Talking SMARTBoards & Much More!

Proudly displaying their poems! 

Today we finished our poems, complete with illustrations and, although I may be just a bit prejudice, I think they are simply the BEST!!  Each student worked extremely hard at drafting, finalizing and illustrating their poems.  It was both a very challenging and rewarding process.  Once again I was reminded of how my students will shine like the morning sun when given the right tools and opportunities to demonstrate their skills.  I am so proud of my students that we decided to have a poetry reading to showcase their work.   A special thanks to Ms. Keenan from the English Department for her help and support. Click here to view the poems– I know you won’t be disappointed.

I wanted to share another spelling site that works great with the SMARTBoard– Spin and Spell.  It mimics the concept of Wheel of Fortune and is very fun!  I especially like it due to the fact that it has audio support and incorporates pictures- how cool!  This is especially important to me as it allows students at varying levels to participate– touch pictures given a verbal cue, identify letters on the wheel given a verbal request or spell words- all depending on their individual level.  Some of the pictures may be a bit difficult to identify, but all you have to do is mouse over (touch) the picture for the audio identification. If students need extra support when spelling a word, there is even an option to show the word. Did I mention there are 5 various categories of spelling words to pick from? I LOVE it when I find a game that can meet the individual needs/objectives for each student- YEAH!!  So put on your Vanna outfit and have fun spinning the wheel!!

Had fun today continuing to write our poems–they are coming out GREAT!  As we were searching for pictures to illustrate the poems I was reminded of Redzee Search, a visual search engine.  RedZee Search displays search results as fanned Web page images. Visitors can quickly search results by simply mousing over the images and then clicking on the Web site they want to see close-up.  “We believe pictures are worth a thousand words and we’re bringing that philosophy to our search engine,” says John Stewart, president of RedZee Search. “Visuals make it so much easier to see what you like rather than read what you like.”  RedzeeSearch still uses text as the search criteria, but instead of producing the web page results in text,  they are displayed visually. Very cool!

For my students, who definietly benefit from the visual  support, this is a tool that I very much appreciate.  Using it on the SMARTBoard is also a plus for two obvious reasons- 1. the visuals are larger and 2. students can easily explore the results by interacting (moving) the image results with their finger.  So if you have not explored this search engine, you may just want to give it a visual workout! Oh yeah– and if you’re  an animal lover like me you’ll fall in love with their adorable logo.

Visuwords is an online graphical dictionary and thesaurus that I wanted to share. We used this site today, when creating the rough drafts of our poems.  My students were not able to use this tool independently, but it was helpful in assisting students to choose a variety of words to incorporate into their poems.  Students would say a word, staff would type the word and read the myriad of results, giving students the opportunity to select a word.  We would then find graphics/symbols as needed to support student work. I found myself dreaming of a graphical dictionary that supports/incorporates pictures– now that would be awesome!  If anyone knows of one PLEASE let me know!  I also like the way Visuwords uses color coding to demonstrate the parts of speech.  My students loved to watch the organizer in action on the SMARTBoard– I have to admit it did look really cool watching the words ”grow”!

We definitely got into a groove today, writing the draft versions of our poems. There was a wide range of interests, from cars and graduation to video games and football!  Tomorrow we will write our final versions and begin the process of adding illustrations.  So stay tuned– we hope to have them ready for viewing by the end of the week!

I’ve had some time over the weekend to add two new pages of student activities- complete with pictures- so feel free to check them out to see what we’ve been up to. Here are the links: “Look What We’ve Been Doing” and “Making a Dirt Cake” or you can find them filed under “Meet Our Class” under the Page section to the right. Feel free to leave comments!

I also updated my Interactive Website Page and my Special Education Resources Page with new resources.

Friday, we celebrated Ms. Ruth’s birthday- complete with a “published” newspaper article announcing the happy event! I linked the article to her picture on our morning calendar, so when her picture was touched the article appeared in all it’s glory on the SMARTBoard! Boy was she surprised!!! 

If you have a birthday to celebrate you might also want to check out a cute birthday video that can be found at Priorywoods. This site also has some other fun music videos that can be easily downloaded and incorporated into SMART Notebook lessons. 

Feel free to leave Ms. Ruth a birthday comment!

 Flowers Pretty

A poem written by the students in room 123

They like sun.

Outside on tree.

Stem.

Leaves.

Beautiful colors.

Happy.

Growing.

Spinach.

Pick flowers in grass.

Dandelions are big.

Mom likes flowers.

Valentine’s Day.

LOVE!

 

My students loved watching the talking flower “say” their poem– it was made using Fodey’s Talking Flower

I also neglected to mention another poetry site from Julia’s Rainbow Connection that I incorporated into our lesson.  This site offers 3 very nice poetic videos that my students very much enjoyed watching.

We also used a BBC website to analyse poems- English: Reading-Poetry. 

 We completed the poem by creating our own flowers, which helped to illustrate our poem. Take a look…

 

Next week we hope to have our students write individual poems about something of interest to them.  Rasheen has already indicated he wants to write about cars and Scott, he wants to write a poem about his video games. So make sure you check back next week to be dazzled with more original poems by these amazing students! 

This week we are exploring the wonderful world of poetry- reading & writing poems. As part of this process I utilized several resources that were very helpful to me and so I thought it might be helpful to others if I shared.   One of my favorite children’s poetry books is by Caroline Kennedy: “A Family of Poems: My Favorite Poems for Children”. Reading the poems in this book is a joy, not to mention that the illustrations by John J.Muth are spectacular and inspiring. Each poem was caringly selected by Mrs. Kennedy from her childhood memories. In addition to reading from her book we also viewed a CBSNews video of Mrs. Kennedy being interviewed about this book.  The great thing is that during the video she reads some of the poems, so the students could actually see her and hear her voice. 

I also used Classic Poetry Aloud , which is a poetry podcast of poems from the past. There is a link on this page to search every reading since May 2007 (organized by themes). It also gives an option to request a specific poem be added to the list.

The Favorite Poem Project is another great site that offers 50 short video documentaries showcasing individual Americans reading and speaking about poems they love. A nice feature on this site is the fact that there are some young adults and younger children videotaped, allowing my students to view students their age. Click on the video link to view the available selections.

And now for my top pick- Interactive Poetry Tools and Lesson Plans.  This outstanding resource is loaded with interactive poetry activities, many which are perfect to use with a SMARTBoard. I especially like the Magnetic Poetry Board because you can generate your own words to create poetry, allowing the students the opportunity to move the words around on the SMARTBoard and Student Riddle Interactive because it is very well organized with clear instructions and because my students love riddles!

Hope this helps with your own poetry adventures.  I will be posting our first class poem called Flowers Pretty, tomorrow.  My students did a PHENOMENOL job writing and illustrating their poem– guaranteed you’ll be impressed so make sure you check back tomorrow!!

Often when I am teaching a lesson with the SMARTBoard my students may require some extra support to complete an activity or follow a verbal request.  Initially whenever a student was encountering difficulty I found myself gravitating to the SMARTBoard to assist and perhaps, in some instances, giving more assistance than might be required.  So in comes the penlight to the rescue!  The penlight allows me to highlight specific words, pictures,  (perfect for counting activities), etc. on the SMARTBoard to give enough support for students to successfully complete a request without me being with them at the SMARTBoard. This technique helps to eliminate my temptation to give too much support–YEAH! It has definitely increased the indepedent interaction on the SMARTBoard for my students.  When reading passages on the SMARTBoard I am now regularly using the penlight to highlight the words we are reading– just another support that has been beneficial. 

Penlights are relatively inexpensive (starting at $15) and, in my opinion, well worth the investment! Just remember that the less expensive penlights may not be as powerful and may limit the distance you can be from the SMARTBoard to be seen. So as my students say “Follow the red light”!

I have watched the :60 Sec Tech SMART Board videos posted on Teacher Tube since I first started using a SMARTBoard a year ago, so I was thrilled when I came across the :60 Sec Tech site-YEAH!  Phil’s videos on specific SMARTBoard and Notebook features are fantastic – his demonstrations and explanations are not only informative and extremely useful, but also very fun!  The really good news is, Phil has started to post Notebook 10 videos– as my students would say, “SWEET”!  This is a marevelous resource for anyone using a SMARTBoard- thanks :60 Sec Tech!