Publish a Collaborative Research Project with Google Slides

Students will:

• Be able to publish a research project collaboratively with google slides using at least eight slides, seven images or video, and at least five links.

To prepare for this lesson:

• Teachers should understand Google Slides and how to create interactive presentations in order to show students.

  • Here is a video tutorial on how to use Google Slides. 

• Most 5th graders are not going to have their own Google Accounts, so you will need to have Google Classroom and assign the presentation to them through your Google Classroom. 

  • Adding a Slide Presentation to Google Classroom

• Create a presentation template and make a copy for each of your students and then assign them their own copy through Google Classroom. 

• The teacher will want to do some prep work with the students ahead of time if they have never used Google Slides before. 

  • Opening the template

  • Adding text

  • Adding images

  • Linking images

  • Saving a document (Explaining that Google automatically saves their work.)

  • Opening a saved document

• Students should have already drafted their story with a partner. For this activity, they are publishing their previously created work.

Note: Students are able to create their own drawings in Google Drawings. You will need to do a lesson ahead of time to show them how to open up Google Drawings and create their own drawing to add to their slide. 

See the Accommodations Page and Charts on the 21things4students website in the Teacher Resources. 

Directions for this activity:

1. For this activity, 5th graders will publish their collaborative research projects using the share feature of Google Slides.

2. First, one student of each partnership or group is instructed to work with a new Google slide presentation template shared with them by the teacher.

3. Once created, that same student shares the presentation with their partner(s).

4. Students begin working on publishing their collaborative story. The first slide should be their title slide, with the title of their story and their names as the authors.

5. Next, students should create a table of contents. This table of contents should include each of their subtopic sections related to their research. For example, if a group did a report on Brown Bears, their subtopics might be physical features, diet, habitat, etc…

6. Students then create a slide for the first part of their information. They should work together to decide what goes on each slide based on how they want their audience to read their research.

7. Students should also add places throughout their work where they can link websites where they got their information.

8. Once they have typed their information, students should use the insert function to add their own pictures, videos, google images, and/or drawings to their project.
   

9. Students repeat this process until their whole presentation is typed and illustrated.

10. Now that all slides are created, students return to their table of contents and link each slide to its coordinating subtopic (i.e. diet links to the slide about diet). The teacher instructs students to highlight their text on the slide, and then select the “link” option from the toolbar.
    

11. Next, students link to the appropriate slide.

12. At this point, students should also copy websites they have used and link them to pictures or words within their slides.

13. Lastly, students create “next” arrows on pages to help their reader “turn the page” in their story. Students can choose a shape for their advancement symbol, or just link a word.
    

14. Students should then choose the option to “link” the current slide to the next slide. Students repeat this process for each of their slides.

15. Students share their book on a class website or to Google classroom and present their work to their class, family and friends.

Different options for assessing the students:

• Observations
• Check for understanding
• The teacher is looking for information that relates to the group’s chosen topic and is categorized into subtopics. This information should be supported by appropriate images, videos, and hyperlinks.
• The teacher is also looking for the student's ability to collaboratively communicate an idea clearly through published work and add pictures that match their text.