OK – today’s trick boys and girls, is how not to re-invent the wheel. Templates, aka the wheel, are a lot of work to create … so let’s use the ones that Microsoft has paid a lot of people a lot of money to develop already.
Today: the business card online and a Business Card Template.
There are a lot of other styles, I chose this one … you may want another. That’s ok.
The end result is a Business Card featuring one of many monuments in Paris. Here’s the Word version if you’d like it: trading card.
I give them the template, a monument from a list and this information sheet Infos des Monuments to complete via email.
They insert their text into the template first; three to four short sentences in a bulleted list format. Once the text in one card is how you like it in size and content, copy and paste it into the other cards.
For their image, I suggest to them that they insert it into another word document to re-size it prior to putting it in the template. Once they have the image at the proper size, they can copy/paste it into the template, change the image ‘format’ to ‘in front of text’, repeat the copy/paste for each card and Voila!
They resubmit their completed project re-saved as lastname_card_theirmonument.doc and their info sheet as lastname_info_theirmonument.doc also via email.
We are on the block so this can easily be competed in a single lab period IF I prep them well the day before.
OK – the kicker is that after the students make this, they print it and they cut it up and then they do a TEACH AND SWAP! In some organized fashion, each kid gives every peer a they made card teaching them what they found about their monument.
At the end of the period they have a card from each person in class and we do a basic poll: coolest photo, coolest piece of info, most informed, most excited … these kids do in a day what I could not do in a week or more!
Student researched, created, taught – teacher approved.
I could see using this with famous French people as well.
How do you see this being applied in your classroom?
Please leave a comment / idea to enrich someone else…and yourself.
Have a blessed day!
Integr8! 