// Langwitches Blog

I have created several charts for my students with the table feature of SmartBoard Notebook. Although working with tables is not very intuitive, nor can they be as easily manipulated as in MS Office products, they have produced nice results with students. Students took ownership in their own learning and were actively involved in creating data in the following two examples.

Pssst SmartTech: Please make table manipulation easier in your next update!

To create the charts:

• I inserted a table by making sure I had one more row than students and as many columns as I needed for the number of skills I wanted to address in the chart (Adding an additional column AFTER the initial creation of table proved to be a big headache!)
• Use the text tool to insert each student’s name into first column.
• Find a images in the gallery or take a screenshot (with camera tool) from the web that represented the skill you want .
• Clone that image and drag and drop it into every cell under one column. The image will adjust its size automatically to fit the cell.
• To add cell shades to each column, simple right click each cell and choose “add cell shade”.
• As student master certain skill which is represented by the clipart, they come up to the SmartBoard and find the appropriate row (with their name) and column (with the skill they mastered or demonstrated) and click on the cell shade to remove it and reveal the appropriate clipart underneath.

Students LOVED to come up to the chart, AFTER they had demonstrated a skill in a completed project, I had made as the pre-requisite for “checking” a cell off. It seemed to help them stay on track, they knew what projects/skills they were working on and demonstrated a certain level of satisfaction as they were able to complete the chart in their assigned row.

Another chart I created was for first graders before Groundhog Day. Each student was able to enter their prediction whether the groundhog would see his shadow or not. As the story goes (Wikipedia):

Groundhog Day is an annual holiday celebrated on February 2 in the United States and Canada. According to folklore, if a groundhog emerging from its burrow on this day fails to see its shadow, it will leave the burrow, signifying that winter will soon end. If on the other hand, the groundhog sees its shadow, the groundhog will supposedly retreat into its burrow, and winter will continue for six more weeks.

The procedure of creating the chart, is the same as in example above. Except with two possible predictions (Sunny -will see his shadow or Cloudy- will not see his shadow) are represented by a sun or cloud clipart. Student come to the board to click on the cell in their row to reveal their prediction. After every students has made their prediction, the teacher could talk about how many students chose one option over the other, count each option, which one is more/less, etc. Teacher takes a screenshot of completed chart and goes over their predictions AFTER students watched the  YouTube clip of the actual event.

Other possible clipart (to be found in Gallery) to use in charts could be smilie/frown faces for yes/no or check marks or star stickers.