How to Create a Worksheet in Google Classroom

Go Digital! Have you been wondering how can you digitize your worksheets in Google Classroom? Then this blog post is for you! I'm going to share 7 ways that you can take a regular old worksheet and turn it into a digital version! This is perfect if you have a copy limit or need to save paper! It's also great for 1 to 1 classes or for classes with Chromebooks! These options all use Google Apps for Education which are FREE and can be used along with Google Classroom to manage all your students' work.

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These ideas are going to be introduced from the easiest to implement to the hardest.  That being said, the easiest implementations are not always the best use of technology. This is the SAMR model for technology integration. Content can be enhanced through technology or transformed through technology.  The more transformational the implementation, the better! However, it's okay to use technology as a substitute at times as well! As you read about each strategy for "digitizing" your worksheets, try and decide which level of the SAMR model that it falls in!

Go Digital! Use Google Apps to Transform Your Worksheets

Digitizing Your Worksheets

All of the strategies for digitizing your worksheets require a digital copy. A desktop scanner is great tool to help digitize your worksheets! You can keep one in your classroom for easy access!

You can also use your cell phone to scan worksheets. This video shows you how to use your phone and an app called CamScanner to get those paper copies into your Google Drive.

The Fastest Way to Digitize Your Worksheets

If you're looking for the fastest and easiest option for digitizing your worksheets and sharing them with your students in Google Classroom, just scan them and upload them to your Google drive! Sometimes you may already have a digital copy of your worksheet. For example, you may have purchased a file from Teachers Pay Teachers or Etsy.  When you have a digital copy, it's probably still a good idea to print the pages you'd like to upload and then scan them.  When you use the original file, it probably contains things like terms of use and answer keys.  You definitely don't want to share those pages with your students!

I use an app on my phone called CamScanner.  It's free and easy to use! You can choose the batch option if your worksheet is more than 1 page. It's as simple as taking a picture and uploading it straight to your Google Drive.  Then you can just go into Google Classroom and share the file with your students.

When you're ready for the students to complete the worksheet, they can open the file for the questions and record their work and answers on a piece of notebook paper.

The Strategy 1 video (but first the CamScanner Video) will show you how!

Totally Digitized - No Paper Needed

This strategy builds on the first one to completely digitize your activity, making paper a thing of the past!  In addition to the digital questions, this strategy adds a digital recording sheet.  Using Google Slides, the students can mark their answer using text boxes, draggable answer tiles, or even circles they can use to cover the correct answer.

The Strategy 2 video will show you how to use the free Google Slides template to provide an answer sheet for your students.

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Students Can Still "Show their Work" with Digital Activities!

I use digital whiteboards and the screen snipping tool all the time! If the students play a practice game, I have them snip their score and paste it onto their recording sheet. If I want to see the strategies they've used to solve a problem, I may ask them to show their work on a digital white board and then copy/paste their answers on their recording sheet.

The Strategy 3 Video shows you how you can use a recording slide (like the one provided in your free started file) to help students show their work.

Digitize a Worksheet to be self-grading in Google Forms

You can digitize a worksheet that you want to grade! Strategy 4  is fairly quick to create and is self-grading, which will definitely get you back the time you spent creating it. Using Google Forms might take a tiny bit of practice, but before long, you'll be an old pro at it! Plus, Google has some cool features that help the creation go faster! Watch the video to see what I mean!

Making Your Digitized Worksheets Self-Checking

This next strategy is a little more work than the others, but it will make your assignment a little easier for students to use and a little more engaging too!

To create this type of self-checking digital activity, you just screen snip and copy/paste one questions per slide. You'll hide an image behind the answer choices.  When students think they know the answer, they'll just drag away the answer tile to reveal if they are right.

I like this strategy the best for several reasons:

1. The students like to collect the images, or stickers as I call them.  You can change up the images according to what is engaging for your students.  If it's Halloween time, they can collect candies, like trick-or-treat. If you are studying rainforest animals, you can use little images you found on Google Images.  I allow the students to start a blank Google Slides file that they can use as their sticker book.  If they earned the sticker, they just cut/paste it onto their digital sticker book.

2. The students feel less overwhelmed when they only look at 1 question at a time.

3. It offers a place for students to leave feedback for the teacher about a specific question.  Likewise, as the teacher, you can also leave specific feedback to the student.

4. It makes a great activity for student collaboration or learning partners.

Check out the Strategy 5 video for a glimpse of this strategy!

Making Games Out of Your Digitized Activities

You can digitize worksheets to use with a digital gameboard!  Y'all, I'm the queen of math games! It's definitely my favorite center! For me, discovering the magic of digital board games was like winning the lottery. Here's why I love digital board games:

1. I don't need a set of question cards.  Any worksheet that I have with questions becomes the cards.  I play it simple.  One player chooses the question another player will answer.  If they get it right, they move.  If they get it wrong, they try and learn from their mistake and wait until their next turn.
2. With digital game boards, you don't need any materials. I use digital dice, pawns, spinners, etc. Clean up has never been faster.
3. Games are engaging, so the competitive fun nature of the game makes completing the boring worksheet a lot more fun!
4. Everyone can play the game at the same time! With traditional games, each set of players needs their own gameboard.  That's not the case with digital board games.  Everyone gets their own copy!
5. The game board can be as engaging as you make it.  Use a theme that you know your students will love!

Watch the video to check out this strategy and the free game board you can use today with your students!

Differentiating Through Videos on Google Slides

Technology makes differentiating much easier! The technology feature that revolutionized my class more so than any other was the ability to replicate myself through video. Here are some of the ways that I used video in my class:

1. To Deliver Instructions: Whether it was a lab, a math station, or a complicated assignment, I could record myself giving the instructions and just upload the video onto a Google Slide.  Students can re-watch the instructions as many times as they need to.  Plus, it's great for absent students.
2. I like to differentiate test corrections by allowing each student to watch me solve only the questions they missed. I use screencastify (along with my Wacom Tablet) to record myself solving the problem.  (It's just screen and audio so don't worry if you don't like being on video!) I put one question on a slide and students watch any of the videos to the questions they missed.
3. Teach New Concepts: My students were self-paced.  They moved through the curriculum when they were ready.  This meant that I wasn't giving the same whole group lesson to the entire class.  I was able to give an introductory lesson to the students through video so that when they came to small group, we were ready to dive into more rigorous examples of the lesson.

What do you do in your classroom to help save paper? Share your knowledge with the crowd in the comments!

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How to Create a Worksheet in Google Classroom

Source: https://minds-in-bloom.com/7-strategies-for-using-google-to-digitize-your-worksheets/

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