How to Teach Your Language - Create a LIstening Lesson

Canva - How to Create Lessons

Learn how to make visually engaging printable lessons!

Hey, everybody. In this lesson we're going to look at how you can create an endless supply of worksheets using Canva, and you can use these worksheets for a prompt to do listening activities. So, in a previous lesson for Audacity, we looked at how we could do recordings using one of these templates, just the pictures on the template as something to talk about. And in this lesson, we're going to go ahead and create a template in just a few minutes.

So first, here is the blank template that I have, and now I just have to populate this with pictures and just change the name. And I can do this in just a few minutes. It doesn't take that long to do. Now when you want to create something like this, what you can do is just go to Canva and just type in A4, just type in A4 and then go to A4 document. If you click on that, then you've got this blank here, create a blank document, and then you can open that up. And then voila, you can add the text. So, we can add the text here, you can add the numbers, you can add images. So, for example, I have the heart. So, if I have like, if I type that in there, I might have these different images. I think I had to type in heart maybe to get that. There it is. I can click on that and then it's on the screen.

So, this is how you can go ahead and do the basics, but once you have a template made, then it's very easy to do the same activity again and again and again. You just got to change the content words. So, what I'm going to do now is I've already created this template and I'll share the link to this template. Then I'm going to make a copy, if I can get right there, there we go. So, now I have a copy and I'm going to change the name. So, I'm going to change this to, "Worksheet for sports." That should be an easy one to do. So, then we have sports.

And so then, I'm going to now change the name at the top. I have it. And then I'm going to go ahead and leave this, "What does the speaker love, just like, or dislike?" I don't have to change anything. Actually, I could say, "Write the name of each sport below." I guess if I want, I could do that. I don't have to though. And then I just need to populate it with sports. So, then I'm going to go to elements and go ahead and type in some words. So, first I'll go soccer. Let's see what I get there. And that's a nice one. So, we'll go ahead and put that here. And I have soccer.

And then let's go to tennis. That should be pretty easy to do. I like that one. Just grab that. And here we go. And then let's see, what else? What do you guys think? I could do maybe basketball. There we go. And the graphics are great, right? And this is, by the way, I actually have the paid account, but this is the free account. So, I'm showing you how you can do this with the free account. Let's see, is that that going to go ... I'm going to go that one for golf. Maybe that one's easier.

Sometimes with the white background it doesn't quite show up well. So, you might want to have to play around with it a bit. Let's see, what else? How about baseball, right, that's very popular in some countries. And notice I'm taking all the free ones. There we go. Almost finished. Let's see, maybe volleyball. And it's going to go ahead and auto-populate for me. That one will do, although I guess some people might think that's the soccer ball or football, but I think that'll be it.

Let's see. That will be fine, I should say. How about rugby? Ooh, rugby's going to be hard, isn't it? That one's pro, so I can't use it. I'll just go American football. How's that? And I just need a couple more. So, what are some other sports that people play? I need nine, right? Gosh, I'm drawing a blank now. What is another sport? Oh, badminton. That one. That's a good one. There we go. And that's a good picture right there.

And one more. Huh. You know what? I'm just going to put question. So, then maybe the teacher can add one later, or you can think of one. I'll put question, mystery one there. So, we'll have that. So, a person could have their own, if they think of their own that they like to do, they could add that. Oh, I could have done ice hockey. That's the one I should have done, huh? Oh, well. Actually, you know what? I will go ahead and add that. Let's go ahead. All my Canadian friends are probably screaming, "Hockey. You can do hockey." And now I've got it. So, I've got my nine sports.

So, nine's always a nice little number. And then voila, I'm done. That's it. So then, I could easily do an audio for this activity and you could change the task, what you want the students to do. But again, using Canva, it's very easy to create a bunch of words, put them on one document, have images for those words on the document, and then you just talk about them. And then, it's a great way for students to hear these words used in natural context. And of course, you can print this out. This is now a nice printable page. You can make this part of a book. There's a lot of options that you can do, and that's how you can create a worksheet in minutes, using Canva.


Meet the Teacher

My name is Todd Beuckens and I am an ESL teacher in Japan. I created this site to provide teachers and students free audio lessons and learning materials not usually found in commercial textbooks.