SmartBoard!
I have a SmartBoard in my room these days. When we were awash in grant money a few years ago, our site bought three. Two were mounted in classrooms, and we put the third one on wheels (just like the pic in the link) so it could be moved from room to room. The idea was that one would allow people to try out the idea and learn how to incorporate it into actual lessons. Then we might buy more. The reality was that when I got all the software dialed in and all the issues worked out so I could do tech support for the others (about a month), I passed it on to my then-BTSA mentee for his social studies classroom. I figured with all the maps and pics and suchlike, he might be able to use it more fully than I could in English. I mostly just doodled on it. He’s had it ever since.
A week or two ago, he asked me if I wanted it back. He said he hadn’t been using it that much, and he was going in the computer lab for a while, and then…etc. He wasn’t going to use it for the rest of the year. So my servant wheeled it over, and we’ve been doodling ever after.
We finally used the SmartBoard for more than doodling. I copy/pasted a few old sentence scramble exercises into the SmartBoard software. I made each sentence chunk a movable piece, so they could come up to the board, and physically drag the pieces around to show the sentences they’d put together. Since each sentence can go together in more than one way, it’s groovy to move the pieces around to change the rhythm of the sentence. (“Now you’re getting all Shakespearean on me! Nice.”) It’s like those magnetic poetry things, only with sentence pieces. And a few grand worth of equipment.
A lot of them had some trouble with the dragging. Their fingers would bounce and the board would think they had tapped or double-tapped, and a menu would open up, and they would flip.
- Click for full-size.
“AhhhUhhh.”
“Just tap somewhere else, and it’ll go away. You’ll be fine, try it again.”
“OhhhAhhh. What’s that?”
Still, it was pretty groovy, and the kids had fun, and I think I might do it again.
If’n you have a SmartBoard, here’s a copy of the notebook thing.
MadLib for The Giver!
Here’s a new MadLib taken from the pages of The Giver. It’s from chapter 3 when they bring Gabriel home.
The Giver – MadLib #1
1. past tense verb:
2. plural noun:
3. different plural noun:
4. adjective:
5. adjective:
6. present tense verb:
7. adverb:
8. past tense verb:
9. noun:
10. past tense verb:
11. noun:
12. adjective:
13. plural noun:
14. noun:
He had been 1)____________ by the newchild’s 2)_________. 3)________ were 4)___________ in the community; they weren’t 5)__________, but there was no real need of them, and Jonas had simply never bothered to 6)__________ himself very 7)__________ even when he 8)__________ himself in a location where a 9)_________ 10)___________. Now, seeing the newchild and its 11)_________, he was reminded that the 12)_________ 13)___________ were not only a rarity but gave the one who had them a certain look–what was it? 14)_________.
We had a lot of fun with this one.
More MadLibs can be found on the grammar page.
Mr. Coward’s Site for Teachers
This is SeventhGradeEnglish.com. It’s the teacher version of my seventh grade class page. It’s the result of 18+ years of junior high middle school teaching and 13+ years on the web. Feel free to take and mutate, but give credit where credit is due.
BULLETIN! Now with 8th grade material! I have a period of eighth grade this year, so I am dusting off and revamping my eighth grade shtuff. Stay tuned.
Have fun always.
(Mr. Coward has been teaching on the beautiful central coast of California since 1989. He enjoys fruitbooting, rocking, and teaching seventh grade.)
Teaching the Outsiders
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