I have a confession to make… I seriously love using Canva in the classroom. If you’ve never heard of it, I’m excited to share my love of this amazing online platform with you!
Canva is a design program that has taken the internet world by storm over the past three years. Not only is it great for designers and small businesses, but it’s a game changer in the classroom too.
Here are some strategies for using Canva in the classroom to improve instruction, and of course, make your life easier!
What is Canva?
Canva is a design program that allows you to have access to millions of graphics, fonts, videos, images, and animations right at your fingertips. You can use these tools to prepare classroom materials, engaging lessons, and even spark creativity in your students.
Is Canva Free For Teachers?
Yes! Canva is 100% free for teachers. Usually, users create a free or a pro (paid) account, but you can create a Canva for Education account as a teacher. This is free for K-12 teachers (as well as for students!).
Disclaimer: Your Canva for Education account can only be used for classroom materials. If you are planning to create Canva materials to sell on TpT or any other site, you will need a separate Canva account as this violates the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA).
Ways to Use Canva in the Classroom
Now that you know that Canva is free for teachers, let me share some of the ways I love using Canva in the classroom!
1. Creating Visuals to Support Lessons
As teachers, we know that visuals are everything, so the more often that we can incorporate them, the better! You can use Canva to upload visuals and to find visuals as well. These visuals can be used in a presentation, on a worksheet, and more!
I recently used Canva to incorporate images about the local area into my geography lesson. I’ve spent some time hiking locally lately, so I’ve taken pictures of the landscape I’ve seen. Canva allowed me to upload those photos and then it populated the photos into a cute presentation for my class.
Canva can also be used to find photos that you don’t have. For the places I didn’t go, all I had to do was type in the name of a specific place. For example, I typed in San Joaquin River and tons of real life photos populated. No matter which way you use Canva, it’s a great tool for adding visuals as support for your lessons.
2. Designing Math Visuals
Who doesn’t love a good graph or infographic for math content? I know that I do! I especially love creating infographics because they make learning more visual for my students, and creating infographics in Canva is easy and user-friendly (which makes it even better!).
Canva contains shapes, graph grids, and more to help make creating visuals for math easy. I’ve used it to create infographics for my reindeer unit which students love (you can grab it here!). No matter what kind of math visuals you’re hunting for, Canva has everything you need to bring your vision to life.
Oh, and you can also use the student accounts to have them create infographics as well! How cool is that?
3. Creating Worksheets in Canva
Canva is great to use for creating worksheets too. Instead of trying to create worksheets in PowerPoint (like we used to back in the day), I’m able to create worksheets in Canva instead. The perk to Canva is that all of the designs are saved there, so I’m not taking up space on my computer. You can also use the designs as templates so future designing is a breeze.
I’ve created my share of worksheets in Canva, but in case you feel like you need top-tier designer skills to get started, I wanted to share one of my simple spelling quick check worksheet designs that 1) I use weekly and 2) isn’t fancy at all!
To create this worksheet in Canva, I created a simple document with a border. I added the title, name line, and instructions. Then I used a map of San Francisco to put in the picture and used the elements to include little pinpoints for the bodies of water I wanted them to name.
4. Creating Graphics Organizers
There’s just something that I love about graphics organizers. But there’s something else that I don’t love, and that’s creating them! Thankfully, Canva already has graphic organizers created and ready for me to use.
To use them, all you need to do is go to the “Elements” tab on Canva and then type in the type of graphic organizer that you’re looking for. You can add the graphic organizer to a worksheet or project it on the board for students to see during the lesson.
With so many graphic organizers to choose from, I can’t wait to hear how you’re supporting your students with learning and processing information using Canva.
5. Using Videos to Build Background Information
Last but not least, Canva has a fantastic video feature. If I want to teach my students about the properties of water or solids, liquids, and gasses, all I need to do is search for videos on these topics within Canva. I can easily add the videos to a Canva presentation or pull them up for students to watch. You can also add YouTube videos into any presentation if there’s one that you know you love from there instead.
I’m always looking for new platforms with educational videos, so this one was super exciting for me!
These are just a few of the ways I like to use Canva in the classroom. Try it out for free and let me know what you think! (I don’t make a commission off of this, I just love it this much!). I hope that you find it as helpful on your teaching journey as I have.
Share in the comments, what are some other ways that you can use Canva in the classroom.
Wanna see how I use voice memos in my classroom? Check out this post!
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