Jul
19
Tribute to Frank Schaffer Publications…
July 19, 2009 | | Leave a Comment
Greetings,
Sometimes it is a tell-tale sign that if you have stuck around long enough in the field of education, you will certainly feel the effects of what is called the “swing of the pendulum.” This means something that is a new fad catches on and takes over for a while in a school district and then is pushed aside for the next “new” idea or fad, until the pendulum swings back and we start over with the previous fad from before. I get confused just thinking about this type action in the classroom.
Well, one thing that I am sure has not lost its effectiveness over the years (mainly because I can remember working on them in the classroom) is the sheets of fun that Frank Schaffer worksheets and workbooks provide for students on certain topics. I am not for a “drill & kill” worksheet society in the classrooms, but for as long as I have been in the classroom as a student and now as a teacher, I have been impressed with the quality of Frank Schaffer publications books and sheets.
Which gets to the point of this post (sorry it took so long), I am in the process of looking through old manipulative workbooks and tools that I have used in the classroom with students and am trying to integrate them with the great interactive technology of the Smart Board. If you remember the Workbook pages that gave you the little window to write your answer into and then you flip the page over to check your window answers, then you should recognize this Notebook File as something similar to that.
This file is dealing mainly with just Blends and Digraphs.
The screen shot above is just an example of a page that can be built in the same essence of a Self-Check worksheet and uses some of the best interactive agents of the Smart Board with the students. For example, the blends at the bottom of the screen are “infinite clones“, which means that clones can be dragged from the originals and taken into the boxes as needed above without ever running out. I added the pictures to help my lower level readers figure out the word they need to be solving.
To make things a little more differentiated in the classroom, this is how all of my pages in this Notebook file start out looking like. Then I will print off this page to use as a handout to my students for the day. We will go over what they will be inserting into the boxes or “windows” for the day and then I will allow them to try to figure out what goes where by reading the “rimes“. I will give them time to complete in pairs or on their own, before the class goes over the sheet on the Smart Board.
Students will come to the front and drag their answers to the appropriate spots. At the end I have hidden the answers below the windows for the “self-check” portion of the Notebook file. I am sure a cool animation such as click and reveal could be used to do the “self-check” as well.
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 is conveniently placed at the top right hand side of this blog.
Thanks for stopping by,
Bill
