Games on the Smartboard

I have spent the last week or so trying to find games and review activities on the Smartboard. I have found some great games, including hangman, jeopardy, wheel of fortune, and whack-a-mole. Each of these games is a template that allows you to place in regents based questions into them and makes it interactive with the smartboard. I plan on using some of these in the upcoming months to help my students prepare for the regents exam in Algebra.

My portfolios are now on my website, most of the students have done them, some are still in the works. They came out fairly well. The major issue students had with creating the website was that when they made a mistake they didn't bother to read the text to find out what the mistake was. Instead, they just got frustrated because they didn't follow directions. This seems to happen a lot when my students use the computers.

Stations Review and Xtranormal

It seems like the xtranormals are sweeping through Corcoran at a alarming rate. I've heard many teachers have been doing them with their classes. I did mine a little differently and let each of my students choose a topic. Well they didn't really know what they were choosing. I did a screen capture with the smartboard and used the highlighting tool to cover up the choices. Then students used the eraser to erase away the writing. I had my students write the dialogue first for the xtranormal. For this I gave them 2 class days and a total of 45 minutes. Some students used the time wisely, some didn't.

Next, we did a stations review for a Trig test. One station was to complete the Xtranormal with the dialogue. Some of the issues students had were they used an e-mail that they didn't have access to, which caused them to not be able to finish their work and access their account. Other issues students had when choosing a username. Some chose a username that was so common that it would not let them use it. Some students didn't know that choosing JoeSmith might already be taken.

I am going to have students email me their link for the xtranormal with the hope of creating a web page with the whole collection of them. Hope it works out.

Quadratics Menus Reflection

As a class we have had several days to create a menu out of particular items that pertain to properties and applications of quadratic functions. This project had many options that pertained to technology. One option was to create a song or poem about quadratic functions with an optional five point bonus to record the performance. Some groups have decided to do this task and record. So hopefully, these will be done tomorrow or Monday.

Another option was to create a short story where the main character would have to deal or find a situation that dealt with quadratic functions. Students were able to use the computer and create a short story by using photos from the internet and microsoft word with the new pod of computers.

While the project was going on students were given an assignment on Castle Learning. This assignment allowed students to review sections of a Algebra Regents exam that were covered this year in class. This assignment was set up so students would have 2 guesses with each questions, if the answer was incorrect the first time another chance was given with a hint to help the students solve each question.

Overall, this week with the technology went well. Having the option to include some new innovative ideas has given me an open door to develop unique lessons.