With testing this week and another virus on my laptop, my Promethean hasn't gotten much use. But, Monday afternoon I used it during after-school tutoring. I was able to have my student practice reading comprehension questions and then a longer passage for 45 minutes just because he wanted to have the board all to himself. Awesome. We used Test Tutor at http://www.harcourtschool.com/ and free online tutoring through Soar At Home.

Another Game

Played an awesome Jeopardy game to review for EOG's today.

http://jeopardylabs.com/play/3rd-grade-math-eog-prep

The Promethean made it easy to see, keep score, and the kids really liked it.

Jeopardy labs has other games as well. You can even create your own Jeopardy games or use their templates. I like this site better than another similar site I have used because it is user friendly and the layout of the game is neater. Check it out.

Keeping Interest

It's Spring. It's the time of year that our minds are on the beach and sleeping in just as much as our students minds are on video games and playing outside all day long. No matter how cool this Promethean is, it's hard to compete with the sun shining through the windows beckoning students attention. I'm trying hard to keep things interactive and entice students to participate in what we're doing up front. I've been reminding myself of all the tools available to change up activities that are seemingly the same. For an EOG math game today I used the spotlight tool. The kids were just answering EOG questions again, but this time, they couldn't wait to see what question the spotlight would reveal next. I've, of course, had students coming to the board to annotate, highlight, underline, and answer reading questions. We've loved "fit to width" option and are able to write our thinking and underline answers and then save our annotations to revisit another day. This has been very helpful and the students even "oohed" when I showed them what I had learned. I'm also trying to use different reveal strategies, such as erasing annotations over typed text to reveal an answer or moving a whole text box to reveal others. A strategy I used recently in a science flipchart was having students "trash" items that didn't belong by dragging them to the trash bin. I might even use this strategy to "trash" answers that don't belong with our EOG questions. At this point I'm using every strategy I can think of to keep student attention.

What is everyone else doing?

Preparing for End of Grade tests

My laptop had a virus and I haven't been able to use ActivInspire all week. Until today! It was wonderful. The students missed it, and I did too. We have been playing review games, but they really like any game that they can come up to the board for. They ask all the time.

Today I used the Fit to Width feature as well for reviewing a reading comprehension passage and "Thinking About Our Thinking" strategies. It went so well. The passage was easy to see, as well as the annotations. I was able to very easily scroll up and down through the passage without having to switch between pen and arrow to do so. And going back and forth to answer the questions was also a breeze. The students are still amazed at how easily we can do this now. Instead of waiting for me to erase and redo, or squinting to see a tiny passage, I heard "oohs" and "aahs" as the annotations scrolled with the text on the screen. I could barely keep them in their seats they were so excited to be next. It was nice to spend the majority of my time teaching rather than stumbling through technological roadblocks.

Now that I have my laptop back and it is able to get to the internet, we will be able to resume using it for centers and get to all those review games I had planned. Again, check out my delicious site for links.

Fit to Width

Check out Mark's comment to the previous post on the "fit to width" option. I've been showing a few people around school and it is awesome. If you don't understand, leave a comment and I'll come help you.

Also, check out my delicous site for plenty of interactive links. In the two weeks we have before end of grade testing, let's try to make review fun and less stressful while also making it more engaging. I also appreciate the links that have been sent to me and have added a few from other people. If you are using anything else, please let us all know!!