Canvas in Elementary | Best Practices, Resources, and Success Stories

[jkremer]

As we all navigate the challenges presented by COVID-19, your CSM team has consolidated best practices, resources, and success stories to help with the implementation of Canvas in the elementary classroom. Whether you are looking for a template course, hoping to connect with other Canvas in elementary users, gathering helpful implementation strategies, or anything in-between, we hope this resource can serve as a guide for you and your district as we see more and more folks introduce Canvas to their young learners. 

Teachers, please don't hesitate to reach out to your Canvas administrators for assistance with leveraging these resources. Canvas admin, your CSM partner(s) are here to assist however we can. 

Resources

Instructure Resources:

• Faculty Lounge Webinar: Canvas in the Elementary Classroom 
• Canvas for Littles K-5 Usage Community Post 
• Fantastic case study of a successful Canvas rollout to elementary grade levels
• Forney ISD Case Study Summary
• Passport to Canvas - a Canvas course that walks students (generally middle and high school but can be adapted to fit in elementary) through how to use Canvas
• Engaging Elementary Version 1 - resources and strategies (log in to Canvas in a separate tab to access this link)
• Engaging Elementary Version 2 - resources and strategies (log in to Canvas in a separate tab to access this link)

Social Media (connect with others!):

• Canvas for Elementary Facebook Group - over 5000 users collaborating on elementary use strategies

InstructureCon Presentations:

• Canvas in the Elementary Classroom - CanvasCon Presentation
• Taking the leap to launch Canvas in primary classrooms - CanvasCon Presentation

Templates and Example Courses (log in to Canvas in a separate tab to view Commons resources):

• Sample Course by Iredell-Statesville (scroll to the bottom of the page)
• K-5 Teacher Appreciation Home Page Template
• K-3 Template
• 4-6 Template
• New Braunfels ISD Template Courses
• Template 1 - homepage buttons organized by subject area
• Template 2 - homepage buttons organized by essentials
• Template 3 - homepage buttons organized by essentials + parents
• Template 4 - homepage buttons organized by essentials + parents (v2)
• Template 5 - homepage buttons organized by day of the week

Customer Success Stories:

• CMS Pre-K Speech Language Pathologist Canvas example story
• Canvas in Stations
• Mrs. Ray's students talk about stations and using Canvas (2 minute Video)
• Mrs. Park's 1st Grade Class & Canvas
• A Radical Shift in Thinking: Canvas in the Elementary Classroom (Blog Post)

Parents in Canvas:

• Canvas LMS for Parents Video 
• 10 Tips for Observers
• Parent Pointers for Canvas Part 1
• Parent Pointers for Canvas Part 2
• Canvas for Parents (Spanish)

Adoption:

• K-5 Adoption Toolkit

Implementation Strategies

Start with a template:

• K-3 users benefit from image/button based navigation based on customer experience.
• Ex: Assignments as a clickable image icon rather than being housed in the course navigation bar
• Primary Ready-made Templates
• Search Canvas Commons for elementary templates, there are quite a few free resources!
• Canvas for Elementary Facebook Group - several great ideas for templates here as well

Limit the course navigation items as much as possible:

• In a Canvas virtual classroom, the home page is where most of the button based navigation should exist. The text heavy course navigation bar can be confusing for young learners.

Use Video for Instruction and Submissions:

• This allows you to avoid having to repeat instructions for the young ones and allows them to click one button to record a video submission. 

Collaborate with local districts:

• The Canvas family continues to grow into the elementary grade levels. Working with local districts to learn from their experiences and consider new strategies is where the best ideas come from!
• All Canvas users can share content through the Canvas Commons.

Helpful Feature Options

• Immersive Reader - Feature Option for a screen reader offered by Microsoft (currently free)
• Canvas Elementary Theming Option - limits the course navigation and applies young learner friendly font
• Canvas Welcome Tour Feature -  provides quick tips to get started with a Canvas course