My Favorite Teacher Fonts to Use for the Classroom

[00:01:11] Kirsten: I know this is probably the last thing you're thinking of is social studies and just really any subject in general. So we're gonna make this a little fun episode, but it's still useful. Today we are going to be talking about teacher fonts. That is right, teacher fonts. Whether you're creating anchor charts or worksheets or slideshows or classroom decorations,

[00:02:02] So if you love designing your own classroom materials, or you just wanna make your resources more student friendly, this episode is for you. Before we get started, I do wanna share with you a few links that I'm going to be referencing. The first one is my blog post that has gotten a lot of traction over the last five years, and for whatever reason, people just love to flock towards it

[00:02:48] subjects you're teaching. And I also have another source of how you can find Google fonts by the ladybug files. So I'm gonna link all of those and you can look at that in the show notes. Alright, before we get into my favorite fonts, let's talk about why font choice matters in the classroom. As teachers, we create a ton of materials either for ourself or for our team.

[00:03:28] Some fonts are easier to read, especially for emerging readers or students with dyslexia. Lexand is designed to improve reading fluency. It's specifically keeping that in mind. So I think just thinking about readability, you also want to make sure that if emerging readers aren't able to tell what letter is a capital letter versus a lowercase letter, you probably don't wanna add that in your teaching materials.

[00:04:25] It could be really distracting for students. So any of those really decorative or hard to read fonts maybe keep it for teacher purposes or PD purposes and limit it to having it for specifically your students. Another reason why choosing the right font is important is thinking about branding, classroom aesthetic.

[00:05:08] You can literally go to fonts.google.com and any font you like, you can download and use for professional purposes. You can use for personal use in your classroom. You could even, if you wanna create resources and put it on teachers pay teachers, you could use it for commercial use. So as long as you don't say that, you know, you created that specific font and it's like, oh, I did it myself

[00:05:53] It just is a really great way to use for student materials and for worksheet. I know some people don't like when the A is that fancy looking A and Lexend has the typical A where you've got the circle and the stick right next to it on the right side. I don't know how to describe it, but that's how I'm gonna do it for today.

[00:06:38] There's also didact gothic. It's a simple sans serif font that is friendly and easy to read. Outfit is another one. This is a sleek and slightly rounded font that works well for labels and headers, classroom decor, and then there's a font called teacher, the name says it all. It's great for early learners and it mimics clear print handwriting.

[00:07:28] Alright, let's go into Microsoft fonts. This is a short list. If you're creating documents in Word or PowerPoint, these fonts will definitely make your materials look clean and professional. The biggest font that I use out of this is Century Gothic. This is pretty much my go-to. I use it on a lot of my resources.

[00:08:11] if you create classroom posters or fancy decor or digital resources in Canva, you know how important fonts are. Canva is great 'cause it has a ton of different options that you could use, whether you have the pro version or the free version, and I wanna share with you some of my favorites that you can pull in there.

[00:08:57] Quicksand is a friendly and soft font. A little bit more rounded. Works well for labels, classroom decor. Montserrat is more stylish if you're maybe a secondary teacher, or sixth grade, seventh grade. This is a fun, bold, stylish font for displays and headers. If you want something a little bit fancier and less playful and Glacial Difference is a nice clean one,

[00:09:49] if you are making resources for your class, or you might be selling it on TPT, you do want some additional fun and teacher friendly fonts that are unique to our teacher and educator world. So I'm gonna share with you some of my favorites from Teachers Pay Teachers. There's the KA font by Kaitlyn Albani.

[00:10:34] KG Fonts is a classic TPT font that has been around for many years by Kimberly Guess Wine. And all of her fonts can be downloaded pretty much for free. And if you ever wanna sell resources on TPT, you can purchase a license for each font. I think it's around $5 right now. So you could use her fonts in your resources, and if you ever want to sell those resources to other people, you can have that commercial license.

[00:11:28] Lastly, I wanna mention AG fonts, Amy Grossbeck Fonts. These are really fun. Some of my favorites include AG I'm Extra, or AG sorry, not sorry. These two are bold, handwritten fonts that work well for worksheets and labels. If you want some fun cursive script fonts, I recommend AG Helicopter parents or AG rather be Sleeping solid, and I will make sure to link all three of these.

[00:12:22] Otherwise, that would be a lot of overwhelming links. All of these TPT fonts are perfect for adding personality to your materials while also keeping things readable and student friendly. It's also great if you want to, you know, create some customized teacher notebook or teacher journal and print it out on nice paper.

[00:13:04] make sure you're using simple and readable fonts. I recommend checking out those Canva fonts, Google fonts. For anchor charts and classroom decor, make it really bold. You can make it really fun, but still readable depending on what the purpose of the anchor chart in classroom decor is. Also for slideshows and presentations, you can use modern, easy to read fonts.

[00:14:22] Fonts will help make your worksheets, slides, and classroom materials look polished, engaging, and student friendly. Alright, well that wraps up season two of the Social Studies Teacher Podcast. If you are outta school or almost outta school, I can't wait to chat with you over the summer about a variety of topics.