Word Magnets

From one of my FAVORITE blogs, iLEARN Technology, I came across a really great resource for use on the SMART Board (or any interactive whiteboard).

The specific resource that I found first is Word Magnets from Triptico's website.


Here is Triptico's description of the Word Magnet resource: "Word Magnets will take a piece of text and break it into individual magnets which can be moved around the screen, resized, removed, colour coded, grouped, sorted and so on. New magnets can also be added at any point.The resource also offers a range of backgrounds for use in a variety of activities."

Here is iLearn's description of the Word Magnet resource:
"What it is: Word Magnets is a fantastic little website that lets you type or copy and paste words into a field and create virtual word magnets out of them (think of the popular word magnets sold for refrigerators). After you have typed in the words to transform into magnets, you can choose a “magnetic” background for your words. There are several backgrounds to choose from including grids, venn diagrams, time lines, arrows, stair steps, targets, boxes, numbers, alphabet, circles, webs, flow sequences, tables, present/absent, and many more. After you choose your background, students can create sentences, sort, and interact with the virtual magnetic words. Words can be added to the board at any time and the color of the background and size of the magnets can be adjusted.

How to integrate Word Magnets into the classroom: The background options for your word magnets are really the highlight of this website. You can do everything from word sorts, to venn diagrams, to practicing alphabetic order. Create tables; sort words by their root, prefix, or suffix; link ideas; practice building sentences; create a time line of events, take attendance…the possibilities with this site are endless! If you are going to use this site for taking attendance, I would suggest creating a master list in a saved word document that you can copy and paste from (this will save you from re-typing names every morning). This is an excellent site for an interactive whiteboard or to use as a center activity. This is an easy way to create customized interactive lessons for your classroom. Because you enter the content, this site is appropriate for any grade level.

Tips: One thing I wish this site had: the ability to save. If you want to save words to interact with over and over, create a document that you can copy and paste from. If you want to save a copy of the word magnets after students have interacted with them, take a screen shot of it."


See why I love reading blogs so much? It is so helpful to find a resource on someone's blog. Not only are you getting access to a teacher tested resource that has proved helpful in someone else's actual classroom, you are also usually getting a quick, to the point, but thorough and useful description of what the resource is and how to use it in the classroom. I love them.

So what do I have to add to these posts? Two things:

1.) I want to make sure you see all the other helpful resources that are on Triptico's website. There is a LinkUp activity where students sort words into categories,

a simple timer,

a 4 or 8 option spinner,


a match/memory game,


a simple calculator, a scoreboard, and number spinnners.
All these resources are "content free" so you as the teacher can customize their use to your individual lesson.

2.) I also want to take this opportunity to make sure you are all aware that Flash Files can be saved from the internet and inserted into SMART Notebook software. This would allow you to insert this Word Magnet resource (or any of the other resources on Triptico's website) into the middle of a language arts lesson that you are presenting in SMART Notebook, so that you could seamlessly move from one segment of your lesson to the next.

How do you do this? Here are some (hopefully) easy to follow steps:
1. Find a webpage that is a flashfile. (They will usually have a .swf ending instead of a .html ending) Hint: the resources on Triptico's website are able to be converted into .swf files by going to the resource and changing the .html ending to .swf
2. When you are on the webpage, go to save page as in the File menu. Give the file a name, choose where you would like to save it, and make sure it is saving as a .swf file
3. Go to SMART Notebook, to the Insert menu, and choose Flash File. Find where the file is saved on your computer and click it to insert.
4. The flash file should now be inserted into your Notebook document, with all the interactive functionality it had on the original website.

One more tip: you can do a google search for flash files by going to Advanced Search




and selecting "shockwave flash" as your file type.



Once you put some kind of search term in the top box (i.e. fractions), all the results that come back will be flash files that should be able to be inserted into your Notebook files as HIGHLY interactive lessons.

Here is an example flash file for math that I found using Google Advanced search that could be saved and inserted into your Notebook file.

As always, please ask questions!

Alphabetical Order

A teacher of mine asked for some resources to help reinforce the concept of alphabetizing to her first grade students. I wanted to pass along what I was able to share with her.

1.) Using the "Sentence Arrange" game in Lesson Activity Toolkit 2.0 in SMART Notebook. This allows the teacher to use any combination of words they would like the students to practice with. Students can check their work, and the page can be reset so the words are scrambled, allowing for continual practice. You can download a sample file here.

2.) Crickweb has a wonderful assortment of resources that work great on a SMART Board, both for literacy and numeracy skills (it is based on the UK standards of education). This particular activity (Alphabetical Order 1) allows for students to alphabetize easy words, progressing through increasing levels of difficulty.



3.) Roy the Zebra also has a nice variety of resources for the SMART Board in the area of literacy, including alphabetical order, double consonants, and capital letters. There are five different levels of alphabetical order games based on the number of letters included.



Enjoy these new tools for your toolbox and keep asking questions!

Blockbusters

A great (possibly) new review game for you all to try on your interactive whiteboards this week. It is taken from the old TV game show Blockbusters. I've posted a link to a YouTube video so that you can see exactly what I'm talking about.



In this game, two teams compete against each other to answer questions. The answers to these questions begin with a certain letter of the alphabet. If a team gets a question right, that team's color gets control of the hexagon. One team is trying to complete a row of hexagons from left to right across the board before the other team completes a column of hexagons from top to bottom. Click here to go directly to the online blockbuster game. (or click the picture to the left to read a little more about it)


You can also read another description of the Blockbuster classroom game by going to the TeqSmart blog. The rules and game format they describe would be the same as you would use with the website game above. There is a video on their blog showing the game in action. TeqSmart offers a downloadable version of the Blockbuster game that allows you to type in and customize the questions. If you are intersted in this, please let me know.


This game would require a little bit of either advance planning or fast on the spot thinking in order to come up with questions that have answers that start with every letter of the alphabet (except Y and Z), but I think this game would work really well for certain chapters of study.


Let me know what you think of this tool! Have fun!

Quizlet

I've been encouraging my teachers to use their SMART Boards or Mimio boards to break up their times of direct instruction with 5-minute Reinforcements. Many of them have said that they find themselves only using these IWB (Interactive White Board) products for games. I agree that many of the best uses of interactive technology are gamelike in nature. However, instead of only playing a full-blown review game at the end of a chapter, why not play a mini-game or do a similar activity after each smaller section in a chapter to reinforce what the kids learned, change up the type of instruction, and appeal to the nature of children and their diverse learning styles.

Here is one resource that I think would be ideal for these 5-minute Reinforcements. Quizlet.com is a study resource where users can create flashcards to review any topic that they desire. (Teachers and students can also browse through already created sets of flashcards, but keep in mind that the content of these other-user-created cards is not monitored.) The flashcards could then used for study.

The feature of Quizlet that I would like to focus on is one of the two games that can be played with the cards. The "Scatter" game scatters the terms and definitions around the screen. Students are then timed as they drag matching pairs together. This could be a really quick reinforcement activity. If you had premade a set of flashcards to go with the topic you just discussed, pairs of students could go up to the board and help each other get rid of all the pairs of terms. A new set of students could then come up and try to beat the previous set's time.

I can think of other ways that Quizlet could be integrated into the classroom as well. Once a flashcard set is created, you could post a link to your specific set on your class blog. Students could then review the flashcards, take practice tests, and play the basic games from home or from centers. Students could also be given the assignment of making their own flashcard set and then posting the link on their individual blog or emailing the link to the teacher. This could be an interesting variation on a homework assignment that gets students more involved with the chapter content and might provide a context for future studying.

How else can you think of integrating Quizlet?

Here are some simple instructions for creating a set of flashcards and playing the game:
1. Go to Quizlet.
2. Click on the "make flashcards" tab at the top of the page.
3. Either sign up for a new, free account of log into an existing account. If you are signing up for a new account, you will need to check your email and click on the confirmation link before continuing.
4. Click on the "make flashcards" tab again.
5. Give your new set of flashcards a title, a subject, and a description. Then simply type in the terms and definitions into the blanks provided. You may click on the plus sign on the bottom row of terms if you would like to add more cards to the set. When you are done entering information, click "create set."
6. You will then be taken to a screen like this where you can interact with the flashcard set in five different ways. This is the screen that you should post a link to for your student's use.

Enjoy Quizlet and, as always, ask for help if you need it!

Revealing Information within SMART Notebook

Have you tried all of these ways to reveal information in SMART Notebook? Feel free to comment with other ways that you have used.

1. Dragging an object out of the way
2. Erasing to reveal - cover your text or objects with a marker drawing the same color as your background. You can then use the eraser to rub away the invisible drawing and your object will appear. It will look like you are using a magic eraser, or a reverse eraser.
3. Click and Reveals from the gallery
4. Using "Shrink and Grow" animation to reveal hidden text
5. Revealing by color


6. Flippers from the gallery
7. Balloon pops
8. Revealing by ordering/layering


(Thanks to Jim Hollis at Teachers Love SMART Boards for providing some of the ideas in this list.)