Sunday, September 26, 2010

Smartboard Center Up and Running......kinda. :)

So the past few weeks have been some intense teaching and reteaching and reteaching, did I mention, reteaching of my literacy centers. I really do enjoy setting up and watching my students be active and independent in centers. It also means that I get quality time in small reading groups! I really wanted the Smartboard to be a consistent center this year. It was a scary task as the enthusiasm of the students can quickly turn into frustration and chaos! With the patient help of my student teacher, we were able to fail and succeed 3 or 4 or 10 times in setting up this center but I think we've finally got it! Using a list of names for each center team (this minimizes the fighting over whose turn it is) and a very kid-friendly word building lesson (provided by an amazing teacher who posted her Smartboard lessons on the Resource page), the students can now independently learn their spelling words in a MUCH more engaging and fun way than paper and pencil! They love it and so do I!
I am now in search of a 2nd Smartboard activity to use in this center. I would like to design a lesson for sight words. However, the current ones I have found (while amazing) are not as effective in actually teaching the words because the kids aren't hearing the word if they don't know it. So my next task is figuring out how to put some audio on the sight words! To be continued........
Hope everyone is enjoying their Smartboard experiences and some fresh fall air!
Jenny

1 comment:

Kelly Berry said...

I can't wait to stop by and see what your kids are working on during literacy centers! Although scary and quite daunting you have succeeded and now your kids will succeed because of your dedication to making the SmartBoard center work for your class.