Summer is here and I guess I am a workaholic because I have already started prepping for next year! The school I work at has had the same PowerPoints for a while and none of them were cohesive, so I decided to add my flair and give them a face lift and a little update as well!! I decide each six weeks (which is how our grading cycles are divided) will have a different themed powerpoint background. This will help me know just by looking at the thumbnail in google drive when we talked about something making it much easier to find. It will also help my students see division in the units and keep things organized.
I started this daunting task by pulling all of our current powerpoints and looking at the TEKS. I wanted to make sure that everything we talk about fully covers the learning targets that are required and that nothing was missing since the TEKS were last updated a couple years ago. After this I consolidated the powerpoints as their were several of them over each topic. I found a theme I loved for the first six weeks from ” slidestogo.com ” copied it to my drive and got to work.
To keep the fonts cohesive and make sure all of the necessary material was included I retyped everything rather than copying and pasting. I found new updated pictures that were clean and simple and embedded those in each of the PowerPoints where they would be helpful.
I tend to not lecture for very long so these are just supposed to be tools to help students take notes from. In on level they are assigned the PowerPoints to take notes from the class before we talk about a topic. Then we come to class and process the notes they take together going through the presentation to make sure none of the big ideas were missed. In my Pre AP classes students use our textbook to take notes and the PowerPoints are used in class as a summary of the big ideas. Having a cohesive theme that is clean and neutral is helpful for the students to be able to focus and not get overwhelmed by the new ides being introduced.
I hope these tips are helpful as you take on creating, or redoing presentations for your own students. 1 six weeks down 5 to go!!
Smile Style & Science 