Try these two 
games on the SMART Board to have your students practice their skills with addition combinations. The first one is Connectsums. The object is to find as many combinations of numbers, dice, or coins that equal a target sum, all while trying to beat the timer or using a countdown. One additional constraint is that the numbers have to be next to each other. I found this game is an excellent way for students to practice their number combin
ations with a variety of options.
Another way for them to practice is with the game Sumstacker. This game asks you to drag and drop number combinations until you have the correct sum in each column. You can also choose numbers, dice or coins as well. This game is also available as an iPhone/iTouch app.
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Who has time in the school day to teach handwriting? It seems that there is an ever increasing demand to pack more curriculum content in the school day. And it also seems that handwriting continually moves down to the bottom of the list. Here’s one tool that may help save some time when teaching handwriting. The Writing Repeater is perfect for the SMART Board and allows handwriting to become interactive. Once you demonstrate how to make a letter, you can quickly save the letter, and click play to show the exact letter formation over and over again. Instead of writing the letter a dozen times until students see the correct formation, just have them click the play button. When they are ready, move on to the next letter and repeat. But all the letters can be saved so that students have access to each one if needed.
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Check out the daily weather and date chart from ictgames.com . It is perfect for the SMART Board. Just touch the red buttons to choose the weather and date. You can also enter a student’s name by clicking “special person”. If you want to save the page, just capture the screen and import it into your SMART notebook file. Thank you to Mrs. Coggin at SMARTboardgoodies.com for the link!
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Thanks to one of my favorite sites,Teachers Love SMART Boards, you have access to a host of Halloween goodies all in one place. There is a Halloween Resource page that lists Halloween clip art, games, puzzles, informational activities, create your own activities, Notebook resources and sound files. It is filled with lots activities that are ready to use. Be sure to check it out. http://www.teacherslovesmartboards.com/smartboards-and-halloween-resources.html
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A new way to communicate….
Wall wisher is a free, online notice board maker. It’s ideal for making announcements, posting notes and responding to questions. Wall wisher is an online bulletin board that can be collaborative and interactive. All you have to do is follow this link http://www.wallwisher.com/ to post a question, make an announcement, take notes or anything else that comes to mind. Your students can comment, respond and post. They can even include images or videos. Imagine reading a book and asking the students to post an answer to a question about the story online. Not only do they write for an audience but they can also see each others responses.
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I am not sure where the name Mrs. Pancake comes from, but I do know that this website is full of resources for teachers. The site contains “doodads” which are down-loadable, printable educational resources for parents, teachers and children. It is perfect for the beginning of the school year when you might be thinking about how to fill up that bulletin board or replacing some outdated posters or just making your classroom look a little better. The site is arranged in categories such as literacy, numeracy, classroom helpers etc. Some doodad examples are: colorful alphabets, number lines, borders, numbers, days of the week, states of matter, faces of dice, clocks, seasons and one of my favorites…question words. You can search by category or by tags and if you scroll all the way to the bottom of the page, Mrs. Pancake is also looking for new ideas! http://mrspancake.com/index.php
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Thanks to Teachers Love Smart Boards for the website thisissand.com . It’s the 21st century way to create sand art. Just tap on the SMART Board for a never ending stream of sand. Press the C key to change color, use the arrow keys to move around the board and create your masterpiece! Seems to me, this could be a great way to spend a rainy indoor recess.
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If you are looking to create a game for your class but you don’t know how to get started, look no further. This site contains lots of game templates that can be customized to fit your content area. They all use PowerPoint so it is something you can also use on the SMART Board. Games can be a great way to review content, to make curriculum exciting and to engage students. http://jc-schools.net/tutorials/PPT-games/
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Earth Day is coming up and what better way to teach the kids about conserving than to use the SMART Board instead of paper and pencil tasks. These 3 lessons are full of interactive activities that will be lots of fun while also reinforcing those concepts that Earth Day is all about. Rainforest has beautiful illustrations along with rich content to guide the students through the layers of the rainforest while they learn about the plants and animals that live there. Rainforest by Liz Koehler
The Glyph Poster allows students to use the notebook software to create an Earth Day poster while using pictorial forms of data collection. Perfect for integrating math skills with social studies content. glyph-poster by Denise Sozda
Celebrate Earth Day is a comprehensive introduction to the holiday that is perfect for kindergartners and first graders. celebrate-earth-day by Christine Wolzl
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Words allow us to have language. Language allows us to communicate. This website lets us know how important it is for us to use words. You must take a look at this site. It will astound you with it’s visual appeal. You can adopt words, sign up to receive a word of the day or simply explore the meaning of new words. How about asking your students to adopt a new word each week or assign an adoption as a homework assignment. There are many ways this site can be used to help extend a student’s vocabulary. Take a look at Save the Words!
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