30 Amazing Teachers ~ Brooke

Happy Back to School, teacher friends! I'm Brooke Brown, and I blog over at Teach Outside the Box. I'm entering my 13th year of teaching and currently teach Gifted and Talented for K-2.

I am SO honored and excited to be featured as one of Cassandra's 30 Amazing Teachers. Cassandra is a huge inspiration and dear friend of mine...One of those teachers I wish taught next door to me! Thank you so much for allowing me to guest blog!

Today, I'm sharing a quick and EASY How-To tutorial for creating your own banners in PowerPoint. I love decorating my classroom with colorful banners and customizing them with my own content such as the examples below:

Follow the steps below to create your own!

First up, download some fabulous digital papers and frames from Teachers Pay Teachers. This makes the backgrounds for your banners colorful and fun! Do a quick search for "Digital Papers" or "Digital Frames" and you'll find lots of paid and free options. My personal favorite store for a huge variety of digital papers is I Teach, What's Your Superpower? by Megan Favre. Her digital mini sets (like the Retro Brights set shown below) are affordable and ADORABLE and I use them on a regular basis!

When you open PowerPoint, the first thing you'll want to do is adjust your slide size to be the same size as a standard piece of paper. Click on "Design" on the top toolbar, then "Slide Size" all the way on the right, then "Custom Slide Size." A window will pop up for you to adjust the dimensions of your slide. Change the width to 8.5 inches and the height to 11 inches.

Now that your blank canvas is ready, you can copy and paste the digital paper of your choice onto the slide. Simply right click on the file, click "Copy" and then "Paste" onto your slide. Then, click to stretch the paper on all sides so that it covers the entire slide.

Next, click "Picture Tools" on the top toolbar.

Click "Crop" all the way on the right, then click "Crop to Shape." A whole menu of shape options will pop up for you to choose from! It's like a magical digital paper cutter!

To create a banner shape, you have two options to choose from: the standard banner or an upside down triangle. Click the option that you'd like, and your paper will cut to that shape! Pretty amazing, huh?! (My mind was kind of blown when I discovered the shape cutter tool!)

Now, let's jazz it up with a frame! This makes it easy to add a text box right on top. Simply right click on the digital frame of your choice to Copy and Paste onto your banner and stretch it to the size you'd like.

Next, you're ready for text! Click "Insert" and then "Text Box"on the top menu to draw your text box on top of your frame. You can add full words or add one letter at a time to spell out words across a banner. The font shown above is called "Geromino Blocks" and is free download for personal use in Kimberly Geswein's TpT Store.

To create banners with the same pattern, right click on the slide sorter on the left hand side and click "Duplicate Slide." To create different patterns, click "New Slide" and follow the steps above with a different style of digital paper.

Before you print your banner, click "File," "Export" and "Create PDF." Reopen the PDF file and you have a few options. You can print full-sized pages for extra large banners, or for smaller ones, click the "Multiple" button before printing to print two banners per page.

And THAT'S IT! Easy peasy, right?! Once you go through the steps once, they are easy to remember when you want to create again. Happy creating, and I hope this Back to School is your best yet!

~Brooke Brown, Teach Outside the Box