Writing with SMART Boards
Published by Jennifer Weeden and Ryan Galloway
Table of Contents
SMART Board in the Classroom
What are SMART boards?
Smartboards are interactive whiteboards that allow the user to manipulate items on the screen by touch. A projector displays the output of a computer on to the Smartboard screen (usually about 72” wide), and the user has the ability to navigate either on the computer or on the board, and the technology will respond. The user can tap on the Smartboard, and their touch will be able to click on items as if it were a mouse. With Smartboards, teachers have the ability to engage students in lessons kinesthetically using different tools and lesson formats.
Writing Devices
The Smartboard includes four different colored “pens” that all respond by touch. For example if you chose a blue pen, you can draw on the screen with this device, and blue “ink” will appear wherever you wrote. Once you pick up a pen, the sensor on this area of the tray is no longer blocked so you may use your finger or any type of stylus in its place. The Smartboard also recognizes this handwriting, and can covert the pen into typed format. Additionally, the menu includes an QWERTY keyboard if preferred. Students and teachers can use these devices to write, draw, highlight information, or to type.
“Copyright 2001–2008 SMART Technologies ULC. All rights reserved.”
Smart Notebook
Smart Notebook corresponding with Smartboards, and it is designed for teachers to create lessons which they can build by themselves, or download from the Smartboard exchange website (see link below). Smart notebook lessons are organized in pages or slides, and allow teachers to insert text, video, audio, images, and shapes to enhance their lessons. Also included are tools to magnify, rotate, spotlight important information as well as a camera, which can capture images from the Smartboard screen. These particular tools can also be utilized outside of the Smart Notebook in other programs or on the Internet. Notably, within Smart Notebook are various lesson templates for teachers to use organized by subject area. These may include blank maps, graph paper, games, manipulatives (such as dice and spinners), or graphic organizers that the teacher can easy access and custom fit it to his or her lesson.
What is the purpose of Smartboards in the Classroom?
Smartboards themselves are appealing to teacher and students alike because they allow for more active, participatory learning. These devices are timesaving and multifunctional; teachers can easily pull up prearranged assignments, lessons and WebPages without wasting time switching between technologies or writing on the board and organizing materials. Smartboard tools is also more economical since it does not include the cost and hassle of dry erase markers. Also on the practical side, teachers can incorporate classroom management tools within the Smartboard technology such as behavior charts, homework completion, or other classroom routines such as daily graphs or calendars. Interactive Whiteboards provide an engaging visual for students, and allow material to presented through many different modalities to accommodate a wide range of learners. From videos and games to guided reading and math manipulatives, Smartboards engage the learners and provide a richer learning experience. A classroom has the potential to grow academically and foster critical thinking when a teacher uses a Smartboard creatively.
With the use of Smartboards, there are many opportunities of enhancing writing instruction. Students can easily make annotations on existing documents, or create written work from scratch. Resources such as the dictionary and thesaurus are easily accessible at the touch of a button.
Writing at the primary level
At the primary grades students might be working on combining words to make sentences, organizing their phrases to make sense in simple paragraphs, or focusing on punctuation and grammar. After learning how the pens work, students can practice handwriting skills using the Smartboard, which benefits learners because they can see how to make the letters on a large display. Also, students who are still working on fine motor skills can practice tracing letters with their fingers. The Notebook gallery also has templates to create word and sentence sorts to teach syntax or paragraph organization. The Interactive Whiteboard is ideal for this activity because students can move around the words or sentences quickly and easily without the hassle of usual sentence strips which require significant prep time. Other writing skills can be integrated into the lesson, and students can underline vowel patterns, or vocabulary words as additional skill practice. Smartboard technology also provides for students to edit their writing, the writing of their peers, or other selections. The pens can be used to make comments, highlight key words/skills, and make corrections. With the convenience of a Smartboard teachers can also access graphic story organizers which they can save, access and make changes to with the students. The class could also go through the motions of the writing process as they create an entire story together, and easily make changes or additions. It would be fun for students to create more professional work by adding animations and pictures and share their work with other classes.
(The University of Waikato)
- By filling in missing letter sounds for rhyming words can help improve phonemic awareness and improving writing skills. Students can also improve phonemic awareness by learning about a goat on a boat that floats by understanding the long O sound.
- Students can improve their vocabulary by completing the sentence with different words as they explore a wide range of adventurous vocabulary.
- Organizing paragraphs using the hamburger graphic organizer is a great way to learn about paragraph structure.
Writing in the Intermediate Grades
In upper grades, students are working more on more advanced skills, writing for specific purposes, and adding more style and voice to their writing. Smartboards would allow older students to explore different genres of writing from online sources and to identify the specific elements of this writing style as a class. For example, they might underline key elements of a persuasive letter, underlining the words and details which make it convincing. E-mail could also be used on the Smartboard to reinforce writing for a particular audience, and together the students could compose a response. Subject specific audio or visual resources could be a motivator to get students interested in responding to a specific question, or even creating their own writing prompts. Once again, new graphic organizers could be introduced to the class, and students could get the feel of creating these tools on their own physically moving around and organizing their ideas. With more advanced skills such as cause and effect, students could playing matching games, or teachers can upload student created story starters and the class can add concluding results. Since older grades focus on the 6 plus 1 traits of writing, skills lessons can be created to include writing which exemplify this trait, and students may be engaged in practice such as physically moving around sentences (organization), using resources or movable word banks to make their word choice more impressive, or recording and listening to their written word to check for sentence fluency. In the intermediate grades, Smartboards can help motivate students to write, simplify processes, and give students plenty of visuals and examples of writing they can emulate.
- As students begin to write longer works, they need to understand how to construct a paragraphs by examining what elements (topic sentence, supporting details) go into developing a well-written paragraph.
- By using templates and the magic pen, students can practice their cursive handwriting.
- As students explore different writing genres, they can learn about jouralist writing by analyzing journalism or letter writing by reviewing the components and related webpages of writing letters.
- Students can also learn about the five steps in the writing process (prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, publishing) in this short lesson or learn about the six+1 traits of writing by examining each trait in detail.
The makers of this video, offer a whole set of lessons for different curriculum
Writing For ESLs
With this technology, students who are learning the language spoken in the classroom will benefit from the visual and tactile learning of the Smartboards. Sentence or word sorts could be annotated with images, or ELL students could practice doing a “picture sort” –dragging a series of images in the appropriate place to tell a story. Vocabulary games would also benefit these students, and once again visuals and physically dragging words and synonyms to a corresponding image will help student retain this information.
- Vocabulary games and lessons can help increase students fluency by increasing awareness of different words.
- Sequencing lessons can also help students learn the the structure of sentences.
Tutorials
Here is a rubric to see if you are Proficient or Advanced at using the SMART board
| Beginning |
Proficient |
Advanced |
|
Teacher is the primary user of the SMAR T Board.
|
Teacher uses the SMART Board to present information and creates interactive lessons for students during whole class and small group instruction. Teacher effectively moves between Notebook software and all other applications.
|
Teacher presents information on the SMART Board and creates interactive lessons for students in a variety of instructional settings. Teacher enables students to design and use the SMART Board for presentations and projects.
|
|
Teacher uses the SMART Board primarily for providing directions, DOL, United Streaming videos, PowerPoint presentations,
scanned worksheets and bell work exercises.
|
Teacher uses the SMART Board for providing background information and directions and also has students use interactive web sites, flash tools, interactive PowerPoint presentations and online manipulatives.
|
Teacher uses the SMART Board for providing background information and directions, has students use interactive tools, and designs higher level thinking activities that involve student collaboration, creativity and problem solving.
|
|
Teacher uses the basic SMART tools including pens, erasers, handwriting recognition, spell check, Notebook galleries, SMART Board keyboard and right click button, and can orient the board.
|
Teacher uses basic tools along with the spotlight tool, magnifier, screen capture tool, highlighter pens, stamps, full screen view; can add lines, shapes, and text; can group and lock objects; adds links to websites, videos, documents and attachments.
|
Teacher uses all basic and adaptive tools and uses Ink Aware applications, infinite cloner, My Content folder, Smart Recorder, Smart Video Player and changes settings, customizes the floating tools and saves Notebook files in a variety of formats.
|
|
Teacher does not use the recording feature.
|
Teacher records information and uses the files in the classroom or for substitute teachers.
|
Teacher records information using the SMART Board and posts documents on the web.
|
(adapted from Amphitheater School District)
If you are finding yourself not at the advanced category, SMART Technologies offers a training center web-page dedicated on how to use the SMART board for beginners or advanced users.
Here are some other resources that might be helpful to learn the basics of the SMART Board
- Basic Learning
- This pdf is powered by SMART technologies and teaches you the basics of the SMART Board
“Copyright 2001–2008 SMART Technologies ULC. All rights reserved."
References for Additional Learning
For more information, check out these helpful sites:
Comments (0)
You don't have permission to comment on this page.