Craig, Darryl, Nancy & I made two presentations for the Horizons 2009 CUE BC conference.

I posted our slides and notes for our first presentation on my other Blog: Thinking UDL ~  What is UDL (Universal Design for Learning)

I posted notes and web links for our second presentation “Resources and Tools for a UDL classroom” on this blog. To see all posts for this conference click here. Below is an outline of this presentation with links to more detailed information.

Resources and Tools for a UDL classroom

• I presented a brief overview of UDL ~ for a more in-depth overview of UDL see the notes from our morning presentation: “What is UDL?“
• Craig presented information about some of the resources he uses in his classroom…
  • Kurzweil
  • Into the Book
  • PD to go – SMARTBoard Lesson Podcast – Inference activity
  • SMARTTech Resources – organized by PLO’s!!
• Darryl presented information about some of the resources he uses in his classroom…
  • WriteOnline
  • Jeopardy
  • Sheppard Software
  • BBC science clips
  • EdHeads
  • Science Netlinks – lessons tools and resources for teaching science
  • Teachers’ Domain – a variety of learning resources by subject area
  • ARC BC
  • TESconnect – A site from the UK where teachers can participate in inservice, find teaching materials, or communicate with fellow teachers
  • Teachers Love Smartboards
• Nancy presented information about some of the resources she uses in her classroom…
  • National Library of Virtual Manipulatives -  a great place to find manipulatives that work beautifully on the SMART Board and can be used to demonstrate a wide variety of science concepts.
  • MathsZone
  • Austrailian Primary’s Smart Kiddies Math
  • Learn Alberta – a wide variety of teaching resources sorted into curriculum areas
• Nancy showed how teachers are capitalizing on the networkability of etext by Building their lessons in SMART Notebook with hyperlinks to the websites, videos and other files they are using to make their lessons more explicit and engaging for all learners.

Into the book is an engaging way to review and reinforce various reading comprehension strategies teachers are teaching in their classroom. I introduce it as a large group activity on the SMART Board or using a projector. The strategies it includes are:

• Visualizing
• Summarizing
• Synthesizing
• Making Connections
• Prior Knowledge
• Inferring
• Evaluating
• Questioning

Students love these activities and will be motivated to repeat them in the computer lab following a class introduction.

UDL Tip…

When using this as a large group activity the teacher can move out of the spotlight soon after the activity begins rolling. Station yourself in proximity of a student who will need more direct support to be successful.

Use Nancy, Darryl, & Craig’s “phone a friend” strategy so that all students can participate without anxiety. Students can either try the answer they choose, or they can ask for a volunteer from the class for a suggestion.

A Classroom Story…

One day I was using this activity with a Grade 3 group. One of the students was especially eager for her turn – her teacher had indicated that she had some special learning needs and had very beginning reading skills. I had been circulating the room while the students ran the program when it came to her turn at the computer. I moved closer at this point to assist if necessary. She ran the program with a few tips mostly because she was new to a mouse pad. She decided to “phone a friend” in the process of selecting a response – in fact she selected three friends who together provided her with two possibilities. She chose the most popular and was excited when the game confirmed her response.

When the school Principal came in to ask the class what they were learning from this game I was thinking that I had probably not provided enough information to the students about why we were playing this game. The young lady in this story provided a very detailed response which showed a very good understanding of the point of the activity (whew!!!).

Craig showed us a fantastic activity to teach students about using inference as they read. You can download the SMART Notebook activity from ~ SMARTBoard Lessons Podcast episode 7:

In this activity the students look at a picture and later read a very short scenario such as:

Then they work through an activity – could be as a class on the SMARTBoard or Projection Screen ~

There are many other engaging scenarios in this SMART Notebook file.

Write online is a fantastic example of a UDL tool. It is designed to be used by all students and has tools built in to support learners with disabilities. These tools can be turned on and off by the learner. One of the best features of this software is that it is online so students can work on their assignments at school and at home. Often students with learning disabilities use assistive technology at school but don’t have access to it for homework assignments. Teachers can also post assignments and check their students’ work online.

We have been using this program with our students for the past year but it has unfortunately been problematic at this point, we are quite sure that the issue is on our end with bandwidth issues which result in the program timing out prior to students accessing the program. We are continuing to test the program as we believe when these issues are resolved it will be a fantastic tool for our students.

To read more about how this program works go to ~ Crick Software; Write Online

UDL Highlight

The basic fact that this tool is designed to be used by the entire class and is only sold as a site license automatically makes it UDL. When we teach it our students the entire class is fascinated by the word prediction features – they are quite fascinated by its ability to read their mind!! The theory is that students who benefit from the support of word prediction or of the word bar function will use them while other students will eventually turn these supports off much in the same way that when kids have the chance to use a wheelchair they will want to because it looks fun, but they wouldn’t want to use it for long as it would stop them from doing many of the things want to do. The use of word prediction or a word bar makes writing possible for students who need it, but would slow down writers who don’t.

Teachers have been building and using Jeopardy games with their students as a review at the end of their Science Units. They are using Science Probe. One of them is posted on our SMARTBoard Forum site currently – hopefully more will be there soon. The students love playing Jeopardy and are highly engaged during these activities. Their teachers also report increased scores on tests at the end of their science units. I enjoy watching them play in their classrooms because the kids are so excited and it is a great way to develop class spirit.

While there is a place for these types of games in the classroom, they tend to focus on basic recall skills. What I became very excited about was when the teachers began having their students come up with their own Jeopardy games. They would read the text and then determine what would be good questions for a game and what the value of the questions should be.

You can find a template for making Jeopardy games in PowerPoint (and a few other PowerPoint game show templates) on the Jefferson County Schools site

You can also find a template for making Jeopardy games in Notebook Software on the SMARTBoard Lessons Podcast site.

Sheppard Software is a teacher and student favorite. It has many great interactive activities that are perfect for the SMART Board.

At the Horizons 2009 – CUE BC Conference Darryl highlighted a couple of activities he uses from this site:

Canadian Mapping activities:

There are many other mapping activities on the Sheppard Software Canada Page.

Food Chain Activity:

Try your hand at knee surgery, hip replacement, or deep brain stimulation (my son is working on this right now…). You can also explore simple machines, weather or designing a cell phone. These are very engaging and informative animated simulations that kids love. They will learn far more from this than they can from reading about these things in a textbook!

Check all of these activities out on Edheads!

ARC BC is a repository for etext. It is designed to provide etext to teachers who are working with students who have a perceptual disability. Teachers in BC whose districts have registered with the program can set up an account so that they can download materials for use with their students. This is currently only available to teachers within BC. For a list of districts who are currently registered to use the ARC BC content go here.

If your district is one of those registered, click here to apply for an account.

To download etext here is the process: Read the rest of this entry »

This is a FANTASTIC place to learn more about using SMART Boards. If you check back often – or better yet set up an RSS Feed – it is like taking a course a bit at a time. The author of this blog – James Hollis – provides fantastic support for SMART Board Users.

James Hollis also teams up with another SMART Board expert – Harvey Almarode – in a Podcast: “Get Smart with SMART Boards”

You should also be checking out Harvey Almarode’s Home Page: Harvey’s Home Page. It is another great place to find resources.

This is a great site that brings together and organizes a wide variety of interactive Math websites and resources in one place. This site also provides thumbnails of each of the websites when you hover over the link making it easy to preview sites to see if they will be useful.