New IWB Workout Blog

I use this space to write up activities and plans that I use during computer class in grades Kindergarten through eight. These posts assist me in improving my work with my students year to year.

I am in the process of assisting several teachers in making the transition to using a MacBook, projector, speakers, and ActivBoard. I have created a separate space to document lessons I am learning in teaching the teachers. 

This past year, I created a ning to assist help the teachers become comfortable with the process of learning and sharing online. It is to form the habit of mind of reading emails and connecting to the ning. The space is private. I cannot open it to the public. 


I do want to be able to share my documentation, so I am writing blog posts in Blogger and cross-posting it to the private ning. In some ways, the documentation is specific to the MacBook and my school set up and software. In other ways, the documentation may be helpful to other teachers and technology specialists in general. If you find it of use, please feel free to add my new IWB Workout blog to your reader.

First Grade Reptiles Lesson

First Grade Reptiles

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I used to feel uneasy when I had to have a larger than usual class in K-3. With my new tools, I look forward to these times. It gives me an opportunity to learn how to integrate the Activboard, Activotes, and Discovery Streaming into the school day. I hope that someday I have more Activboards in the school and want practical, first-hand knowledge of what can be done.

Book Fair Schedule Change
I had the entire first grade in the computer lab today. They will be going to the book fair tomorrow. Usually half of the first grade is in my lab while the other half goes to the library. The next day, the students switch and I have the half who went to the library.

What To Do?
I started by browsing Promethean Planet. I was specifically looking for a lesson designed for K-2 with Activotes. I downloaded a few lessons, but the one that caught my eye was called Discover Reptiles by Nicole Glover of Kentucky. It got my attention because I was certain that I could find a complementary video on Discovery Streaming. Reptiles are fascinating creatures. I headed over to Discovery Streaming and was not disappointed.

Discovery Streaming Reptile Choices
There were a tremendous number of choices. As you can see from the image on the right, there were 44 video clips just in the K-2 grade range. I previewed about five.

The first video that fit my need was Animal Groups: Beginning Classification (copyright 2000). I liked it because it talked about all the vocabulary in the Activstudio flip chart: turtles, lizards, crocodiles, snakes, vertebrates, scales, cold-blooded. It was a one minute 54 second clip.

The second video I chose was The Jeff Corwin Experience: Wild Animals in the City (copyright 2005). In one segment in New York, they show how a snake was left behind in an apartment and had to be collected by the animal control department. It was a ten minute clip, but we only watched the first few minutes.

Running the Class
When the students arrived, they sat in a horseshoe around the Activboard. I reviewed the Activote and explained that everyone would have at least two turns working on the board. We would write, erase, or move things on the board. I modified the original flip chart. Several slides were changed from "reveal" type items to Activote questions.

This was the second time they used the Activotes, so I made the first few questions very easy. I focused on having the students click A, B, C, D, or E to identify the snake, crocodile, turtle, lizard, and iguana. Next, the students slide vocabulary to where they thought it belonged in different sentences. They must have worked on the concept of reptiles. They were aware of the concept that reptiles are cold-blooded animals. Afterward, students erased a block to reveal the actual answer.

Next, we watched the first video and filled in the blanks about different animals on the board. Other students clicked to reveal the answer and compare it to what was written by the previous student. Before moving on to the Jeff Corwin video, I needed to review some vocabulary: rural, urban, and suburban. Those words all came up in the clip. We used the Activote to determine if the students felt we were from a farming (rural) or big city (urban) area. I talked about the word suburb and how it applied to our area. I asked who had traveled to New York and Miami.

Finally, nearing the end of our 42 minutes together, we watched the snake being bagged in the New York apartment.

Looking Forward to Opportunities
I am looking forward to more opportunities to gather the students around the Activboard and use the Activotes and Discovery Streaming. It is a great combination of products. My hope is that I will eventually have more classrooms with boards and I will have a personal understanding of what can be accomplished with students. I know the children had a fun learning experience.

Where Does the Money Go

Darfur Q&A for Dress Down

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Our school collects mission money. During the year, we also have out of uniform days. A short time ago, I came across a post by Erica Hartman called Be The Change in Darfur. In the post, Erica links to New Jersey Coalition Responds to Darfur. It turns out that one of the coalition members is none other than the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark - our very own archdiocese.

Make It More Meaningful
The student government decided to make the Saint Patrick's Day an out of uniform day for this cause. Each student that chooses to dress down donates one dollar. My eighth grade son's teacher asked if anyone knew anything about the cause. Someone more or less said, "Who cares as long as we get a dress down day". I decided it was time to step up to the plate and create a short lesson during computer class. Out came the tools of the trade: Activstudio, Activotes, online searches, and a slide set to share.

What I Found
I want to use the same presentation for Kindergarten through eighth grade. I found a great video at the Jewish World Watch website. Unfortunately I did not want to bring up the word rape. I just wanted to leave it at violence. I found the video on YouTube, downloaded it with Zamzar, brought it into iMovie and made a couple of little edits.

I am starting with a KWL chart for all grades. I will probably fill it in for the youngest students. I'll have to see how it goes. I've interwoven questions to find out what the students know about where Darfur is and what experience they have with collecting firewood. This will bring us into the video.

Bringing It Back Home
Finally, I want to provide the students with a feel for how they are making a change for the better in the world. We will briefly review approximately how many families are at the refugee camp, how much the cookers cost, and how much the violence has gone down as a result of these efforts.

I think it's important to make a strong connection in the student's minds about what is actually happening with their dollar. I wish I had a better understanding of all the other work our student's money does with the mission money collections.

Activboard Quick Activity

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.

Actiboard/ Activote Illusions Slides

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Image Citation:
"optical illusion - pulsing vortex." ClintJCL's photostream. 2006 Oct 20. 2009 Mar 3.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/clintjcl/274762242/

Winter Wonderland and Third Grade Research

Back in December, Kevin Jarrett over at Welcome to NCS-Tech! wrote a post about research skills called On searching, web literacy, and the ubiquitous "animal report". I've been giving that topic thought since becoming a teacher seven years ago.

Personal Experience
My two sons are no better and no worse than the average student at our school in their research skills. We've given them a lot of attention at home to try and help them learn what they do not seem to understand from their classroom lessons. In the computer class, we have completed mini projects and learned various search skills. I have come to the same conclusion as Kevin, online search skills really must be follow book based skills. I hope I paraphrased you correctly, Kevin.

Winter Wonderland January Project
I have had some trouble getting the January Winter Wonderland project off the ground in Kindergarten and first grade. I wasn't able to find a project I wanted to use with Kindergarten and the first grade is working on Dance Mat Typing. I've really been working hard with the third grade, although it wouldn't be apparent from my student's wiki page.

The Penguin Glyph
I really liked the Penguin Glyph project. Amber Coggin put the files together. They are under the January heading on the activities page. We start using PowerPoint in the fourth grade. For the third grade, this glyph is a great introduction to the PowerPoint screen and the idea of glyphs in general. Her PDF file explains what the various colors represent (such as orange feet would mean a boy created the penguin).

I wanted to do more and I thought this would work well as a research project as a group activity over several classes. The big question was: How?

The Big Six
I did some research on teaching basic skills and came up with several Big Six resources. I found that for younger students they call it the Super Three. One of the most obvious points is to come up with a focused question to ask the students. I decided something simple would be to ask: How is a penguin different and similar to our state bird. We've been picking at the question a little every week.

First Focus: The Eastern Goldfinch
Our state bird is the Eastern Goldfinch. I found a nice printable sheet on the American Goldfinch on the Little Explorer's website. Before giving the student's the sheet, I asked some questions using the Promethean Activotes.

Without prior discussion: 1 child clicked A) Emperor Penguin, 6 children clicked B) Eastern Goldfinch, and 3 children clicked E) American Robin.

Two children chose B) Hair and eight children chose F) Tails.
















Three children chose A) Seeds and seven children chose B) Nectar. We had an interesting discussion about what type of birds eat nectar and what type of beak shape they require.
















One student chose A) in pine trees, two students chose B) in weedy grasslands, 1 child chose C) in a building, 4 students chose D) at the edge of a pond, and one student clicked E by mistake.
















This question also prompted some interesting size discussions as one child chose A) four inches, one child chose B) twelve inches, 2 children chose C) four feet, and six children selected D) one-half inch.

Drawing in Kid Pix
Armed with these images and the discussion, I gave the students a printout from Enchanted Learning. It has a black and white outline of the American Goldfinch. I asked the students to do their best job to sketch the bird in Kid Pix. I projected some photographs on the screen from Flickr so the students could try to match the bird's coloring. The student's images are really turning out quite well.

Next Steps
In an upcoming post, I will talk about how we practiced reading for information while integrating the Activotes. We will also be using the Activotes to look at scanned images from a book about penguins and read to find information.

These are some good first steps to leading my students to find information in print in the third grade. Your thoughts and insights are welcome to help me extend the lesson.

Activboard Adjectives

A couple of weeks ago, I went to Kean University’s Going Global conference. One of the new things I learned was an interesting method to use an Activboard. I stopped by for a session offered by the Promethean company. I picked up a tip from one of the presenter’s named Rob. While it is specifically useful for the Activstudio software, the idea could be adapted using Word and the highlighter option.

I learned how to use the Activstudio software by taking their online tutorial. This tutorial was very good as far as learning how to operate the software. The piece I am missing is seeing how outstanding teachers use the board and software with their students.

Activstudio, Text, and the Paint Bucket
I learned that when I am using Activstudio, I could prepare a block of text on a page. Once the text is on the page, the paint bucket will color a full word when it is clicked. Rob gave me an example of having students find all the nouns (or other parts of grammar) within the text block.

Activstudio and Monster Project Preparation
I decided to give this method a try with my second grade students. I wanted to introduce the Monster Project that I will be working on with Anna Baralt and other teachers. Since this is the second time I will be drawing monsters collaboratively, I have work online to show the students.

I began the project by reading the book Many Luscious Lollipops to the students to get them focused on adjectives. After reading the book, I brought my wiki up on the projector with last year’s projects. Last year, I completed the project with second and third grade students. Many of my current second grade students have brothers, sisters, or friends the grade ahead. They enjoyed looking at the original drawings and the redrawn images. Next I found a description written by one of the student’s sisters.

1. My monster has a round, blue body that's outlined in gray.
2. It has six eyes. There are two black, two pink, orange, and blue with pink glasses.
3. It has a pig-snout nose, a small yellow smile, and orange wings on its bottom.
4. It has a black crown.
5. It is plump and short.
6. There are crazy ears (and stubby hair) coming out of its blue ears.
7. It has no arms, but stubby blue, short legs.
8. It lives in a pink area.
9. There is an angry sun with yellow eyes and mouth.

We sat in a circle around the Activboard. Each student took turns looking for adjectives and using the paint bucket to choose a color and click on the word. Each student had at least three turns since the description had so many adjectives. I stayed at the computer behind the projector. As each word was clicked, I asked the students if they thought it was or was not an adjective and why. If the word was not an adjective, I clicked Edit – Undo to reset the word to black. This is the end result.
One of the second graders told me that this is a great way to learn grammar and that their teacher should learn to use the board, too.

Extensions to the Lesson
So far, we have followed the first lesson with a second lesson using Kidspiration. We are currently using version 2. The Science category has an Explore with Senses template. The students learned to use Kidspiration for the first time. I taught them the basics of selecting a category – Food and Health. They learned to use the blue arrows to move between the Foods, Fruits and Veggies, and Treats categories.

Once they dragged their favorite food to the center of the chart, they attempted to type five descriptive words for each of the five senses.

When we return from vacation, we will look at the student's work and try to find out which words are adjectives that can be used to describe the student's favorite food. I hadn't completed these preparatory activities first last year, we dove right into drawing monsters and writing descriptions. I know they will be prepared for better descriptive sentences this year.