During hybrid instruction, when my clothing unit began I wanted my students to practice this vocabulary and colors, but wasn’t sure what the best option was since I couldn’t use my whiteboards. I thought of the idea for virtual paper dolls early on and eventually motivated myself to do it and the results are pretty cool! I used Jamboard because I wanted to see all the students’ progress in one place and only have one link to share. Jamboards only allow 20 frames though, so depending on class size you might need two. When creating the “doll” I quickly discovered that I couldn’t use the actual outline of a person because each article of clothing was shaped slightly differently so it was impossible to get them to fit properly. That is how I ended up with just a head and neck as the base. As students dressed their dolls they could add other body parts as they went and it gave them the chance to individualize their dolls.
Using the virtual dolls went so smoothly! Each student found a frame, added their name to the sticky note and used that frame the whole time. To begin, I described a doll to my students. As I said each of my descriptions, made up of complete sentences which included a clothing item and color, they had to move and resize the item to fit the doll and then use the marker to color it in. One downside to Jamboard is there aren’t a ton of colors to choose from right now, but it is still fun! After repeating my descriptions and giving them time to complete their dolls, I shared mine on the smartboard so they could see how they did. To clear the frames for the next description, they either moved everything back and used the eraser or just repeatedly hit the undo button until everything was back where it started. After listening to 4-5 of my descriptions, they wrote their own on a sticky note they added to their frame. This was great practice of vocabulary, él/ella forms and adjective agreement. As they wrote, I walked around the room giving them feedback and support. Then I broke them into pairs and they each took turns reading their descriptions to their partner, who dressed their doll to match their partner’s description. If they finished quickly, they created more descriptions to share or created a doll together by taking turns describing a clothing item and seeing if the dolls matched in the end.
I loved that this activity got my students talking with each other, which was something of a struggle in the spring. In the end, we actually used more colors than normal since I’ve never had enough variety of dry erase markers! And the best part about this activity? It is definitely something I can use in a normal year!
Make a free copy of the virtual paper dolls Jamboard here.
