ACTIVBOARD

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SUGGESTIONS POUR LES ENSEIGNANTS AVEC L'ACTIVBOARD

Général

·         Learn how to use the software

·         Create interactive lessons, not just Presentations

·         Take advantage of the resources out there

·         Print out your flipcharts

·         Prepare well, but don’t over‑prepare

 Participation des élèves

·         Mix up the interaction

·         Tailor exercises specifically for student participation

Adding pages that allow for student responses gives theman opportunity to share responsibility and ownership of the lesson. Create the activities so that you keep the individual interaction short enough so each student can have an opportunity, and the others keep paying attention!

·         Let your students make flipcharts

·         Let your students use the Activpen

I find the children love to be in control of the pen and theyare delighted to see their writing on the board. Even thosethat object to writing with a pencil will give the pen a go, andif the board ‘recognises’ their writing and converts it to type they are very proud of themselves. It is a great motivator.

·         Use your Activboard for group work

Plan for your Activboard to be used by small groups of children independently during group activity parts of lessons.

  

OUTILS DE BASE ET TECHNIQUES

·         Make the most of even the simplest tools

As a geometry teacher, I do not think that my Pen tool is ever down. It is constantly useful to me. I make everything with it from basic shapes to different point to point shapes. It gives me the freedom to add whatever to my flipcharts. I would not know what I would do with out it.

·         Make the most of techniques such as magic writing…

Magic writing is a great way to demonstrate interactivity. Use the same colour pen as the background and ask the children to watch very carefully. Write a number on the board and ask ‘what number did I write?’. Then reveal the number by changing the background colour.

·         …and rub and reveal

Rub and reveal is very effective, as teachers hide the key vocabulary words and reveal them as they explain the definitions/significance of the term. This way students can guess the word before it is revealed.

 

PRÉPARATION DE COURS

·         Colour code your pages

Use set page colours for certain tasks. My students now know that a blue screen with yellow writing means homework. The diaries are open and I never even need to say anything!

·         Make the most of links

Create links between pages. Don’t go through them following the arrow on the side. This way students can dictate the section they want to look at, giving them more ownership of the lessons.

I include links in almost every flipchart I create! Sounds, video clips, music, and websites are easily incorporated into lessons by using links. I also use ‘internal links’ when I create more student-centered lessons. Students are able to check the accuracy of their work by linking to another flipchart page containing the correct answers. This trick is ideal in a classrooms in which centers or stations are used. Also, student-centered learning can be achieved by creating a non-linear flipchart using links. Now the students can truly drive the direction of the learning!

I make a flipchart at the beginning of a half term with the curriculum areas hyperlinked to pages that expand on what we’ll be doing over the forthcoming weeks. Kids come out and explore.

·         Use one folder of resources for one topic

If you are going to use a range of different images, web links, docs etc, and don’t want to necessarily have these all on pages ‘done’, these could all be saved in one folder in your Resource Library and then accessed very efficiently.

 

GESTION DE LA CLASSE

·         Use the Activboard to help organise students into groups

·         Use the Activboard from the beginning of the school year

·         Use the software as a scaffolding Tool

·         Use the Clock tool for classroom Management

·         Use the Clock tool to create an activity circus

OUTIL HORLOGE

·         Use the Clock tool to help fast workers and slow workers

Set a task then start the count down clock. Challenge fast workers to justify their answer and think about their first (impulsive) answer in more depth. Slower workers are ‘protected’ by the clock, which gives them sufficient time to complete the task rather than giving up when they see some hands shoot up immediately after the teacher has given the task. This fosters a more inclusive environment in the classroom. Once the time is up, all students can contribute to the discussion.

·         Use the Clock tool’s ability to include sound

It can be useful to get the clock to play a sound when it reaches zero, such as the theme tune for Countdown or Mission Impossible. 

·         One idea for using the Clock tool and tickertapes at the start of a lesson

One teacher in Connecticut who is new to the Activclassroom uses the count down clock and tickertape together to assign a warm up activity for the 7th grade math class. The problems are posted on the Activboard with directions across the top of the screen as a tickertape. The clock counts down to mark the end of the warm up time. It is a great way to have students come in and engage in the lesson.

 

IMAGES

·         Use images to model real-world Situations

·         Take photos of your students’ work

·         Associate images with rules

 

ENREGISTRER L'ÉCRAN

·         The screen recorder is ideal for modelling

Use the screen recorder to record how to solve a maths problem. Show the video again as needed - you could do the same to model letter formation. 

·         Use the screen recorder for simple explanations

Use the screen recorder as an additional adult, to explain an exercise or a topic on screen; whilst you are dealing with individual queries in the class.

 

ENREGISTREUR DE SONS

·         The sound recorder encourages children to speak

Children can use the sound recorder to add narration to stories presented on the whiteboard.

When planning to use the Activboard for group activities, use the sound recorder for those children who find writing very difficult, allowing them to get their ideas down!

·         Use the sound recorder to play many voices

When teaching foreign languages, teachers can record sounds as they should be pronounced, to help students perform listening exercises. The sound recorder gives language teachers the opportunity to play a range of voices in their lessons.

·         Use the sound recorder for listening skills

Another idea for the sound recorder is to record the question. This is great for listening skills as well as for students who are learning another language. The question can be listened to (versus read) and the students can vote on the answer.

  

TECHNIQUES POUR LES LEÇONS 

·         Encourage your students to create connections between events

Show pictures of key events then get students to draw lines and explain how they think the events are linked. When you’ve got a few you can ask the whole group to vote which they think are the most important links.

·         Choose when your students discover answers

‘Hide’ stuff by leaving it either just, or wholly, out of view off the sides/top/bottom of the flipchart. Then drag it in or change the page scale to reveal all the hidden stuff.

·         Put a series of events in the correct order

Put up a series of events in the wrong order and get students to put them into the order that they happened. Involve the rest by letting them add a running commentary on the ordering.

·         Annotate images to encourage discussion

Show a key source like a painting or a cartoon and get students to come up and circle parts of the painting or cartoon, saying what they tell us about the source.

·         Use the Lock feature to create magic effects

I love locking a shape or image onto the page and hiding a bank of words, shapes, coins etc behind it. I pull the items out as if by magic! The awe and wonder never ends with this one!

To do this, all you need is a before and after picture of the same thing.

Make sure the after picture is over the before image. Then you double-click the after image, which pulls up the Object Edit toolbar. In version 3 of the software, it is really

easy because the translucency slider is on the object edit box. Just move that slider, and you will be just like Marty McFly, going back in time! This is great for showing global warming, before/after history pictures, maps, etc.

In some activities, allow for a more spontaneous building of a page. These activities can often have an additional quality which is difficult to quantify. If students help to build the page, it also gives them more ownership of their lessons.

Having a folder of images which confine students to a set of resources is a good way of focusing their attention. For example, building a story with a set ‘choice’ will help some children to be more effective in creating their characters/ setting etc.

All my classes have enjoyed ‘guessing’ what the learning objectives are as they are gradually revealed by one of the children. I always have the learning objectives typed (sothey’re on the middle layer) and initially I covered them over with thick pen (top layer) that could be gradually rubbed out. I have also used shapes which I put onto the top layer (Design Mode - right-click on shape) and then I started using pictures from the Resource Library and then from the internet. That way, the objectives could be hidden under something to do with the lesson, thereby acting as another clue!I always expected the children to get bored of this, but it’s not happened yet!

 

IDÉES POUR TRAVAIL EN GROUPE

In maths I often plan for children to use the whiteboard to reinforce an objective/activity I may have been teaching via a prepared flipchart. I do this by allowing them to teach each other using the methods and tools that I have used during my lesson input. It works particularly well in maths with the children using resources from the library such as money, blocks and shapes. The children add their pages to my flipchart and their work is often shared during plenary. The whiteboard is also often a popular drawing ‘media’ if children are drawing pictures etc. and given a choice of tools to use. They love the huge scale of drawing on the board.

As a treat, I will often let a group of children design a game of snakes and ladders using the resources. We then play ‘their’ game as a whole class activity.

 

NOTES DE PAGES

Always put in page notes when making or adapting a flipchart - you may know what you are doing now but may not remember this time next year!

Don’t forget, you can have some text in your page notes, open it, select the part you want, and there is a button that will paste your selection on the flipchart page.

 

INTERAGIR AVEC DU TEXTE

Before the lesson, type or copy or drag a piece of text onto a flipchart. Students can interact with the text by finding rhyming words, words with a certain sound, key words, nouns etc.

They can ID these words by:

• Using the paint bucket to make them a different colour

• Using the Highlighter tool or Pen tool

• Dragging a piece of highlighter over certain words

• Circling them with the Ellipse tool

• Pointing them with the arrow

• Using the Callout tool to add notes about a text

• Underlining them with the Pen tool

• Using the deconstruct text feature to drag individual words out of the text.

To drag more than one word onto the page (a phrase,sentence or definition) go into Text Edit. Select the words you want (they will appear highlighted). Lift the pen off the board, then touch the highlighted group again and drag it out of the text box onto the flipchart page. I think this is called ‘extracting’ text. Sounds painful!

Deconstruct the key words from a paragraph or article. Use the Fill tool to colour those words in the paragraph with the background colour (this ‘hides’ them, creating a cloze exercise). Shuffle the key words. Students drag the words to the correct place in the text.

LATER

Have just the key words on the page. Students need to write sentences including those words in ways that show they understand the meaning. The original text can be available if they need to check that they are on the right track. A good way to model that old favourite ‘rewrite this in your own words’.

  

AUTRES IDÉES

Since using Activprimary I very rarely make worksheets etc in anything other than Activprimary. It is great as your flipchart and resources look the same.

I use dice if I have two or more students who offer an answer. I quickly ask them to pick a number and roll the dice. The closest wins. I currently have my Activotes numbered, and if I want to randomly call on students, I just roll the dice or say dice times two, so I can get up to 24. It helps me from calling on the same students.

I prepare large words on a flipchart page and then use the Reveal tool to reveal the word from left to right at varying speeds to hear them blending the phonemes. They love it when I drag it very slowly on certain phonemes!

For early years children - let them practise large scale hand control movements by drawing letters and shapes on the board. 

Backgrounds are great for creating atmosphere.

I too believe backgrounds can enhance a flipchart. I love the subliminal message backgrounds can send. I teach World History to 7th graders and use my backgrounds to introduce more information.

The Page Reset button is the teacher’s life-saver. As long as you have saved the flipchart at the appropriate moment, you can always click on the Page Reset button to restart an exercise or to have another go at explaining something.

These are great to have a message or prompt on screen during a lesson. They float over all applications, and you can have a number of them open at once. Colour-code them for greater impact. Stack them in order with the most recent one on top. Turn a Note into a Pointer so its text is hidden, then reveal the message again later. ‘Shuffle’ Pointers then pick at random.

Some Ideas: Lesson objectives, assessment criteria (rubric),safety information, activity circus instructions, key words, vocabulary, warnings, reminders, group members, chemical formulae, equipment list, clean-up instructions, name of visitor, inspirational message, design brief, recipe.

I switch the handwriting recognition on when recording suggestions and answers from the class during a whole group exercise. It makes them more legible and allows me to move them around, rearrange them on the board etc, much more easily and quickly than leaving them as annotations.

I have found an easy way to keep track of whether students have turned in their assignments or not. I made several pre-made flipcharts. Each flipchart has all of my students’ images on them. For each assignment in the day I pull up a new flipchart and type a heading on it to match the assignment. When the students complete the assignment they go to the Activboard and click on their picture. The word ‘done’ appears across the front of their picture. At the end of the day, I print a copy of the flipchart and can see exactly who still needs to complete assignments. This has made my students more responsible for their work and helps them to take ownership of it.

I have found that when teaching specific topics, there are certain objects and annotations which I use frequently in class. These items usually wind up on the shortcut side of the toolbar.

At the end of a topic I create a flipchart containing items used frequently with that topic, by simply dragging them off the shortcut bar to a flipchart page. I then save the ‘shortcuts’ flipchart under that topic in ‘My Resources’. The next time I teach that topic, all I’ll have to do is open that flipchart and drag the commonly-used objects and annotations to the right side of the toolbar and I’ll be set to go.

  

TICKERTAPE

Use tickertapes to share the learning objectives or to share messages with parents in the morning when dropping the children off. The parents in my class often look at the board for messages now.

Use tickertapes when sharing the success criteria/WILF for a lesson - a good reminder for those who were asleep when you shared it the first time!

My personal favourites though are the messages to parents reminding them that their children do need their reading folders and PE kits in school everyday.

Use tickertapes to display sequences of numbers. Children find the next number in the sequence - such as what is the next prime number - and can add it to the tickertape.

A teacher friend of mine told me she used the tickertape for all the ‘hard’ spellings involved in the activity of the day. She had found that pupils continuously asked her ‘how do you spell .?’. This was disrupting pace and also concentration of others. Once the spellings were scrolling across the screen the problem was solved. 

Use tickertapes for this week’s spellings that have been set to be learnt for homework.

I use tickertapes for the key words I want students to know by the end of the lesson.

How about a ‘Happy Birthday’ banner running first thing in the morning for any child who has a birthday on that day?

We have also used tickertapes recently to highlight any changes that have occurred in the tadpole tank

  

SPOTLIGHT

My favourite game using the Spotlight tool is guess the shape or number. Put a selection of different coloured shapes or numbers on the flipchart page, then, using the Spotlight tool, start looking for a shape or number. Look at a small part of it. What could it be? Why do you think that? What else should we see if it is?

In version 3 you can now right-click on the Spotlight tool and it will take a snapshot.

I think this would be good in English or art lessons with a photo or picture behind the spotlight. You could illustrate how the picture tells a story by capturing pieces of it, then you could arrange the snapshots you have taken in storyboard fashion on the next page.

I had a big picture of a glacial landscape in Activstudio 3. Using the spotlight, I then snapped pictures of things such as terminal moraine, hanging valley, cirque, crevasse, etc. These appeared as a stack of clips over the original image.

This is also a quick way of making a quasi-jumbled up picture or jigsaw. Just take snapshots using the spotlight (a bit quicker than the Camera tool) and then delete the original. Move around the stack of snapshots you have made – an instant puzzle!

I’ve used it to focus children’s attention on a small detail or part of a picture displayed on the interactive whiteboard. 

One idea I liked was a teacher who got their students to describe what they saw on the interactive whiteboard as they slowly moved and enlarged a spotlight over a huge image. In the image, one person looking at something became a crowd looking at something, as the spotlight was enlarged. The ‘something’ turned out to be a house. Students had to guess why the crowd was gathering and looking at the house.

As the image was fully revealed, it turned out that the crowd was looking at a house falling off the edge of a cliff. I really enjoyed this idea of using the spotlight to help students build up a narrative.

You could use the square solid spotlights together with grids in maths lessons to explain area by enlarging and reducing the spotlight to cover specific numbers of squares on thegrid.

When you start a topic, or even if you’ve just put a letter on the board that you’re learning to sound, put the spotlight on and ask the children to direct it. What can they tell you about what is behind?

I don’t know about others but I sometimes find teaching recognition of key words quite boring. A good way to make it ‘slightly’ more exciting is to have a selection of words on a prepared flipchart page and then drag the Spotlight tool around revealing one word at a time. The children call out when they see a word - good with the Bond theme tune too!

 

"WELCOME TO THE WORLD"

(Use the Page Scale option to reduce the size of your flipchart and make the world area visible.)

This area has all sorts of possibilities, storing extra images, extra vocabulary, preprepared anything really. Not only does this mean you have all that you need on one page, but it means that you can also limit students to options too. I know one primary school where they use this facility for children to create stories and the teacher limits their choice of character by only having a few available in the world area.

Alternatively, if you don’t want to reduce the page scale, you can have words/pictures just off the edge of the page, so you can just see them peeping in. Easily pulled in, onto the page. Adding an arrow and grouping this with the object is another way of making them available. 

I only found out about the world area relatively recently and it is such an incredible concept. I often group items with a picture of a hand with a pointing finger and just have the fingertip showing on the edge of the page.

 

I recently saw how a teacher had grouped an answer to a question to a thumbnail of a website. How cool is that? This means that you only go to the relevant website when needed.

The world area is useful when using one page for differentiated group activities. For example, if your class is looking at a poem but each of the reading groups is doing a different task. Have the group name visible so when it is their turn the children can ‘pull’ on their activity.

  

ACTIVOTES ET ACTIVEXPRESSIONS 

A great way to keep students on task is to keep the Activotes out all the time and ask students to agree or disagree with what an individual has contributed to the discussion, or lesson.

I’ll set a class a question without defining the correct answer. They vote and we look at the percentage for each option. They then have to discuss the possible answers and we vote again. The aim is to get 90% of the class to agree on a particular answer before I set the correct response. I like this because it encourages discussions - pupils have to persuade each other that their answer is correct. I’m still waiting for a ‘12 angry men’ scenario where one pupil persuades the rest of the class to change their minds!

I never define the answers as I feel that it is great to talk about the possibilities.

My Algebra 1 and 2 students, as they move through the curriculum, start to see different ways to solve different problems. Some, also, have issues deciding which method to use. For example, with a system of linear equation, you have three ways to solve as an algebra 1 student: graphing, substitution, and elimination. I present these options along with an ‘I am not sure’. Once they have chosen and we see the class vote, I stick it to them to ‘round table’ their decision. Then we vote again and see the new results. At this point, I start asking the students what made them change. It is a great way to guide them to decide the best way to reach solutions. I also do this with solving quadratics as well.