Share your examples of Lucid in the classroom

Hi everyone! I worked as a life coach and also taught fourth grade for three years. I use Lucidchart all the time specifically to make diagrams that are easy to read and understand.

Here's one of the projects I did last year to outline the Relationship Continuum for my team and everyone loved it. It's pretty easy to use shapes and text to make any kind of diagram. Excited to get new ideas from everyone else too!

I've been a middle school teacher for 9 years and one of the things I've been trying to incorporate more is remediation based on weekly formative assessments. Lucidchart helps me do this with its Data Linking feature. Using this feature I am able to import data from my gradebook and see visually on my seating chart how my students scored using conditional formatting. Here is an example:

With Lucidchart I can create a seating chart that shows me visually where each student is at with their proficiency on our most recent content. The cool thing is that I can quickly refresh this data (on the same Lucidchart diagram) and quickly see each week what progress/changes have taken place. Here is an example of the exact same seating chart with refreshed data:

The initial setup of the conditional formatting rules takes a minute but after that first time it takes less than a few minutes to refresh the data each week. I use this chart for so many things on a daily basis such as:

• Creating data-based groups for focused instruction
• Helping me know which students to focus on during independent work
• Giving a substitute some insight on the students
• Guiding discussion during IPLCs
• Comparing progress from week to week or tracking the success of remediation

Hi my name is Beth! I have taught 2nd and 3rd grade as well as summer tutoring. I have been using Lucid to create seating charts graphic organizers and a classroom newsletter!

Creating my newsletter was quick and easy using Lucid and has made delivering classroom news a bit more exciting than a generic email. Once it was created I was excited to learn that I could save my document as a template! Now I can easily use the template to create each week's newsletter! 

Hey my name is Vanessa.  I love using Lucid for Education to encourage creativity in the classroom!  I love how you can start from a blank canvas or template and create anything you can think of using the tools inside of Lucid.  Here are a couple of my favorite activities. 

I love having students create 3 step comics to practice their vocabulary.  It's fun and the kids have to think deeply in order to create their mini vocab comics.

For this example I give students a rubric and they create a diagram. #thinkdeeplyaboutlearning

This example is a click and drag activity that I used with my 1st graders.  

I love having students share their learning by creating brochures they can print out.

Hey Everyone!

I'm Kris Zebarth from Ottawa ON Canada. I teach Computer Science for Grades 10 11 12. I've used LucidChart for Flowcharts over the past couple of years but this year I've started using LucidSpark for Gantt Charts with my Grade 12 students. Gantt charts allow them to properly plan and manage their time while working on large programming projects. The templates are great for starting off and the students love how easy it is to add new tasks organize based on time assign work to different people add milestones and dynamically change the view of their chart with just a few clicks. I know I'm just scratching the surface of everything you could do with this but I'm loving it so far!

Hi teachers! Thanks for posting these great examples of your boards and giving us some new inspiration! It's great to see what everyone is up to.

If you haven't already be sure to follow this thread (top right corner of the page) so you get an update whenever someone posts a new idea. Also check out our templates videos and training designed specifically for K12 teachers!

I'm Val a high school and concurrent enrollment English teacher.  I love using Lucidchart and Lucidspark to create graphic organizers for my students.  Although I have used Google Docs in the past I prefer Lucid because of the ever-increasing canvas and better functionality for shapes and layering while still maintaining all the collaborative elements I was used to with Google.  Students get their own copy of the Lucidspark and get to work.  I love that I can have them add a PDF of the text they are working on and annotate it before working on the graphic organizer.  

Hi All! My name is Lindsey and I'm a high school English teacher. I use the Lucid whiteboard ALL the time. I love how easy it is for my students to access and add to whatever I have planned for the period. I regularly use it in my AP Language & Composition course as I teach students to norm their scoring around the Collegeboard free response rubrics. I will assign students to read and score three example essays provided by Collegeboard. I name the three essays so we're not calling them Essay A B or C so in the screenshot you'll see we read essays by "Bluey" "Bingo" and "Chili" (if you've got littles you know where those names came from). I provide them with this blank template LucidSpark:

Then in groups of 2-4 they discuss their scoring of the three essays negotiate discuss and come to a final decision on scoring. Once this is done they pick a post-it color & share their thoughts on the whiteboard so it looks like the screenshot below.

 Once every group has posted we talk through the strengths and weaknesses. We point out where the groups were aligned in scoring and where they disagree. Then eventually we share the actual scores of the essays received from Collegeboard. Before the digital whiteboard I did this on my physical whiteboard and wasted an ungodly amount of post-its. I LOVE not only the ease of collaboration through the digital option but also the sustainability aspect. 

Hi Lindsey thanks for posting this great example of how you use Lucidspark to facilitate discussions in the classroom! In case it would be helpful to you or anyone else we have a brand new Training Lab on Creative Facilitation available! It's designed to teach how to guide a group from complex problems to creative solutions. There's also new templates and best practices from other expert facilitators that can support the way you approach facilitation. Thanks for sharing your ideas! 

I use Lucid to create hands on math lessons.  I love the locking mechanism that allows for somethings to be changed while other things are locked.  For example in the top left box of the example below the circles are locked and can only change style thus you are able to fill in the correct shape.  As you can see the next box is empty but can be used to draw in shapes to create the desired fraction.  The zeroes in the last boxes can only have their content changed allowing the students to write the fraction in the box.

I really like it most for making it easier to create manipulatives and an endless workspace for students to share their learning with each other as well as the teacher.

Hi, Everyone! 

I teach programming, so Lucid is indispensable both for flowcharting (working in teams or alone, managing student submissions, etc) and web app design (sitemaps and wireframes).  Here’s an example of two of those:

• Multiplication Flowcharts  (where we move from storing in strings to storing in arrays)
• Web Wireframe (moving the above pop-up program into the DOM, with student designs)

If any of you teach with Code.org’s Computer Science Discoveries, I have flowcharts for the “Apps with Processing” activity where students have to identify the kinds of processing for different apps like “Is it my birthday?”

-Bram from Westfield, MA

@bram.moreinis That is such a cool and unique example! Thank you for sharing!

We are working on an animal unit with my 2nd graders where students need to ‘adopt’ an animal.  I created images of the animals they could pick and then created a box for them to drag and drop their chosen animal (In class, their names are added to to the box ‘name’ spot to avoid any issues… but not here for privacy).  When an animal is picked, students can see which animals are still available and which have been taken.  This can be used for other activities where students need to pick something, the images just need to be changed out.

I love this!  You could use it in so many different ways in the classroom!  book report selections, group project topics, arranging school giving trees, jigsaw research projects, picking seats in class, so many options.  Thank you for sharing!!!!

I finally got around to doing something with Edward de Bono’s Thinking Hats.  My students will be using the breakout room fuction and they will be introduced to how the thinking hats work one ‘hat’ at a time.  We’ll do one problem together on the main board (How can we reward our class for completed tasks?)- I’ll add sticky notes to each part of the table with different thoughts and ideas. 

Then the students will be broken into groups with their own table and they can work together on a topic (I work with elementary kids, so I’ll give them a list to topics they can pick from).  Each person in the group can add their own sticky notes so all student voices will be represented. 

This introduction will be helpful so when we start working on real topics in class, the students will know how the thinking hats work (and how breakout boards work too!).

https://lucid.app/lucidspark/e2bff9a7-ea46-47f6-a35b-a23dd66e9cd5/view

Edward DeBono is awesome.  I often use his PMI (Plus Minus Interesting) framework.  The way I do is: Students select elements (I may say, “comment on 3”) to comment on (in my case, a flowchart shape or arrow), add a comment, and then begin the comment with +, -, ? or ! (it’s really PMQI).   The author of the flowchart then replies to the comments if they wish. 

I like that!  I haven’t looked at that part before - and now it’s into next week’s lesson ;) 

I learned about dynamic tables today!   

We have a group activity coming up regarding character arcs.  Students will work collaboratively to identify different story characters who undergo a transformation.  Students can use the sticky note bank to drag a sticky to the column which shows how their character has changed through the story.  Example - Max from Where the Wild Things Are underwent a transformation which was internal (based on his behavior). 

The student can pull the sticky note out, add it to “Characters and themselves” and write Max on it. 

But, with the dynamic table, when another student adds to that column, the column will automatically resize so another sticky can fit - all without having to resize the sticky or the column!

Example of how the dynamic table changes in size with more sticky notes.

My 3rd graders are studying point of view and we are reading the story The Tale of Two Beast, by Fiona Roberton.  We will be using a fishbone to compare their stories.  I created a force copy of my template so everyone will get their own copy.

I’m not sure if everyone knows about this, but you can turn off Infinite canvas.  I teach K-5 and sometimes (especially on iPads), my students get ‘lost’ in a document (...or play around outside of the activity...call it what you like 😜 ).  To minimize this, I turned off Infinite canvas on my template and shared it with my students using a Force Copy template link.  

Here’s one of my templates that I made and then how to get to the Board setting.

​@Kathy R combining turned off Infinite canvas with our Force-copy links functionality is such a great idea for use cases like yours! Thank you for sharing! 😃