Sunday, September 14, 2008

Week 4....

We are embarking on week 4. I believe that my Kinder kids are slowly getting the hang of using the SmartBoard. They are definitely excited about being able to use it (and anything else involving a laptop and projector), so they are showing some great restraint when only a couple of them can practice at a time. I have been developing a few games for them so they can figure out how to trace their ABC's and be able to move letters around so they can match them. Once they all get a chance to use the Smartboard, I hope to really be able to incorporate it all day (especially math). The only thing that sort of bugs me out is that now that we are about to start rotating our students for our literacy block, I will be starting all over with the new students. I am hoping to be able to pair up my students with the new students so they can help each other out.

We will also be starting pen-pals with a class in China and a class in Vail. So with the class in Vail, I'm hoping to be able to do a webcast lesson with them. It's a matter of helping that teacher find a webcam for her class. That should be interesting. Either way, I think we will be doing emails and sending short video messages to each class... still trying to figure out how to fit it all in.

I can't believe we are starting our fourth week of school!

6 comments:

Joseph Miller said...

Dorothy,

Procedures are a huge part of the kindergarten experience and good ones always payoff for other teachers down the road. Think how your procedures with technology, albeit slow at times, will payoff for other teachers down the road. That is really cool.

Drop me an email too. If your colleague in Vail has a computer that is reasonably new I can probably donate a webcam. I think I may have a couple around the house.

Joe

Todd said...

Nice! How did you find your penpals? I'd love to be able to do something similar with my kids.

Jim Hollis said...

If you need some good sites for your students, don't hesitate to ask! Also, don't be afraid to let your students orient the SMART Board for you. They'll love it. A quick tip that I just learned is that you can touch and drag a pen to the center of your orientation point instead of trying to touch the center point. This will help with the accuracy.

Sharing is Caring!

Jim
Teachers Love SMART Boards

DLo said...

Thanks for all of your help! ;) I will check with my friend in Vail. And my kindergartners are definitely taking command of the orienting. :) They love it!

Emily Taylor said...

I've used a SMART Board with Kindergarteners before and was surprised with how fast they catch on to it. I bet the experienced ones will love showing the other students what to do and being in the role of teacher themselves!
How did you find your pen pals?

Dave Tarwater said...

Dorothy,

Great work! Please post later about how the pairing of experienced SB users with new users goes.