[Toby1]

Could you please share some of the easy things you do with smartboard notebook in your classroom. I'm a little overwhelmed. I've done a few things, but I'm wanting to incorporate more in my daily lessons to impress my principal and to help my lessons.

[westwitch]

I just started using the smartboard this year, and am finally getting the hang of it. Have you tried the vortex yet? It's great for sorting words (long vowel/short vowel), nouns/verbs, even/odd numbers...anything that fits in one of two categories.

1. go to the gallery
2. go to lesson activity toolkit
3. click on interactive
4. find vortex sort and click on that

when you get it on your page, click edit in the corner. You'll be able to label your two vortices (example: nouns/verbs), then type in your words that will fit in each category

To use: you have the kids drag the word to the right vortex. If they make a mistake, it spits it out-if it's right, it sucks it in!

Give it a try-it's fun!

[GeminiTwin]

Explore the lesson activity toolkit. It has a lot of interactive tools like the vortex and balloon pop. Word guess and Hot spots are fun games. I use the hot spots game a lot in Social Studies. I put a map in the background of the game and the students have to touch the spot on the map of the correct continent, ocean, where each Native American tribe lived, where each explorer explored, etc. This is a class favorite. I just played around with it and looked at examples on smart exchange and adapted them to fit my needs.

[Toby1]

Thanks a bunch. I can't wait to try it tomorrow after meetings.

[westwitch]

Toby, you might want to get a dropbox (dropbox.com) It's free, user-friendly and it's a good place to store your smartboard lessons.

Our system gave us the smartboard software to install on our home computers, so I can create lessons at home, file them in dropbox and open them at school. Saves me having to do it all at school!

[Toby1]

I appreciate your help.

[Teach2b]

If you go to Smart Exchange... you can download for free pre-made items!

[Toby1]

Thanks for the info.