I love the customizable flash activities that are a part of the Lesson Activity Toolkit. I thought I would give a brief overview of each one and an example of how I might use it. Each activity comes in a variety of colours to suit your mood or theme.
This has been one of my most popular posts, but when I looked back at it, there are three things that I really wanted to add to it. In my classroom there are 3 tools from the Lesson Activity Toolkit 2.0 that really add to my teaching and to my classroom management.
| 1) Crossword – the crossword is a click-able, type-able, or writable interactive puzzle. You enter the words and the clues that fit your lesson and topic and it creates the puzzle for you. I often create them as part of a station in language arts to practice vocabulary words. The students work together on the puzzle in a small group. |
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| 2) Random Word Picker – I use this as a way to select students. No cup of popsicle sticks for me, I keep a file with all of my students’ names on my desktop and whenever I need a student for a task I have the file randomly choose one for me. A great classroom management tool. There is also a random image chooser that would work with student photos, but they are small and not very clear. |
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| 3) Random Group Generator – Another great classroom management tool. You enter all of your students’ names, select the size of groups and it creates them for you. You can use the arrow key to send them out of the flash program to insert or modify them. You can also just hit recreate if you are unhappy with the results. |
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The original 14!
| 1) Vortex – The vortex is a fancy sorting tool – the answers will only go into the correct vortex, and spin out of the incorrect choice. There are both text and image options. |
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| 2) Image Match – match the picture with the correct labels. |
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| 3) Pairs – just like classic memory – works with both text and images, just drag and drop images on to the tiles in the setup. You can change and modify the number of tile pairs. |
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| 4) Category Sort – Drag and drop the words or images into the correct category. Self checking! |
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| 5) Tiles – This application reveals what is behind it, one square at a time. You can select how many squares you want. You can put text, an image, or multiple images behind the tiles. I like it to interrogate a historical picture, breaking down a photo or painting into pieces, then looking at is as a whole. |
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| 6) Word Guess – Very fun! It’s just like hangman, with the choices of soccer, basketball, or my favorite the tomato splat. Choose the letters to try to guess the missing word. Fun vocabulary practice. |
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| 7) Anagram – Rearrange the letters to unscramble the words. It allows for hints, and even hints with a picture to help. |
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| 8 ) Multiple Choice – a simple multiple choice question option. You can add up to 10 questions to the same set. |
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| 9) Image Arrange – put the pictures in order. This one is great for sorting, ordering, or patterns. |
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| 10) Image Select – allows you to import up to 18 images. The images appear in a large box and the students have to select or write in the correct label. |
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| 11) Hot Spot – You place dots in a background based on the instructions in the top red bar. The background can be a grid, human body, map, or other custom image. |
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| 12) Word Biz – Spell out the answer to the question in the box. |
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| 13) Sentence Arrange – drag and drop the sentences (or single words) to put them in order. |
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| 14) Timeline reveal – click on a labelled dot to reveal information. Great for dates on a timeline, but the interval between dots is fixed. With some creativity it can be used for more than just time. |
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You gave a very good overview. I only wish the Smartboard was around when I was in elementary school. There are so many different activities and it is colorful. I think that the activities are a great way to keep the students interested and interactive. I especially like the crossword activity and how you use it in your class. I like the way you incorporate the puzzle into a group activity where students are given a chance to work together.You really seem to have some great ideas for the classroom. This is my second week of following your blog page and you have really opened my eyes to what can be done in the classroom.
Great list, Jen! There are so many cool tools in the SMART Notebook Gallery and many are often overlooked.