// Langwitches Blog

I had the pleasure of observing a wonderful first grade teacher today, Mrs. L. She is seamlessly integrating authentic data, math and her SmartBoard into daily lessons as well as making and connecting year long concepts.
Students at our school are encouraged to bring non perishable food items on Fridays for donation to the local food [...]

Kindergarten students are graphing everyday. They are learning terms, such as block graphs, image graphs, more than, less than, most, and least. The classes are going “out in the field” (around school) to survey and record other students and teachers about their preferences.
Together with their teachers, they are graphing on paper, on the SmartBoard, even [...]

2nd Graders have moved on from their Maps and Globes unit to learning about communities. Their investigation started out with looking at a map of our planet Earth at night.

We zoomed in to look at urban and rural areas and compared cities, like Jacksonville and Buenos Aires. the teacher then guided the students to come [...]

I wanted to add my reflection to the lesson, as a follow up to my post” Map skills and the SmartBoard” with 2nd graders from a few days ago.
As one of the activities for their maps and globe unit, 2nd graders worked collaboratively by creating an imaginary island according to specific directions.
Directions were:

Draw a Compass [...]

2nd Grade is off to a great start in the school year. They are exploring maps and globes. Why are maps useful? When do you use a globe instead of a map? What is a map key and how does it help us?
More and more students are becoming familiar with their families’ GPS systems too, [...]

I have been planning with a second grade teacher to get her started in using the SmartBoard that just had been installed in her classroom.
She let me know that she was working on maps skills and wanted an activity to be able to reinforce and assess student understanding of cardinal directions.
I showed her how to [...]

Despues de un año, tuve otra oportunidad de hablar con docentes en el colegio alemán Goethe en Buenos Aires, Argentina. Esta vez fue una capacitación en Pizarras Interactivas (Smart Board)
El objetivo de la capacitación fue una introducción a las funciones y posibiliades del SmartBoard Notebook 10 software y despertar la conciencia a la diferencia entre [...]

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 [...]

In an effort to collect and archive SmartBoard tips and lesson ideas, here is a cross post from an older entry at the TechConnect Blog.
What if we asked our students to become the teachers? What if we asked our students to articulate the process of something that they have learned? The SmartBoard hsoftware includes the [...]

In an effort to collect and archive SmartBoard tips and lesson ideas, here is a cross post from an older entry at the TechConnect Blog.
Pre-Kindergarten and first grade students have been studying President Washington and Lincoln.
Pre-Kindergarten watched two short video clips from Discovery Education about the two famous Americans in TechConnect and then found graphic [...]