Canva in a Writing Class

A colleague of mine came to me seeking ideas. She teaches our 5th graders Fundamental Writing and in the past had her students come up with a list of life lessons that they have learned thus far, create a presentation, and present their life lessons to their classmates. However, this year she didn't see time in her schedule to complete this entire project, but still wanted the students to create something on a smaller scale. When she came to me, our original plan was to use Adobe Spark Post, but the age restrictions would not allow our students to use the app. Instead, we chose to use an app called Canva.

Step 1: Students chose a topic that taught them multiple life lessons. For example, "Life Lessons Learned from Dance."

Step 2: Students wrote down 7-8 life lessons that they learned from the chosen topic.

Step 3: Students chose at least 4 of the life lessons to illustrate using Canva.

Step 4: Students were asked to create a title poster and then at least 4 other posters. Each poster had to have a sentence that describes the life lesson that was learned along with a picture to illustrate the lesson learned.

Step 5: Students were asked to save the design to their google drive folder.

Step 6: The teacher created a google doc with each student's name listed. Students were asked to get the link from their google drive folder that would take you directly to their canva design and paste it in the cell next to their name.

Step 7: Students were asked to open and view other classmates' designs. 

Other ideas on how to use Canva in a classroom setting?

• Social Studies/History: pretend to be a marketer and design a flyer on Canva persuading people to travel to your colony/state
• click here for a historical infographic idea
• Back to school: create a design for "all about me"
• Language Arts: click here to read about a visual poetry idea