During Terra Nova test days, the morning is dedicated to administering the test and the afternoon has abbreviated rotations of specials. Since I teach computer class, I am in the afternoon rotation with thirty minute class periods.What To Do - Grade 4-8
I really didn't want the students to have an open choice of program and I really want to give them a break after tests all morning. I decided to turn to my Activboard and Activotes. I want the students engaged. I was looking for a fun project and decided to go to the Lesson section on Promethean Planet.
I found an illusions flip chart called Tricks of the Eye by Lisa Dubemar. It has an interesting set of optical illusions. Some I had seen, some are new to me. She had a nice opening exercise with pennies, cups, and partners, but I skipped to the illusions and added some more of my own from the NIEHS Kid Page. NIEHS stands for the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.
How Did It Go?
I had 4th, 6th, and 8th grade students. They were all engaged in the examples, voting for their choice, and seeing how they compared with the students sitting nearby. The half hour few by. I arranged the room in a horseshoe of chairs around the Activboard.
This could really be accomplished with a PowerPoint or Keynote set of slides containing the images. Students could have white paper and pens to hold up their answers or could answer via SurveyMonkey or Poll Everywhere.
Potential Updates to the Questions
Instead of having an A and B choice, the students seemed to want and A, B, Both, or I Can't Tell set of options. I just told them to press C if they saw both images, or D if they couldn't see either.
Overall I was really happy with this little filler lesson and so were the students. Not a complaint was heard in the room.
Here are the slides I used with the students. The images are from the NIEHS Kids Page. As always, I struggle with using images. I believe these are fine to post under Fair Use guidelines. If the owner feels they need to be removed, please let me know and I will happily do so.
Image Citation:
"optical illusion - pulsing vortex." ClintJCL's photostream. 2006 Oct 20. 2009 Mar 3.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/clintjcl/274762242/
No comments:
Post a Comment