Elementary Technology » Uncategorized

Teaching Addition Combinations

vanveghel — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 00:52:52 +0000

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 combinations 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.

Teaching Handwriting

vanveghel — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 14:53:49 +0000

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.

Wallwisher

vanveghel — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 01:03:25 +0000

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.

Martin Luther King’s Message-Wordle style

vanveghel — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 02:07:59 +0000

I heard about Wordle a while ago and tried it out and thought it was pretty cool. I passed it on to our writing resource teacher who also thought it had great possibilities for use in writing lessons. So, I have been waiting to find the right time and the right way to introduce Wordle to some of our teachers. Today, while searching for Martin Luther King resources, it came to me. Create a Wordle out of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech and see what it looks like. Although I have heard excerpts of the speech for the past few years, I have not listened to nor read the entire speech. So, here it is… no surprise to me at which words are the largest. I think I found a great resource for teaching about Martin Luther King and what he was all about. I think he would have been proud of his Wordle.

http://www.wordle.net

SMART Board Templates

vanveghel — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 02:31:02 +0000

For those of you who are just starting to create new lessons on your SMART Board…here’s a gift. I always advise people to search for lessons that may already be created. They may meet all your needs or may need to be tweaked slightly and then will be just what you’re looking for. Here are two notebook files for your SMART Board, ready to go. One for grades K-2 on counting change and one for grades 3-4 on multiplication practice.

Counting Change notebook file

Multiplication Wheel notebook file

And here’s the site they came from with many, many more.

http://www1.center.k12.mo.us/EDTECH/SB/templates.htm

Welcome

vanveghel — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 02:28:33 +0000

Welcome to my blog. This is a place you will find useful information for integrating technology in any elementary classroom. I will update you on current websites, web 2.0 tools, best practices and lesson plans. Please be sure to check back often.