allowing students choice, I would be intrigued to see all of the poems that would come from one piece of published writing. Tools you will need:
Computer with internet access
Newspaper Website (any will do)
Screenshot tool (on the computer or Chrome extension, such as Awesome Screenshot)
Google Drawing
I wouldn't by any means consider myself a poet, but within 10 minutes I was able to take a screenshot of an article - the first one I came across - put it into Google, and create a poem. It might not be the best, but I am proud of my poem.
Here is a video that will show you how students can perform this same activity.
What a fun way to get students engaged in writing and creating masterpieces from someone else's published thoughts.
The EZ Query Add-on for Google Sheets is the perfect add-on for when you want to have information automatically transferred from the main sheet onto another sheet based on certain criteria. This add-on works best when you use multiple choice or dropdown style questions, as the data must match exactly in order for the transfer to work. For names, I suggest automatically capturing their username because if you have them write their name and they accidentally misspell it or don't capitalize the name then the add-on will not recognize it as an exact match. Step 1: Add the EZ Query add-on
Step 2: From the Google sheet, click on Add-on, and select Create Sheet.
Step 3: Choose 'Single sheet' or 'Unique from column' (and select the column that would have the unique data) Step 4: Enter the name for the new sheet Step 5: Choose which columns you want the data to transfer to the new sheet
Step 6: Create a filter by clicking on the + and setting the criteria for the new sheet. The information you enter must match the data in the column exactly (spelling and capitalization counts)
Step 7: Add another filter (optional) or click 'Create'
Here is my example:
Now every time some one submits an entry that matches your filter, it will automatically transfer to the new sheet you created.
Quizlet is a free website that allows the user to create study sets. Teachers and students can both create study sets. Teachers can push the sets out to the students via Quizlet, Google Classroom, link, or embed code. You can add images and audio. No time to create a study set, not worries you can find and use other people's. You can also have a student create the study set for you to push it out to the class. Here is a quick tutorial on Quizlet:
A nice feature, that I failed to highlight in the video, that it will play the term and definition for the students. You don't have to do the recording, it automatically does text to speech for you.
