In a week, my staff returns for a week of workshops and then the start of teaching. 14 of my staff will have a Promethean IWB for the first time. Between now and our Back to School Night in mid-August, they will be in a huge number of inservices not involving IWBs. I’m having trouble finding a time to do more than show them the most basic tools. However, parents will want to see the board in use at Back to School Night.
I’d like to set my teachers up to look great and feel confident. Since I haven’t figured out how to add hours to the days, I’m thinking I’d like to create a few flip charts for them. The first would be a flipchart that they could all use with their students to help the students learn to use the board. It should be fun, engaging, and help to meet some of the teacher’s first week’s of school needs, such as community building, formative assessment or the establishing of routines.
The second flipchart would be a specific to each grade level. It would include a few activities to use with parents that showed how the board will be used to teach some of the content their children will be learning during the year. For example, it could have a container activity where participants recycle the fractions that are not equivalent to 2/3. Another activity could involve using the transparency feature with two photos of glaciers to create a time lapse effect to show their melting retreat. Another could be a self-checking vocabulary matching idea. And so on.
Searching the newly remodeled Promethean Planet, I was suprised to not find what I needed. I did find a few good resources to use with my teachers. You will need to create a free account at PrometheanPlanet to follow these links.
- Activstudio Benefits was created to show off the uses of an IWB. Original target was school boards and other funding sources, but it would also be a great tool to use with teachers to give them idea of how to use their IWB.
- Creating in Activstudio shows different techniques to designing flipcharts.
- Layers and Groups Resource Pack includes 15 activities with detailed notes on how to use them and to adapt them to your own uses.
- Reviewing Activstudio would be great to use after you have given your teachers some training. It uses the format of the game show Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader to review concepts such as layering and the use of various tools.
So now I’d appreciate your help. I’d love to hear your ideas of what I can include in the student flipchart and the parent flipchart. I’d love to see any reasources that you have created which meet these needs.