Water Cycle SmartBoard Lesson-With United Streaming Embedded Videos

To introduce my sixth graders to the water cycle, review prior knowledge, and launch our water unit, my content team-mate and I modified a pretty nifty smart board lesson we found on smart exchange. 

I know a lot of my sixth graders have been taught the water cycle before, but after running a response clicker pre-assessment, I discovered a wide disparity in their knowledge levels regarding the steps of the water cycle and their ability to describe gain/loss of energy at each step.  With that in mind, my teammate and I began designing a lesson that would work well for both first time instruction and review.  We both realized that engagement would be the key to making this work for the students that had already mastered the content. 

The water cycle review lesson we found on Smart Exchange seemed to be just the vehicle we were looking for.  We tailored the lesson for our specific use, but the main structure as built really worked well for us.

Initial Sort

The lesson began with an old fashioned sorting activity where students had a blank unlabeled water cycle printout at their table and an envelope with cut apart labels for each step.  We had a notebook page version of the same thing up on the smart-board.

As they worked in partner groups to place the labels on the handout,  I walked around the classroom and handed the smart slate to various groups and asked them to drag terms to the appropriate location on the smart board.

When the class was completely finished, they compared their work with the completed smart board page until the both eventually looked like this (completed sort):

Completed Sort

The next step in the lesson was to have the students setup Cornell notes in their science journals.  Each step of the the water cycle was listed on the left side of their notes, with the right side reserved for descriptions and details.

name chooser

Now the great thing about the water cycle is that is does not matter where we start, so I used a random name chooser (random word chooser object) to select a student to come up to the board and click on the step of the water cycle they wanted to start with.

precipitation

In the notebook file, each of the labels links to a separate page with more information about that specific water cycle process.  For example, lets say that Karen's name came up on the random name chooser.  She would go to the smart-board, click on  her choice of water cycle process "precipitation", and this is the page that would appear:

Random students were then selected one at a time to come to the smart-board and match a picture of precipitation to its labeled name type on this specific page.

Now here is where it got really fun.  The precipitation label at the top of the page was linked to a united streaming (US) video clip on precipitation. When the precipitation label was selected,  a corresponding video clip describing this water cycle process was played on the smart-board.  Although the clip from US was fairly basic , the students were pretty amazed by how this worked



Once the clip was played, we created a short definition of precipitation including the types and using a document camera, put them into our Cornell notes.  For this particular process of the water cycle our notes now included a description of the process and specific examples.

The same steps were repeated for the rest of  the water cycle until the students had watched clips, reviewed key ideas, and taken notes for each of the key processes.

After we had walked through the entire cycle, I used a vocabulary sort object, as a formative assessment, to review everything one last time.  I had a set of envelopes ready with both terms and definitions cut apart.  The students worked in pairs and used their notes to match each term and definition.  When a partner group had completed their sort, I passed around the smart slate to have them match one of the terms to a definition on the smart board version. So essentially the sort was happening at their table and on the smart-board simultaneously.

Once everything was sorted, we checked to make sure that everyone had everything correctly matched and made any corrections.  Then for the coup de grace, the very last slide of the notebook linked to a you-tube song on the water cycle cool water cycle song (you have to watch this if you get a chance!).  While this played I did this crazy little dance and with a lot of kinesthetic motion.  The kids just died with laughter.

So, a couple of reflections on this lesson...

• The engagement was through the roof.  I figure that I was able to get well over half of the class up to the smart board at some point in the lesson.  The method of delivery worked well for both first time instruction and review.

• I liked having the smart slate for walking around the class allowing students to interact with the presentation from their seats.  I tended to use this for when students were working independently at their seats, and shift to having students come up to the large board when I wanted everyone's attention and I was directing class.

•  Using the smart slate was difficult for some of the students.  They had a hard time coordinating their motions with what was occurring on the smart-board, but got better over time.

•  The random word chooser was great in having fairness for participation.  Prior to using this, students were complaining about not being called up to use the smart-board, or were blurting out for "their turn" 

• Making sure notebook pages linked correctly was a little annoying.  I thought I had everything set and it was frustrating to find a few glitches once the lesson was underway.

• Note-taking was much easier (i.e. they were all doing it) when they knew that they would not be able to go up to the board if they were not caught up.

Thanks for taking the time to read all  of this... Any and all feedback is appreciated.

Smart Board Vocabulary Spinner

I've been using a spinner with my students during reading to help them learn and practice using the weekly vocabulary words. They uncover a word, spin the spinner and then have to use the word in a sentence or say an antonym or synonym for the word. Anyone else use a spinner during reading?

Infinite Cloner

Hi all.
Infinite Cloner came up recently in a conversation with Melissa and Michelle. It is such a fantastic feature. Basically you can right click on any object, drawing, or word and select infinite cloner. From then on, any time you click on that object, you drag away a copy of the object. You can do this as many times as you like (which you figured out with the name and all.) If you want to move or alter the object, you first need to unclick the infinite cloner.

Many of you already knew that, so this is a reminder about all the great ways this can be used. During phonics we build words using infinite cloners on letters. I was going to post a picture of my screen, but I'm having trouble with that this evening. I know other second grade teachers (Jon and Sara) that use infinite cloner on coins and base ten blocks.

How have you used infinite cloner or what ideas do you have?
Lisa

Elementary Morning Routine

Here is my Smart Notebook Morning Routine. Please share any SmartBoard slides or Promethean flip charts you've created!

Slide #1 and #2 could be used for a variety of vocabulary ideas. I currently use them on Mondays to choose our transitional word of the week. The words on the sides are supposed to be made into pull tabs. Let Dave, Doug, Dorothy, Tonia or I know if you want to know how to make them!

The Pledge of Allegiance is included as slide #3. Sometimes we are so efficient with our schedule, we get to complete the Pledge of Allegiance twice (We complete it together and then the students begin over the intercom after we're done with our morning routine)! Who says First Grade is too young to understand Civic morals???

The calendar helper completes the magnetic calendar we keep all day while the Meteorologist completes the weather for the day. Students are diligent about keeping pace and making sure both calendars match. They have quickly realized how many sunny days we've had compared to cloudy or rainy. I plan to recreate the weather calendar monthly and refer back previous months occasionally (bar graphing anyone?)!

At the end are visual/written songs we sing. They love the Days of the Week song which is sung to the tune of The Addams Family.

In the past we would also count numbers using a hundreds chart. We still work on this skills, but I've moved it to our math time. The students LOVE being the number counter and using the finger pointer to flip the squares on the interactive hundreds chart!

Please share any SmartBoard slides or Promethean flip charts you have created for your morning routines!

Elementary Smart Board Lesson on Place Value

Here's a lesson I created for math last week:

Grade Level Essential Target:
1.1c Use objects and pictures to represent whole numbers including odds and evens from 0 to 1000
1.2.c Group objects by ones, tens and hundreds according to place value (for example: given 9 ones, 5 tens and 4 hundreds the student can write the number 459; given the number 459, the student can show 4 hundreds, 5 tens and 9 ones)
ISTE NETS Standard 2. Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments (2a: design or adapt relevant learning experiences that incorporate digital tools and resources to promote student learning and creativity)

Student friendly objective: We will use objects to show numbers up to 1,000. We can use place value to help us group and count large numbers of objects.
Language Objective: We will use language that helps us work as a team. We will use writing and speaking with math words and numbers to show our answers.

Resources needed: Smart board, straws, rubber bands.

Open the lesson by reviewing counting by tens.
Begin by telling students that when we get a lot of things to count we need a good way of counting. Bring a bag of M&Ms, a deck of cards and some other items that contain many objects. Ask the students to discuss with their elbow partner something that contains a lot of objects. Give students a sentence starter: One thing that contains a lot of items is…. Put students into groups of five and dump a bag full of straws (at least 50) on the table. Tell them they will need to use complete sentences to ask questions and to help them work as a team. (“I have x straws. How many do you have?”) Ask them to work together to count the straws. Observe how the students work together and praise any examples of teamwork. After a few minutes, bring the students back together and tell them that if you have numerous objects it is easiest to count them in groups rather than one by one.
Now break out some rubber bands and start to group the straws into bundles of ten. Ask students to use polite language such as “Could you please pass me a rubber band? I need five more straws. Could we share to make a bundle?” Show the students that we will group exactly ten straws for each bundle, and then we can count by tens. Leftover straws do not get bundled. Let the students return to their groups and circulate to check with students as they proceed.

After the students have counted write the numbers for each group while counting the bundles. Review the concepts of tens and ones with students. Tell the students that if we want to count all the straws from each table group together we might even want to put together 10 bundles to form groups of 100. Use the Smart board to show place value boxes. Practice writing a variety of two and three digit numbers and call on students to identify the number of ones, tens, and hundreds. Have students use precise math terms such as, “There are x hundreds, x tens and x ones.”
Then use the blank base ten chart in the place value folder of smart board under “Mathematics”, then “Number Concepts and Operations” or search by keyword. Type in labels for the chart then from the Place Value folder use the ones, tens, and hundreds blocks to represent various numbers and have the students write the numeric value for the blocks chosen on white boards. I posted a video to show how to set the lesson up on the Smart Board: http://mrfishergloballearner.blogspot.com/2009/09/second-grade-lesson-on-teaching-place.html

Differentiation: The lesson offers tactile and visual forms of learning. Because of the ease of manipulating the smart board manipulatives the number of place values being taught and assessed can be increased or decreased to work within a variety of zones of proximal development.

An additional lesson based on counting candy can be found here.

http://peabody.vanderbilt.edu/depts/tandl/mted/faculty/Mted3250/HtmlPapers/Diane%20&%20Michael.html

Crossposted to http://MrFisherGlobalLearner@blogspot.com

Happy New School Year!

The beginning of the school year always seems to fill my mind up so much that I walk around in a haze. The haze is slowly dissipating and my mind is starting to work again! I am excited to challenge myself this year to keep using technology in my classroom. So far I have been using the Smartboard to help teach and practice math concepts and have set up reading listening centers on ipods. I also created a film with my class where each student set a goal for the year. It was a fun project which we did together on the Smartboard. It introduced my students to film-making and got them excited to be making films this year. As always I am inspired by my colleagues and other Global Learners and am looking forward to another great year!

cross posted at: http://mstaylorsthirdgradeclass.blogspot.com/

First Full Day

Well, I had all the kids all day today (just like most of you). Still haven't hooked up the SmartBoard. There is just too much else to do, right off the bat. My plan for today or tomorrow is to read First Day Jitters and use the Promethean flip chart for it that Melissa found. I have downloaded Promethean for personal use and it will be interesting to see how it works out when I use a flip chart on a SmartBoard.
Lisa

This is cross-posted on the second grade global learner blog. (We have so many second grade teachers now, we had to make a blog for swapping tech ideas that fit with our curriculum.)

End of Year Reflection

When I told my students yesterday that we would be reflecting on our experiences from the past year they collectively groaned. A few whined, "I don't want to reflect." Perhaps we "reflected" too much over the school year! But once we got into it, they couldn't stop thinking about our year together and all of the things they had experienced together. One thought led to another and to another and to another.

The last thing we did before they left for summer break was share one thing that they would never forget about third grade, something they will take with them. The two things that came up consistently for my students was going on field trips and using technology. Those experiences will stay with them and held the most meaning for them. I'm reflecting on that!

cross posted at: http://mstaylorsthirdgradeclass.blogspot.com/

Glogster Craze Hits Third Grade

My class has also started to use glogster! Thanks Liz for showing it to us at the Global Learners UNITE session. Today we used the Smart Board and Glogster to create a classroom glogster about our responsibility to share the world with other animals. Each student got to put an idea onto the glog. It was a fun and engaging way for students to collaborate on a project together and to incorporate ideas from a poster they created and a writing assignment they did independently for previous assignments. We kept it simple and just have photos and words on it.



crossposted at: http://mstaylorsthirdgradeclass.blogspot.com/

lesson plan: http://schoolweb.acsd14.k12.co.us/ectaylor/globallearnerlessonplans-IBUnitsofInquiry.htm

new and improved reading centers

This is the time of year that my reading group and myself are getting a bit bored with our reading centers routine. I'd like to use this as an opportunity to spice things up a bit. Next week we are doing lesson 27 in reading. The main selection is a story about spiders. With this in mind I have downloaded some united streaming clips about spiders to download onto my set of video iPods. At one center, students will watch the clips on their iPod and then they will do a drawing of a spider and label its' different parts. I will also do a vocabulary center using the smart board and having students match vocabulary words to their definitions. I am also thinking about how to incorporate voicethread into reading centers as well. Any ideas?

smartboard math

I just started my favorite math unit to teach all year- money. 2^nd graders need to understand and model use of coins up to $1.00. For one of my math centers I run Ms. Ibarra’s store where students identify the price for items and the coins they will need to buy them. I also run a coin behavior incentive system where the students earn (paper) coins for behavior throughout the day to put in their piggy banks. At the end of the month the students use their coins to buy real items at the store I set up the day before winter break.

I have been doing this with paper coins but I was wondering if there is a way I could incorporate technology into this process? Ideas? Maybe an Excel sheet where they enter and add their daily earned coins?

With my coin unit, I found a sweet counting song video on TeacherTube. However, when I play it half of the video is covered with a white square. I tried to download it and the file isn’t Windows Media supported so I couldn’t play it. Anyone else had this problem or know any solutions?

Thanks!!

What I'm up to

Well, it's been a while since my first post. I'm one of the ones Joe keeps targeting in his email about keeping up with blog posts once a month. During the last skype conversation, I mentioned how rough my year has been going. Between classroom management and learning a new reading curriculum, there has been no time for anything else. But I have been able to use the Smartboard several times a day, so I'm finally blogging about it.
I admit that sometimes I use the Smartboard as a glorified overhead. But, as Sara mentioned, I also use some of the activities in Notebook. Notebook 10 has a folder called Lesson Activity Toolkit 1.0. (I think it is also downloadable from the website.) In it there are some great activities and tools (go figure.) The interactivity is already set up, we, as teachers, just have to "edit" and put in our words or sentences or pictures or customize it to our content. Lots of potential. Too often, however, I think of great ideas or lessons to put together and simply don't have time to create them. I would love to have some time off just dedicated to creating Smartboard lessons that relate directly to our math and reading programs. (Maybe if the teaching thing doesn't work out...)
Collaborating with Sara has been great and I do hope we establish an online place to share actitivities and lessons we have created as well as the reading fluency exemplars and other exemplars we have digitally documented (as we discussed in the last skype conversation.)
One of the few other tools that I regularly use is Diigo. In searching for Smartboard lessons, I have collected many sites about Web 2.0 and Smartboards as well as looked at the lists of other Diigo users.

First Grade Virtual Manipulatives on the Smart Board

This evening we just had a great skype chat on Using the SmartBoard in the standards-based classroom. The focus was on what was working well and we talked about engagement, math, and literacy. The consensus was that there was a need for more training or refresher courses. Some ideas where bandied about regarding students teaching other students or creating short training sessions in peer to peer learning. I like the idea and I'm going to share some screen capture tips in one of my subsequent postings. Much of the focus was on math and so I'd like to show a short clip of some place value work we did this week using the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives at http://nlvm.usu.edu/en/nav/vLibrary.html.


Specifically we are using base blocks to represent place value. This address the Grade Level Essential Target of 1.2C: c) Uses objects to show meanings of = ,<, >, from 0 to 100. e) Uses multiple models to develop initial understanding of place value of ones and tens (base ten blocks, abacus, computer, manips). This is a great place to differentiate because while all first graders need to represent up to 100, many of my students can use blocks to show numbers in the thousands. (Please note this website is available in Spanish as well) What I like about the base blocks virtual manipulatives is that they are easy to move around, you get immediate corrective feedback from the number counter, and it is a fast way to demonstrate mastery of a difficult concept.
Here is a short video of my class doing some base block exercises. In the first two segments I am filming but for most of the class work my students film everything and do all the documenting with the digital cameras. Each week I assign a class photographer who take all the pictures and videos. They are filming the third segment. As you can see, it is a bit shaky (Note to self "Get tripod"). Mildly reminiscent of the Blair Witch Project.

Click this link to view the video.

Cross posted on Mr. Fisher's Global Learner Blog.

Struggles with the SmartBoard

This is a cross post with the high school's math blog.
After taking a math technology course this summer, one of my projects was to prepare a tech lesson extending past our comfort zone. With me, it's the SmartBoard. I planned a lesson around congruency shortcuts of triangles because I thought that the ability to manipulate the tools (ruler and protractors) as well as the triangles themselves would be an appropriate use of the capabilities of the SmartBoard. I felt a had a great lesson, with background-building vocabulary, questions with answers covered with the screen shade, sequential topics to investigate which short-cuts work, and conversation topics for each slide--all prepared on the SmartBoard notebook.

However, as I'm sure we've all experienced, the lessons that seem great in theory flop in the classroom. I struggled very hard to line up my ruler and protractor using my finger, so measuring 3 pieces of two different triangles was long and frustrating. Even sorting objects by dragging them around seemed difficult and tedious. If I got a student brave enough to attack the tools, it still left the rest of the class unengaged and bored quickly. I adapted the rest of the lesson in order to cover the main points. Any writing I did was very hard to read since my orientation was off no matter how many times I tried to readjust (and my SmartBoard was against the wall.)

The main points of the SmartBoard that I would like to exploit are the ability to work out problems and record in real time and/or save and the manipulablity. Without these features, I don't see much difference than projecting on a regular screen. I try to be very cautious about using technology effectively and not just for the sake of using technology. However, I do not feel that the ability to save is great enough to offset the difficulties in writing and reading the work. And the ability to manipulate items can be powerful... for the person doing it, but leaves the rest of the class unengaged. It would be no different than me manipulating something from my laptop or with a wireless mouse for the class to view on a regular screen.

With this, I am looking forward to the Global Leaner chat this week, which happens to be about SmartBoards. I would love feedback on how the SmartBoard is used effectively in your classes, especially with secondary students. How does it keep the whole class engages? How does it benefit students who miss class? How can the benefits over projecting on a screen be maximized? And how can all of this be done on a regular basis?

Woops.... duh

Yesterday I introduced Google Docs to my students. In my first hour class, I was projecting the Google Docs screen onto the screen in my room, walked over, and tapped the screen to switch the view. Nothing happened. Puzzled, I went to tap it again, then remembered that I wasn't using my Smart Board, I was using a regular overhead screen. Woops, no wonder it didn't work. None of the students noticed, so I got to keep full cool nerd points for block 1.

Needless to say, I switched back to the Smart Board for the rest of the day. :-)

Using the Smart Board for Phonics Instruction

As a teacher at a Colorado Reading First school with very explicit and systematic literacy instruction I often find it hard to integrate technology during my Core Literacy time. One of the nice features about the Smart Board is the ability to manipulate text and graphics. For many lessons I hand write the words to emphasize letter formation and because the speed at which I write is a good speed for first graders decoding on the fly. For this particular lesson I pre-typed the parts of the words. I wanted to emphasize common end blends. I used the Smart Board to quickly move ending “L” blends to the initial consonant. (GLET 1g: Uses word and letter recognition skills. Produces sounds to common letter combinations. ) Here I've embedded the screen cast from my blog for that lesson.

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