It’s that time again, but, as we all know, Halloween is going to be different this year–because of COVID! Kids get so excited about Halloween, but with many localities canceling trick-or-treating and large gatherings, it’s important to provide teachers and parents with Halloween activities they can complete remotely, at home, or both (the hybrid model).
Fortunately, Teachers Pay Teachers has come up with a new way to modify resources so they can be used at home, at school, or online: the TpT EASEL tool. I love this new feature. It enables creators or buyers to change ordinary single (unzipped) PDFs into digital activities to be shared with their students through Google Classroom(TM). TpT sellers can use the tool to adapt their PDFs, or TpT buyers can add digital activities to the PDFs their own way. Meanwhile, the original PDF is preserved in its entirety.
What can you do with this new feature? Users place a “digital overlay” on top of the PDF so they can add text such as directions or even alternate words to be used in the activity. The tool also allows us to add text boxes for the students to type answers in, or children can use the virtual pen to write, circle, or underline their answers in various colors. Soon shapes and movable pieces will be available, as well. Find out more about this new device here.
One example from my TpT store that uses this overlay is WRITING Halloween Costume Guessing Game, Grades 1-2.
The original resource is a 5-day comprehensive lesson plan in writing a descriptive paragraph, but doubles as a guessing game for children. My students loved this writing project. To them it was a fun mystery activity about their beloved Halloween costume, and to me it was a way to help them write paragraphs with descriptive words. The students describe their costume through a topic sentence, detail sentences, and a clincher–all without giving away what they will be on Halloween. After planning, writing a 1st draft, revising, and writing a final draft, the students read the paragraphs to each other and guess each other’s costumes. We usually held this final presentation right before our Halloween celebration.
Here are a few samples from the 48-page PDF.
Now the PDF includes digital versions of the student pages that you can assign through Google Classroom. Children can type their answers or write them with the virtual pen. You can also adapt this digital overlay yourself, add pages I didn’t include, or delete pages you don’t want. Meanwhile, you will have complete access to the original PDF for reading the comprehensive teacher’s guide or printing out pages for children to complete.
Several other of my Halloween PDFs have been digitized using the TpT Digital Activities overlay. They are all designed for differentiation, with several reading levels and different options for student response, with or without dotted midline on writing paper. Using this digital tool, you can adapt the directions and even the words in the activities to suit your students. The only thing you can’t do is change the original PDF, but you can choose which pages to include or even include pages more than once with different instructions and response modes. (See video at the end of this post for instructions on how to duplicate pages inside the digital overlay.)
Another format for digital activities that is popular with children is Google Slides. With this Google App, you can create drag and drop activities, text boxes for student responses, hyperlinks, and even simple animations. (Hint: For teachers who don’t have access to Google Apps at school, did you know that you can export Google Slides decks to PowerPoint? You just have to use your own Google account at home to do this.)
These digital Halloween ABC activities are offered on 5 levels, with and without an alphabet cue. You can differentiate both for reading level and alphabetizing ability. The activities include sorting to the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th letters. The teacher directions include teaching tips, as well as suggestions for accessing and storing the resource on Google Drive.
Here also are some digital adaptations of a Level B/2 book for guided reading, It is Halloween. The digital book is offered in five versions, each with different types of drag and drop activities at the end of the 7-page illustrated story: Comprehension, Phonics, Sight Words, Spelling, and Making Sentences. A discounted bundle includes the book plus all the different activities. Kids love using drag and drop activities on tablets, Chromebooks, or the computer. A comprehensive teacher’s guide explains how to work with Google Drive and gives lots of hints for teaching digital activities.
Hopefully by the time Halloween rolls around, I will have completed some more digital activities to add to the list. Meanwhile, you may want to create your own digital activities! You can do this three ways: with the new TpT Digital Activities tool, with one of the Google Apps, or with a product for Microsoft OneDrive. If you are hesitant to try this out, check out my blog post about using Google Slides, Getting Ready to Create Digital Resources: A Newbie’s Guide. And check out the new TpT Digital Activities tool here. Believe me: If I can do it, you can do it! It’s fun!
Happy COVID Halloween!
P. S. Here is a little video showing you how to duplicate pages with the TpT Digital Activities tool. The page I duplicate is taken from the Boo! freebie: Teaching Boo at Halloween Time: PreK – 2.
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