Group items tagged

This entertaining blog post compares SMART's Notebook for the SMART Board to other similar products; It's funny. Also, this is a good blog for SMART Board users in general.

"Hundreds of creative combinations that take the writer's block out of creative writing. Set young writers loose with prompts that focus on character (who the story is about), plot (what happens in the story), and setting (where or when the story happens)." You can also pick the story format (notebook, letter, newspaper or postcard).

I love this site because of how nicely it plays w/ our SMART Boards. It has become a great tool for initiating discussions in ELA classrooms. Simply hit the "Random" button and discuss the word w/ your class. You can of course use this as a vocabulary extension activity as well. I worked w/ one class using Visuwords where we tried to predict (as a class and in small groups . . . nice way to allow for differentiation) related nouns, verbs, etc. This activity created engaging classroom discussion!

In the schools where we have access to a SMART Board we use the pens to write our predictions, capture them to the Notebook and then discussed the discrepancies. Let me know how you use it in your classroom!