ACTIV Fun in the Language Arts Classroom
Nancy Crissman, Lorraine Elementary School, Conyers, Georgia

At the GaETC Conference, two of the sessions that I attended were #196 – Everyday ACTIV Lessons for the Elementary Classroom (by: Lisa Prodigo-Nimorwicz, Michelle Levin, & Ashleigh Jenkins - Hightower Trail Elementary Affiliation):and #139 – Unleash the Power of the Interactive Whiteboard (Rachel Hanson - South Forsyth Middle School). Each of these sessions centered on using the Promethean ACTIV board. The ACTIV board is an exciting classroom technology tool that engages both the students and teacher in the learning process. During these sessions, I was able to learn several of the skills that the board had to offer. The ACTIV Board can be used in numerous ways. The teacher can research information about a topic and present it via the projector. The students can then interact with the material presented using the specially designed pen. The software that comes with the Promethean ACTIV board allows students to be interactive with lessons. The leader of the session walked us through how to use the toolbar provided with the software. The tool bar included such things as the writing tool, highlighting tool, the text tool, the library tool and the hiding tool. Creating flip charts for the lessons is the most time consuming aspect of the program. Through the creation of flip charts, the students can manipulate teacher created material or create their own chart using the library or other various tools. These sessions sparked many ideas that I can use in the classroom.

The board lends itself to many interactive lessons. The lessons can be as simple as creating flip charts of the weekly vocabulary or spelling words. The teacher can have fill-in-the-blank sentences set up for the students to simply drag a vocabulary word into or to manipulate their spelling word to put them into alphabetical order. The board takes the ordinary repetitive tasks and makes them more meaningful to the students.

Flip charts can be made prior to a story being read. In response to the story, the teacher can have the students sequence the story by manipulating the information. This can be as simple as using pictures or simple phrases. One example that I used was with the book, The Mitten by Jan Brett. We first read the story in the classroom. Then I created a flip chart that had each of the animals from the story on it. As a reading response, I called several students to the board to help manipulate the pictures by dragging them into the mitten. I was able to use the text tool and have the students dictate the story order. I was able to teach commas in a series and sequencing. The students then were able to go to their computers in the computer lab and create the same image. They drew around their hands to make mittens. Then using clip art, they put pictures of the animals into their mitten. They then re-wrote the story, putting the animals into the story in the order that they went into the mittens. (See sample work) The students were extremely engaged and enjoyed retelling the story. This is just one example of the exciting ways to take a simple activity and turn it into an interactive learning session. The ACTIV board can be used as an extension of the Language Arts program.

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