SMART Board Goodies A Resource Blog by Amber Coggin 

The 2009-2010 Winter Wonderland Project is now open for registration!

The Winter Wonderland Project is an online project for grades K-3 that includes winter-themed technology activities with reading, writing, and math components. Registration will open on Wednesday, November 18th. The Project will begin December 1st and end February 28th. Teachers who participate will share student work on their own personal page(s) on the wiki. Suggested thematic activities and resources for each month will be provided. We will have a Featured Activity each month that we hope all classes will be able to complete. We have chosen our Featured Activity to introduce you to some new tools or websites or new uses for tools you already use. We do realize that there may be times when sites are blocked at schools or schools do not have access to the programs or tools used. If you cannot complete the Featured Activity we would still love your participation in the Winter Wonderland Project.

Please visit the Winter Wonderland Wiki at http://winterwonderland.wikispaces.com/ to register, learn about the planned activities, or to get more information about the project.

Thank you,

Winter Wonderland Project Coordinators

Amber Coggin, Nedra Isenberg, & Vicky Sedgwick

The Winter Wonderland Project is now open for registration!

The Winter Wonderland Project is an online project for grades K-3 that includes winter-themed technology activities with reading, writing, and math components. Registration will open on Monday, November 17th. The Project will begin December 1st and end February 29th. Teachers who participate will share student work on their own personal page(s) on the wiki. Suggested thematic activities and resources for each month will be provided. We will have a Featured Activity each month that we hope all classes will be able to complete. We have chosen our Featured Activity to introduce you to some new tools or websites or new uses for tools you already use. We do realize that there may be times when sites are blocked at schools or schools do not have access to the programs or tools used. If you cannot complete the Featured Activity we would still love your participation in the Winter Wonderland Project.

Please visit the Winter Wonderland Wiki to register, learn about the planned activities, or to get more information about the project.

Thank you,
Winter Wonderland Project Coordinators
Amber Coggin, Nedra Isenberg, & Vicky Sedgwick

I love it when students really enjoy the lessons I’ve planned for them. I’ve had some success recently that I wanted to share.

4th Grade- Butterfly Life Cycles on Kerpoof.com

Our 4th grade Science teacher asked me to plan an activity on animal life cycles. I remembered seeing a lesson plan on Kerpoof for butterflies, so I decided that would be the route to take. I spent about an hour creating my own butterfly life cycle so I could make a list of tips and tricks for the students. I’m thankful I did, because this handout turned out to be a lifesaver. The students printed their life cycles in medium card format, then took them back to class and wrote an explanation on the inside of the card.

Click here to see the picture full size.

3rd Grade- I Love Money

The students have been begging to use the SMARTboard in lab class. A few students have had the opportunity to interact with it, but not all since time is so short in the lab. This week my third graders are reviewing counting coins in math, so I checked my delicious resources to see if I could find an appropriate activity for whole group participation. I lucked up and found the CA$H OUT game. The game shows characters in a grocery store setting. The character tells you what item they want to buy, how much money it costs, how much money they will give you, and how much change you owe them. Your job is to give them the correct amount of change by touching the dollars or coins and clicking “give change”. The great thing about this game is that it has 3 different levels. The easiest level works only with coins. The medium level works with dollars and coins, and the hard level works with dollars in the thousands. You can also choose to display the change amount, or let the students calculate the change amount themselves.

After showing them the process, I let the students come up one at a time and add a coin. It didn’t take long for everyone to have a turn, and they were so engaged and excited about getting to interact with the SMARTboard. Once they went to their seat, they had the option of either continuing to play on CA$H OUT or visit the H.I.P. Pocket Change website.

Not much planning for the money lesson, but it was a success nonetheless.

Nedra Isenberg and I have teamed up our 2nd (and some 3rd) grade computer lab classes during the month of October to participate in a project called Scary Spuds.

Project Description

This project is very similar to the Monster Exchange project and Monster Project Wikispace. However, for Scary Spuds the students use a flash activity found at Crick Web to create their Scary Spuds instead of a paint program.  I felt this would speed the project up a bit and make it more simplified and contained instead of giving the students free reign on a paint program.

More Details

The premise of the project is to create a Scary Spud, and then write a description of the Spud so that their partner classes can re-draw it, coming as close to the original as possible. The students from 3 different schools, 1 in Alabama and 2 in New York, have been paired up with a partner class. Each class will be split into about 6 groups with 3-4 students in each group. Each group will then be assigned a number. After creating their Spuds and writing their descriptions, the information will be posted to the Wiki so that the partner class may access it. After the Scary Spuds are re-drawn they will be uploaded to the Wiki for all to see. The students may then compare them to determine how close they came to the original Scary Spud.

Please visit the Scary Spuds Wiki for more information, including the lesson plans created for the project.