Over the last three weeks that I have been using my Promethean Board, I've made sure to use it every day. Here are some of the easiest ways I have begun to incorporate the board into my room:
1. Interactive Websites: Since our school uses First In Math, this has been a great way to show students how to use the site, play games, reinforce concepts and get kids excited to play on their own. Using it on the Promethean means that students can come up and play on the board and take turns while everyone is able to see what is going on. I even used the Know and Show games to review geometry questions for their math test. On our recent Math Literacy Night I put up First In Math for students to play as they came in the room. It was a big hit. All the kids came in and made cubes and pyramids out of toothpicks and marshmallows and then migrated to the big, shiny board for some games. I will definitely keep using this when I want to review concepts or keep students interested. This would work for any website that has games such as http://www.gamequarium.com/ or the plethora of lesson plans and games available through BBC.
2. Math: The EnVisions Math site has everything from the student and teacher's edition online, including printable resources. Every day in math I can pull up the Problem of the Day or Daily Spiral Review and use the "annotate over screen" button to write all over it. This comes in handy for underlining our important words in word problems and drawing pictures or writing number sentences. EnVisions also has videos at the beginning of each topic in the student edition and I can pull it right up on the screen. The class has also taken advantage of the etools. Since we just did a geometry unit, we used the shapes and I was able to demonstrate slides, flips, and turns then have the students come up and give it a try.
3. Sorts: The first thing I do with my spelling words at the beginning of the week is open up a flip chart and type in all the words. I make an individual text box for each word, which merely requires me to click on the text box button, click on the flip chart screen and begin typing. When I am ready for the next word, I click somewhere else on the screen. The text boxes will continue to pop up until I click on another icon. I put all the words on the side or bottom of the screen. Then I can ask the students to sort them. I don't type in any titles for the sorts so I can use the flip chart for any sort that we do throughout the week. As we begin sorting, I can just write our sort titles using the pen or text recognition tools. After we sort the words I can print what we have done and then choose not to save the changes to the flip chart. The next day when I open it up for another sort, the words are back on the bottom of the screen and we have a blank canvas for new possibilities.
I have also used the shapes option to create sorts for geometric shapes.
4. Promethean Planet: I feel no need to reinvent the wheel all the time. When I am looking for an interactive activity I can visit http://www.prometheanplanet.com/ and enter in my keywords to search for whatever I am teaching. I recently found a flipchart titled "Fact or Inference?" by Jaime Dawson. I tweaked it just a little for my purposes, but it went over really well and was a great time saver. What was so great was as we went through the examples in the chart, students were able to come up to the board and underline their supporting details. That really got them interested in what we were doing.
5. Test Prep: I can import PDF files into ActivInspire software. This is great for importing those End of Grade reading passages or math questions. We can go through and highlight, draw pictures, and answer the questions right on the board. I had been using the Elmo, but I know many people don't have that technology in their classroom. The passage is up on the screen and I can zoom in and move the page around on the screen.
In our recent training I learned even more about the amazing resources available right there in ActivInspire that I can pull up easily. I'll get to those in my next post.
In the meantime, tell me the easiest ways you have incorporated your Promethean...just leave a comment.
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