Sorting Activity

This week I hosted other DK teachers who have Interactive White Boards. They came to watch my students use the board. Here is the sorting activity that we created as part of this observation.

 

 

In the activity students pull out various pictures of hats and jackets that are hidden behind the blue rectangle. We used a variety of actual pictures and clip art drawings to challenge the students more. We also included a verbal prompt (as indicated by the speaker icon).

Great Find!

I made a great find at Target last week. They are selling multipacks of small sized dry erase markers. These are great for little hands to develop proper grip and control.

Hibernation Station Activities

This month we read the story Hibernation Station by Michelle Meadows. I made an activity for the Promethean to go along with it. In the activity students move pictures of animals onto a train. We stop on each page while reading to see which animals need to be added. Then we match animals and then there are several pages of counting animals.



Circle Time Activity

Here is our circle time/attendance activity. We usually do this right after lunch as some of our students are at integration in the morning and three days a week we have gym.

On our attendance page students move their name/pictures to the picture of the classroom. "Jessica's" picture is attached to an invisible line and using "Move along a path" it only allows her to move it a certain way in order to teach her to move items on the board.

 

On the next page we are working on identifying staff members and answering yes/no questions. The universal no, and the green yes circle are done with "drag a copy" allowing the students to use as many as necessary. We ask the student if they saw the person today/if we will see (referring to our visual schedule) and then model a yes/no response for them. The students then select the appropriate response and move it to the person.



 

On the next page we dress "Billy" for the weather. We discuss what we wore today and what he needs to wear and students take turns adding a piece of clothing.

On the next page our special helper gets to select a song for us to sing. When they press the song picture it jumps to the visuals for that specific song.

 

 

Here is a sample of the visuals for the songs. (This is our current favourite).

Why I Love the Bitsboard App for iPad

I love the Bitsboard App for the iPad!

We have one iPad in my classroom that was generously donated by students at Whitney Public School who fund-raised in order to buy it for us. My class is made up of a combination of verbal and non-verbal students. Earlier this year we were having trouble assessing our students using a variety of techniques including the Brigance. My EA and I both felt that our students were not engaged in the assessments. Last year I was told about Bitsboard by teachers at Beverly School, so I decided to set it up.

Bitsboard allows you to use pre-made libraries of images, sentences, adjectives, nouns, letters, numbers and all sorts of other categories. You can also build your own activity, for instance we are working on recognizing our names in print, so I took pictures of all my students names (typed out in Comics Sans). The pre-made libraries come with an audio prompt, and you can add your own audio to the libraries you create. Bitsboard then allows you to work on a variety of activities for each library. Below is an image of some of the activity choices.

So far we have mainly used the Flashcards and Photo Touch activities. The Photo Touch activity gives you options for how few and how many images you want displayed for the student to choose from. So far my students are only asked to select the correct answer from a maximum of three choices, and we have had amazing success. The students I have been using Bitsboard with are so engaged by it, that they are able to work through multiple boards. (Even better - Bitsboard scores the activity for you so you can keep track - not on the actual program but I just write down how they did in my notebook as they work. See sample below). 

Prior to using Bitsboard I would tell you that some of my students could not consistently recognize any letters, shapes or colours. I WAS WRONG! One of my students who has a very limited attention span, showed me that she can identify at least 7 letters, 4 colours and knows a lot of descriptive words (i.e. running, drinking, crying). 

If you do have an iPad in your classroom, I encourage you to download it from the App store. I believe the App only costs $2.99, which is an amazing price for such a useful App.

Decidedly Low-Tech

This past week I got the help of my dad to create a Busy Board for my new DK classroom. We got the supplies we needed at Home Depot and my dad stained and framed ahead of time. 

We made two doors for the students to open, and I am planning on using velcro to stick pictures behind one of the doors and I will use a stick on mirror behind the other. We used a variety of latches and clasps for the students to explore. We also attached two wheels on castors for the students to spin, a door stop, and a key lock. I will post some photos of the kids exploring it once it is up and secured to the wall.

Next Year

Next year I will be changing jobs. I am going to be teaching the Diagnostic Kindergarten at Fraser Mustard Early Learning Academy. We have been approved for a SEA Claim for an Interactive White Board. We will be getting a Promethean Board - great news for all you Promethean users! I will continue to share ideas and inspiration from my program and am excited to try out new things on the Promethean.

Great Website for use with an Interactive White Board

I found (thanks Pinterest) a website that has some cool games and activities for an Interactive White Board. Some of the games don't seem to load, but my students have had fun with the ones that do. (Pop Balloons is a huge hit)

Cookie

We're Going on a Bear Hunt

This week we did our initial reading of We're Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen. I created a short Smart Board activity to accompany the read aloud. During the read aloud, we pause to put the different settings from the story in the correct order. A few of my students are beginning to read, so I created a cloze activity from the last page of the story for them. I also took two pictures of the bear from the story and asked the students how they think the bear feels based on facial expression and body language (no, I didn't use those terms). My students are big fans of memory games so I created a memory game to play at the end with different pictures of bears.

 

We're Going on a Bear Hunt Google Docs

Big and Little

One of my students is working on the attribute stage of PECs training. She has mastered colours and I wanted to introduce her to other attributes. I decided to start with Big and Little as it is a concept that we use a lot. In this activity I also have one of the pre-made games from the Lesson Activity Tool Kit. I use the vortex to get the students to sort pictures of Big and Little objects.

Big and Little Google Docs

Letter Matching

Some of my students are learning to match upper and lower case letters. I have a task box (see Activities and Tasks) that does this but here is the corresponding Smart Board activity. I found that more than 4 letters per page was too busy. Just make sure to check your fonts to ensure that your 'a' is this type of a as it is the most recognizable for students.

Google Docs for Letter Match

Calendar

We do Calendar everyday. I designed my calendar routine to allow for the most amount of skill acquisition and demonstration as possible while still being engaging and fun for the students. I have a picture of every page of our calendar except the weather graph which I am changing to a more user friendly version. I did start my Calendar with a Calendar activity I found on Smart Exchange, and it is an ever evolving activity.

 The first page is our sign in page. Students move their name from AWAY to HERE. Some students who are working on recognizing their name have a colour coded name while the others are black. There is also a small star in the HERE column which acts as a target for students who are learning to move items with purpose on the Smart Board. After student count how many people (including staff) are here or away and how many people are in our class altogether.

The second page is our monthly calendar. Students are in charge of writing the day of the week, following a two colour pattern, and adding the type of weather for that day. The weather images are infinite cloned.

Then we have our weather graph which I don't have a picture of. Next is the days of the week. We sing the Days of the Week song to the tune of the Addams Family. The days are colour coded to allow for more success for students. As well by colour coding words, students actually access a different part of their brain when retrieving the word. We have had great success with this for not only the days of the week, but in teaching one of my students to print their name in order.

 Next we dress Billy for the day. We sing a simple song "What will Billy wear today, wear today, wear today. What will Billy wear today, what will he wear" and then students take turns selecting appropriate clothing for Billy. I had to make snowpants for him as there were no snowpants in the Smart Notebook Gallery. At the end we sing "Billy's dressed for the weather today thank you very much."

Since we do Calendar after recess, we use our Calendar to assess recall and observation skills by asking students what vehicles they saw outside. As we have a construction site next door half of the vehicles are construction trucks. Students move one or two vehicles into the boxes.

The last part of Calendar is about choice making. We give the students a selection of 8 songs to sing and the daily helper gets to pick. When they touch the image of the song they want it jumps to that page. I've included the visuals for two of the songs we do.

Google Docs for Calendar

Observation Class Blog

Here is the TDSB Assistive Technology Blog about the Observation Class I hosted for other DD teachers.

Observation Class

Importing From Smart Notebook to ActviInspire

All of my activities were created in Smart Notebook. For those of you who want to import my files using ActivInspire here are the steps. There may be some formatting issues, and Flash items probably won't work.

1. Open ActivInspire
2. Select File
3. Select Import
4. Select Smart Notebook File
5. Select the appropriate file

Google Docs

I am trying to upload my activities to Google Docs. I am not sure if all of them will work. I will attach the links at the bottom of each post.

Basic Shapes

Here is a Basic Shapes activity I have done with my students. The students get to watch a fun video by KidsTV123 on Youtube then practice tracing shapes. At the end there is a game for them to play. I also change which shape the video and game are hidden behind after each use to help teach shape recognition.

Here is the link to Google Docs for Basic Shapes

Environmental Signs

In the past my students have worked on learning to identify common environmental signs, such as Stop signs, Walk signs, Danger Signs. I created this activity after we took a community walk to take pictures of the signs in our community. Each page contains two pictures. When the correct picture is selected the students are reinforced with an audio clip that says  "Good Job", when they select the wrong picture they hear "No, try again".

Here is the Google Docs link for Community Signs

Where to go in the Community

My students have been learning about where to go in the community to get different services. I made this activity specifically for our community and specifically to meet the goals in the Brigance Assessment Materials. In some of the pages I use an array of items and ask the students to put the correct items on the correct store. In other pages I asked the students to select the right store/service from an array of pictures.

Here is the Google Docs link for Where to Go in the Community

Counting to 10

I used some fairly high-interest objects to create this lesson. In it students have to put the appropriate amount of counters into or onto a given object. I found using numbers higher than ten is too busy for the students. This activity is available on Smart Exchange

Here is the Link to the Google Docs for Counting to 10

Matching By Size

In this math activity students have to sort three items by size into the correct box. This activity was designed for Smart Notebook but could easily be created using Inspiration for Promethean Board. The benefit of using Inspiration is that the boxes could be containers so they would "spit out" the item that did not fit. This activity has been uploaded to Smart Exchange.

Here is the link to Google Docs for Match by Size

About Me

I teach a Diagnostic Kindergarten program in Toronto, ON. My program is made up of Junior and Senior Kindergarten students. We are a full-day program. I teach a fantastic group of students with a variety of needs including, ASD, physical, Deaf and Hard of Hearing and Developmental Disabilities. My class received a Promethean Interactive White Board in September 2013. In the past I used a Smart Board with my Primary/Junior (Grades 1-5) Developmental Disability class. I have hosted other DD teachers who have come to see how our class runs and how my students use the Smart Board. I hope to use this blog as a way to share some of my ideas for Interactive White Board activities, non-IWB tasks, and successes. I will be uploading some of my lessons to Google Docs.