Sunday, December 7, 2008

Crescent Elementary's Smartboards

A big shout out to Crescent Elementary Principal Debbie Shumard and teachers Casey Draper, Angie Drope, and Amanda Oettli for showing me how they are integrating their SmartBoards into their daily curriculum.

SmartBoards? What are they and why do they seem to be popping up everywhere? And more importantly, how are teachers integrating them into their curriculum?

Recently I met with Principal Debbie Shumard at Crescent Elementary to chat about the SmartBoards that have been installed into 15 classrooms at her school. We visited three classrooms to see teachers and students in action. It was really a lot of fun!

First, Mrs. Drope’s 3rd grade classroom. Her class was doing a synonym sort and match. Students were excited to go up to the board, find synonyms, and drag them to the bottom of the page. They discussed why they thought the words were synonyms. The students pretty much ignored the visitors because they wanted to see what was happening up at the board. Mrs. Drope said she really liked using the SmartBoard because her students were so excited about participating during lessons.



Next, Miss Draper’s 6th grade classroom. Her class was learning how to convert mixed numbers into improper fractions. Miss Draper had downloaded the lesson (which was matched to state standards) from the SMART Notebook lesson activities. The lesson included several interactive problems. We watched as a mixed number slowly morphed into an improper fraction.



Students were anxious to go to the board to work on problems. The entire class was fully engaged in the lesson whether they were up at the board or at their seat. Students said they like the interactivity, the size of the text, the colors, and the way the numbers moves around on the screen.

Last, Mrs. Oettli’s 3rd grade classroom. The students used the board to explain multiplication arrays, for example 2 x 3 or 4 x 6. They began by drawing an array on a 3x5 card (no pun intended). Then they created their array on the board with colored dots. All students anxiously watched as one person created their array on the board. They explained to me how to generate another colored dot by clicking on the ‘master’ dot. It was fun watching how excited the students were each time somebody went up to the board.



Some background: Principal Shumard initially introduced the idea of getting SmartBoards to the faculty last year. She asked the faculty to do a little online research about SmartBoard use. At a later faculty meeting she told her staff about classrooms she had visited where the boards were being effectively integrated into the curriculum.

She proposed the idea of purchasing the boards. Five teams indicated that they would all be interested in using them. Currently they have 3 in Kindergarten, 1 in 2nd grade, 4 in 3rd grade, 1 in 4th grade, 3 in 5th grade, and 3 in 6th grade.

The boards had been installed less than a month when I visited Crescent Elementary. I was impressed by how quickly and seamlessly the teachers have integrated SmartBoards and Notebook lessons into all aspects of their daily teaching. What a fun experience! Thanks again for a fun and enlightening experience.

How I embedded the slide shows into a blog post:
1-Download images into iPhoto.
2-Export selected images right from iPhoto into your Picasa account.
3-In Picasa, click on "Link to this Album" then click on "Embed Slideshow".
4-Picasa generates code.
5-Copy code.
6-Return to your blog post. Click 'HTML'.
7-Paste code in desired spot.
8-Preview post.
9-When satisfied with your work, Publish Post.

For a more complete explanation including screen shots, visit the Engaged Classroom blog at: http://jsdengaged.blogspot.com/

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Mrs. McShinsky’s Class & The Clickers

On a recent visit to Alta View Elementary and Mrs. McShinsky’s 6th grade class, her students shared their thoughts with me about their new set of Senteo clickers. (class response systems)

(can you find 5 things that were not in the picture when it was taken?
If not, you may want to look at www.fotoflexer.com)


After a really fun demonstration of how they use the clickers during Math, I asked the students what they liked or disliked the most about the clickers.
Here is a sample of their replies:

What we like:

They’re a lot of fun
  • They simplify work.
  • Makes doing math and reading faster.
  • Clickers help save paper, go green.
  • Saves time, do not need to pass out papers.
  • Do not need write all of our answers down.
  • Students see their scores immediately.
  • The teacher can print off a report telling what kids got right, so it saved correcting time and gives us more time with our teacher.
  • Takes off the pressure. When the teacher looks at the results, she can see what we did wrong and figure out a way to help us.

(Do you know why this picture is so puzzling?
If not, you may want to look at www.picnik.com)

What we do not like:

We have to share them with other classes.

Mrs. McShinsky finds ready-made lessons and tests online that are aligned to the Utah core curriculum. She spends less time spent on creating lessons, writing quizzes, and grading paper, and more time on interacting with students.

And best of all,students want to improve their scores. They willingly ask for help on problems they missed so that they can score higher on a redo test. Kudos to Mrs. McShinsky and her class for diving right in there with the clickers and finding wonderful ways to use them.

Check out Mrs. McShinsky’s blog on the right hand side of this page. You will find more great ideas from her there.


A math joke for your class:
Five out of four people are bad with fractions.