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…