How to Make Your Own Virtual Classroom!

With everything going on with COVID 19 and our schools, many of us might be finding ourselves "quaranteaching" in some way, shape, or form at least once throughout the upcoming year. It is only natural to feel confused and/or overwhelmed as we begin the arduous yet necessary process of adapting our curriculum for the potential of online teaching. I have, personally, set a goal for myself to teach paperless this year, but I am also fortunate enough to work in a 1:1 school district where all my students have access to chromebooks. As we consider online/distance learning once again, we must also consider how we will be organizing our lessons, resources, and classes to be conducive to this new normal. Many school districts have been planning and creating their action plans for the new academic year, and I have noticed a trend: entirely online, blended, or entirely in-person. If your school district is planning to go entirely online or some sort of blended/hybrid form, you might want to consider creating a virtual space for students to view their class sessions and for you to clearly organize your resources for students to follow along and implement your instruction.

We must consider how we will be organizing our lessons, resources, and classes to be conducive to this new normal.

Something that has been working really well for me is using, what I like to call, a Virtual Bitmoji Classroom. I love this concept, because it allows you to organize your class sessions with interactive Google slides for different aspects of your curriculum. I am also pretty obsessed with how cute these bitmojis are- I even added some patterned masks to my bitmoji character! I made my own templates for virtual bitmoji classroom slides available on my TpT account (link available here). These Virtual Bitmoji Classroom templates will help you establish and maintain a regular class routine for your students while also providing a very useful point of reference for your teaching. These Google Slides templates will easily allow you to show your daily agenda, bell ringer activities, learning objectives/standards, homework, classwork, and more! However, some of you creative folks out there might want to make your own! So, this is a step-by-step guide detailing how to begin the process.

This is my Virtual Classroom Opening Google Slide

In a typical virtual classroom, you might find some sort of opening slide like the one included above, a "week at a glance" slide that reminds students of assessments/projects/etc., daily agenda slides to be used in that class' lessons, and a reminder slide to display before the end of your class session. You also might have specific and repetitive class activities that could warrant their own slides. For example, we read our independent choice books each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday during class for ten minutes, so I always include an interactive slide for that repetitive activity.

This is our Independent Reading Time Google Slide

On our Independent Reading Time Google Slide, I keep my instructions clearly listed on the "white board," reminding them to fill out their reading status logs and to check out the bookshelf for book recommendations. On the bookshelf, I individually copied and pasted the book covers of the six books you can see in the image above. When students view this Google Slide in presentation mode and click one of the book cover images, they will open the link to one of my book talks for that book. I try to switch out titles every now and then so that students can refresh their book talk options should they need a new choice book to read. This interactive piece makes the slide more "real" for the students and provides an immersive feel to our virtual classroom experience. If you are interested in some ways to kick-start independent reading in your classroom, check out my article here. In this article, I share some specific ways to include more independent reading in your curriculum and foster book love with your students.

Virtual Classrooms provide an immersive feel to our virtual classroom experience.

Another repetitive activity in our classroom is our creative writing/quickwriting time on Tuesdays and Thursdays. During this time, I usually read a mentor text of some sort and ask students to respond to a few prompts and/or to write whatever comes to mind for a certain amount of time. In this Daily Writes Google slide, I also clearly list expectations and reminders for students to keep their writing together and to write for the entire time. Then, I link the excerpt for that class session to the text on the clipboard, so students can easily read along with me or reread as necessary as we go through the mentor text.

This is our Daily Writes Google Slide

Now that you have seen some examples of my own Virtual Classroom, I'm sure you're wondering how you can create your own. Well, you first need to start by creating a brand new Google Slides file in your Google Drive. You can title it anything you like, but I titled mine as TEMPLATE Virtual Bitmoji Classroom. Once you have your Google Slides created, you might want to make them a Custom Theme in Google Slides so that you don't need to go through all the trouble of recreating each slide all over again in the future. Check out this step-by-step guide for creating a Custom Theme here.

So, now that we have a blank Google Slides, we need some sort of background. I searched "empty room transparent background" on Google images. Many options with different floor and wall patterns appeared, and I clicked on my favorite one. You will want to click "save image as" and save it as a JPEG, PNG, or other image compatible file type. Once you save your preferred background to your computer, you will go back to your Google Slides and find "background" on the list of options. The "background" option will allow you to upload your saved background image.

You will want to select "background" to change it to your preferred office/classroom background.

Then, you will want to click "choose image" to select your saved background office/classroom image.

You will select from where you want to upload your new background.

I typically upload the image from my computer, since I download them. However, you can also select images from your camera, Google search, a specific URL link, and Google Drive as well.

Next, you select the image you wish to upload as your new background.

Now that you have a brand new background for your Virtual Classroom, it is time to add the furniture. You can't have an office without a desk, after all! You will want to go back to your Google image search, this time you will search for objects to furnish your classroom. This part can be a bit tricky, since many of the images do not have transparent backgrounds. I love to use the website, LunaPic, an entirely free online image editor (link available here). LunaPic allows you to upload your images and make their backgrounds transparent. Once your objects have transparent backgrounds, you can add them to your Virtual Classroom.

You will click "insert" images and upload your classroom furnishings just like we did earlier with our background.

After you upload your objects, you can increase/decrease their size and move them around to your heart's delight. You can add bookshelves, whiteboards, chairs, carpets, and whatever else you wish to your Virtual Classroom slides. Once you finish furnishing your "classroom" slide, you will want to take a screenshot of the entire slide. I recommend turning on presentation mode and taking the screenshot while it is on. After you take your screenshot, you will want to make it your slide's new background (just like earlier with our initial background change) and delete the individual objects. This way, your students can't move or delete objects accidentally, since they are now embedded into the background.

Our final step in creating our Virtual Classroom is the addition of text boxes. After all, you may need to routinely change those virtual whiteboards, so a text box offers versatility in changing up your reminders, lessons, and any other types of announcements.

To create a new text box, you will click the "Text Box" icon on the menu.

After you create your text box, move it to where you want and type in your text. You can easily change the format and size of the text through the fonts and sizes on the menu. Now that you have your Google Slides created, you may be interested in adding your personalized bitmoji character! Check out this step-by-step guide for creating and embedding a bitmoji below.

I hope that this guide has been a helpful addition to your distance learning/online teaching repertoire of resources. If you are interested in more quaranteaching tips and tools, subscribe to this blog below. When you subscribe, you also get a free coupon code to my online store and access to some freebie resources in our members area. Please comment below if you have ever created a Virtual Classroom! I would love to see some images of your own creative virtual experiences.