Jul
17
Reading Street 1.1 ~ Sam, Come Back!
July 17, 2009 | | Leave a Comment
Greetings,
Today I am posting about an idea I have collaborated with a handful of colleagues over the past year who have Smart Boards in their classrooms. Three years ago we adopted the Scott Foresman “Reading Street” Language Arts program to be our foundational teaching aid in grades K-5. When I knew I was going to receive a Smart Board in the classroom, I knew I wanted to treat the board more than just a glorified White Board. I ask teachers in the building and some friends who are teachers if they would use a Smart Notebook Lesson that was tailored to the Reading Street Program week to week. I heard many opinions on the topic and what came out of these discussions, is the following Smart Notebook Lesson.
The Notebook file loosely follows the 5 Day Planner that is placed within the teacher’s manual for Reading Street. I say “loosely” because I have taken the liberty to add some of my own worksheets and some cool Notebook specific pages that really get the children interacting with the Smart Board in the classroom. The photo above shows how each day will open, “The Morning Warm-Up.” Throughout the Notebook Pages, I have placed links within some of the clip art images to link straight to Word or Adobe Documents.
The image above is one of the liberties I have taken to show off the Smart Board and the Smart Notebook software’s abilities to engage children into the lessons. The children will be called upon to come up and click on an ear, which will trigger a sound clip to play of a word being read. They will then need to tell me the ending sound of that word.
This screen shot is one I have adapted straight from the Teacher’s Guide and into a Notebook page. I truly believe that the information that in years previous I have read to the children out of the Teacher’s Guide, would actually be beneficial for them to see with their own eyes to help them conceptualize. So I added the script from the guide into a pull and drag page that the children can interact with.
Another liberty I have taken is making up a couple of characters that will help me to teach the Grammar side of things this year. Above you will see a picture of Grandma Grammar and her expectations for the children to know a little bit more about sentence formation and construction. It is my hopes that by integrating some fun and chuckles into the (let’s be honest here) sometimes drab grammar lessons, that there will be higher levels of competency coming out of this.
Above is a way of following the Reading Street Lesson, but also a way to branch out and still use the trade books that I love to read to the children still. Here the children will read a short poem in the Reading Street Textbook, and then join me for a story about Fancy Nancy. You will notice a pencil/paper image, this is a link to a writing document for the Fancy Nancy story.
Although not going as quickly as I hoped this Summer, I am planning on continuing this trend for each of the 30 stories in the Reading Street series this year. I am hoping since I laid some groundwork in this initial Notebook lesson, that it will go a little more smoothly here on out.
An important tip:
1. At the end of the day, make sure to always click “Don’t Save” to reset the Notebook file for the next day and for the next year.
If you have any questions as to how to work with this particular file, please feel free to contact me.
When I post lessons like this one and in the future I will be then posting the lessons onto my Box.net Share folder that is located at this Box.Net Link and at the top right hand side of this blog.
Thanks for stopping by,
Bill
