Working together

Today i decided to try something new. Well, it was something I hadn't tried in my class before. We made a collaborative PowerPoint presentation. By "we" I mean my students and me.
We are covering natural resources in Social Studies and since I did not like chapter test provided in the student workbook I decided the class would create a PowerPoint about the topic. I had the students think of what they would want to put on a slide (one each). I created the PowerPoint presentation on my computer which is connected to a projector for all to see.
With thirty-one students in the class the resulting presentation did not quit fit the profile of a proper presentation as suggested by the reading (a lot of slides with many different approaches). None the less the students enjoyed the activity and really show how much of the lesson they remembered.

This is the last entry in this blog. Thank you for reading... Thank you for your comments...

The Games

This week was a short one due to the holiday on Monday (I also missed a day for eye surgery). I was still able to pull off some interesting lessons using PowerPoint. I started the week covering equal groups of items to work our way up to simple multiplication. Again I relied on the basics. Images of balls sticks and other familiar items separated into multiple equal groups. The students participated and only a few did not make the connection between “five groups of 2” and “5 X 2.”

Taking a cue from a previous comment from Robin I decided to dust off the old “Who Want to be a Millionaire?” PowerPoint template and fill it with math problems. The question was presented as number of groups and number of items in each group. Four answers were provided as with the real game show. Few students had ever seen the actual TV version of the show but all enjoyed our classroom version. The whole class worked as a team to reach the Million Dollar mark. They did it (I cut them some slack on one question since they were doing so well).

Science and Social Studies also got a taste of the millions… I enter the vocabulary words for each subject and had the students look up the words in their books as we played the game. Filling out the template was a bit time consuming (I have such a hard time coming up with wrong answers), but overall it was well worth it.

Side note: I have to create a folder system to save and retrieve all the presentations I made this year.

PowerPoint and Probability

In the second part of this week the math lessons focused on probability. I used images of the sides of a die to demonstrate the vocabulary for the lesson (certain, probable and impossible). I put up a slide with each word (just the word) as I explained what each meant. I followed up with a slide that had an image of all six sides of a die (1-6) while I asked questions such as “is it certain, probable and impossible for me to roll a 7, a number less than 7, or a 5 with this die (I also had an actual oversized die in my hand). We dissected the question and included or excluded die images until we reached an answer. We walked through the process a few times before the students went on to independent work in their book.

Overall I think the slides worked well. The one thing I would mention is that I could have just shown the one image and achieved the same goal. I put the image into a PowerPoint slide but I could have used any image viewer to the same effect.

Words this Time

I’ve decided for this entry to comment on my co-teacher’s use of PowerPoint in the classroom (he teaches language arts and reading). I feel that continuing to comment on my own experiences would be a bit repetitive. Not much changes from day to day (although it probably should).

I’ll start by describing discussing the “ugly” side of PowerPoint in Language Arts. My co-teacher uses PowerPoint to guide the students through sentence structure. Sentences on PowerPoint work well to a certain extent. Actually they work well to a certain length. Long sentences do not display well on slides. Using a smaller font helps but then the little ones in the back of the class have trouble seeing the words. Paragraphing on PowerPoint is even worse. You get a block of text overwhelming the slide or you have to break up the sentences over several slides losing the effect of visualizing the paragraph. (Side note: After discussing this problem we decided to use Word (set to full screen view) for writing demonstrations)

And now for the “pretty”… Again we come back to images. Our vocabulary words were presented and reviewed in a new way this week. Instead of the boring black and white images found in the student workbook we presented the words with full color images downloaded from the Google Images. I created a set of slides that alternated bright, colorful images and the corresponding vocabulary word. Most of the students knew all the words the second day. It’s usually the “Friday Surprise” whether or not the students will finally know the words well enough to score high on the test. I hope the motivation will carry on to next week. We will see…

Is it all in the Image?

I normally use my slides as a guide while I lecture. Most of these are meaningless to my students. This week, for the first time ever, I created and presented my PowerPoint slides with specific ideas and suggestions pulled from journal articles in the required reading. I thought about what my students needed to see, what they did not, how much information was on each slide.

On Tuesday I created my best PowerPoint presentation to date. The students watched attentively and understood the content. Most amazing to me is that the whole presentation consisted of one word on three slides (the title), each slide with a different image. I fought hard the temptation to retype the words my students already had in front of them (in their books). I also did not want to retype my lesson plan. The images consisted of a progression of stacked cubes used to show volume in cubic units.

The hardest thing for the students to grasp when looking at cubic units is the fact that when cubes are stacked some are not visible. Last year I used building blocks to make a demonstration in front of the class. It worked ok. With the images of the blocks moving over three slides I was able to show the progression in forward and reverse order on a screen large enough for the whole class to see at once. It worked better.

I’m starting to think that images are the only things I will ever put on my slides (don’t hold me to that statement) since the words I can provide orally.

Stay tuned for more entries as I review my notes.

I’d like comments on using PowerPoint strictly for image slide shows.

Welcome!

This first entry is simply an introduction to what this blog. Future entries will fit the description found in the syllabus.

First, some background. I teach second grade students, most of which are learning English as a second language. I try to offer my lessons with as much opportunity for multiple means of reception as possible. Motion and facial expressions are a big part of my teaching. So is PowerPoint.

I use PowerPoint for almost every lesson. I started doing so simply because I was able to. I later discovered how useful a tool PowerPoint could be. I show pictures of vocabulary words. I create sentences over several slides. I use simple animations to demonstrate math concepts.

I know PowerPoint can be a good thing, but it can also do some harm. Any presentation is only as good as its creator. Care must be taken when deciding when and how to use PowerPoint.

I will use this blog to record my experiences using PowerPoint as an instructional delivery tool in my second grade classroom. Over the next three weeks my hope is to discover whether the advantages and disadvantages I encounter in my classroom are in line with those found in the literature.