Creating Structured Center Transitions

By Karen Zurita, Cisneros Pre-K

In today’s digital learning environment, Canva has become essential for a variety of things like creating activities, fliers and slideshows. This post will explore how a lot of the offered tools can be used and how it can be incorporated to reinforce routines and maintain structure during centers.

Canva is a digital design tool that can be used to create visuals like fliers, slideshows and videos. It allows us to reference many different resources in one tab to make presenting lessons or activities more effective. Overall it serves many functions and can be used in different ways depending on the content and grade level. In this post I will share how I utilize this tool to keep structure and consistency in my centers.

Getting Started

The district provides Canva Pro with your school email, when you create an account and log in this is what your home screen will look like, now we can get to the fun part, creating!

You can search for existing templates that you can edit by typing into the search bar or if you would prefer to create your own template you are able to create your project by choosing one of the labeled buttons. You are able to create a flier, a worksheet, video or slideshow.

Once you have chosen what you want to create the blank document or template will open and now you can add your essentials.

This app is very user friendly so feel free to mess with some of the editing options and use that undo button if you make any mistakes.

After looking over some templates here is the one I chose to edit to create my centers slide show. I used the elements tab to add pictures of my students and of the centers, I added numbers for each center, and I used the top bar to change the colors of the squares to match the color of my centers.

At a glance this seems like a lot of work but if you through it step by step then you can see how simple this process is. I added 2 extra squares to align with my amount of centers and to make sure they were the same I right clicked one of the existing boxes and duplicated it.

Afterwards I clicked on every square and used the top bar to change the colors of every post it. Once I had fixed the squares how i wanted I began to use some of the fun Canva tools.

Editing

You can always use the search bar to look through the offered Canva elements or you can upload your own pictures and documents. I pressed camera roll and added a picture of every student in my class and then arranged them into their groups. Having this virtual copy makes it easy to display current centers while also allowing you to make any needed changes. I added the numbers to every center by pressing the text box and then finally, I embedded a link to the timer we use on Youtube and added that to the bottom of the slide along with a picture of our center rules.

After adjusting all my elements and making sure everything is centers I now have my finished product of my centers slideshow.

I made 7 slides for my 7 centers and adjusted the pictures to match everything. Initially it took me about 30 minutes to get everything set up but after having my completed slideshow I can make changes very quickly from my computer or phone.

This is a great tool because we all know that in the beginning when we are introducing transitions and centers it can get very hectic. You can have 10 students asking what they do next, where do they need to go, how much longer, etc. Having this visual displayed allows me to focus on my small groups and my assessments. Every student can see what center they need to be at and they can see how much time they have left in the center and can prepare to clean up and transition when they hear the timer go off. After the timer ends I switch to the next slide and restart the timer and then I can quickly get back to my small groups trusting that everyone else will be ready for their new centers.

Once you get comfortable with this app you can continue editing to include vocabulary words, more detailed directions, voice levels, music, or small reminders or announcements.

Best practices and tips: practice editing in the app and ask for help, start with pre-made templates so that you can get an idea of how you can use all the offered elements and tools, and finally create a wish list of your MUST HAVES to include in your slides because its exciting to adapt these slides to fit your needs but you don’t want to overwhelm the students with a busy visual or create a project that is difficult to adjust as you progress further into the school year.