Smartboard Mania

I have had a blast using Smartboard so far this year. I have been adding literacy transparencies and lesson components from Storytown's Thinkcentral.com website. Each of these smartboard files is about 70 pages and has everything I need for teaching the literacy section including powerpoint vocabulary slides and spelling attachments. I have created a lesson for sightwords which acts more like a sightword center for the students. There are basic pages where students click on a color blob to hear the sight word and then must drag it to a grid with the corresponding print word. I'm having problems with immediate corrective feedback. I guess I need the district to send me to a class to learn to build flash files (hint, hint).

The other day I was behind on building the weekly sightword matching game so I put two students to work typing in the words. They did great. From now on I'm going to have my students build these weekly files.

Math has been fun with the objects available to teach place value. I've also been spending time at the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives. A must have for all who teach math: http://nlvm.usu.edu/en/nav/vlibrary.html

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.