RING in the new year with the Ring Lollipop Zipper digital art challenge. Do you think your students can recreate the wearable sweet treat? It's made with a rectangle, block arc, and four trapezoid shapes.

Level = Growing Green
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Snow Globe + One-Word for 2024

Learn to draw a shiny glass enclosure in the Snow Globe lesson. You get to decide what goes inside and what to write on the plaque. It's tricky to draw with so many layers, so it's handy that the lesson includes a detailed instructional video.

Level = Progressing Purple
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The Snow Globe lesson invites learners to insert something under a shiny glass enclosure. That something could be their "One Word" for the new year, which is like a simplified new year’s resolution. You could copy and paste students' globes into this Google Slides shelf as a terri-FLAKE reminder to stay true to your SHELF.

Marc Hodgkinson revamped his One Word lesson for 2024. It takes a Grade 7 student through a variety of activities before creating a slide that explains their word (and proudly displays it in a snow globe). You can copy his Google Slides and use them as inspiration for your own lesson.

Shapegrams Posters Updated for 2024

I spent time over the holidays revising posters. Last year Google changed a few things in Slides and Drawings, adding icons to menu items and changing "transparency" to "opacity" in the Format Options panel.

Members can download posters from each lesson's page. I've organized all the one-pagers into a single 85 page PDF for Shapegrams members. That document is titled Shapegrams PDF: Posters about Drawing for Friends. The one-pagers are great for printing, displaying on a big screen, or distributing to students.

Book Me for Tasty Teaching

Sprinkle something special into every lesson! Book me for a one, two, or three-day workshop to explore how to combine teaching strategies and free online tools to add flavor to any lesson.

In Tasty Teaching, participants experience parts of a lesson as a student and then dig into how they were created. I share hypnotic hooks, conversation kickstarters, dynamic discussion prompts, creative closures, buzz-worthy brain breaks, and recipes for reflection. These activity ideas are designed to be low prep and easily mixed into any existing lesson at any grade level.

If you’re interested in inviting me to your school, organization, conference, or PD event, fill out the form on this page and we can discuss details. I customize my presentations based on your audience’s needs and your goals. Or, forward this information to the people who make PD decisions for your school.

Smiles from Iowa,
Tony

P.S. A new Zipper challenge will come out of hiding soon. In the meantime, feast your eyes on the shapes that make up the picture. Perhaps your students would enjoy guessing what the picture might be.