Some applications and uses of the IWB from the classroom: ‘snapshots from the classroom’ Compiled by the teachers from the IWB Professional Learning Team at Rosehill Secondary College

Some generic applications of an IWB by teachers and students Use the IWB to encourage students to review, summarise and reflect on their learning. Use the IWB recordings as a ‘learning journal’; Use the IWB to have students organize and classify information and ideas by manipulating the text, images and numbers on the IWB; collect and analyse data and information; examine and critique data. Use the IWB to have students rank and prioritise ideas; Use the IWB to encourage discuss and share ideas; build and extend on each other’s ideas and collaboratively construct understanding; Use the IWB to encourage the students to visualize their thinking; interpret and make inferences about ideas and data. Use the IWB to encourage students to analyse images and text – ‘write on the reading’ – and collaboratively build understanding; Use the IWB to engage students with a concept or idea and increase their motivation and enthusiasm.

Year 7 English: I’ve found that using the IWB at the start of the lesson encourages engagement on an idea or concept as well being an effective way of encouraging participation. This was a sequence of activities focussing on different ways to create antonyms – this involved the students mixing and matching, recording ideas, discussing as they progressed and then using a graphic organiser to summarise their learning (see next slide).

The IWB allowed me to do something that I haven’t been able to before. Create a concept map with the students (in a way that promoted participation and was visual for all to see) and model a four step process. We could then return to this and continue its development in our next class. Using the IWB as a visual diary of our learning and an artefact to encourage the students to reflect on and review their learning has become one of its most powerful uses. The key ideas (the themes in a novel) were Generated (step 1) and then the students sorted them (Step 2) in terms of the importance and centrality (themes circles in yellow). We then connected them (Step 3) by joining them with a line and explained the connection in a sentence (in red). The final stage was to elaborate (the ideas stemming from ‘loss’).

This was another brief activity used at the start of the lesson to engage the students and encourage participation. The focus was homophones and the students, selected by me, came to the board, thought about the sentence, selected the (misspelt) homophone from a pool of words and dragged it to complete the sentence. They then corrected the spelling.

An IWB makes it easier to build collective understanding about the use of a graphic organiser – like the ‘double bubble’ above – and develop one with the students.

Using the IWB with the students to introduce them to another graphic organiser – the story triangle – and develop understanding of the dramatic structure.

Using the IWB to encourage the student to discuss and share ideas about the structure and grammar important in a narrative; allows the students to build and extend on each other’s ideas and collaboratively construct understanding. Using the IWB to encourage the students to visualize their thinking; interpret and make inferences about ideas.

Year 7 Maths: I set up loads of squares at the top of the IWB. The students had some interconnecting squares to try to make cube nets. They were invited to make their cubes nets on the IWB.

The students had to try to find a general formula to find the area of a regular polygon. I set up on the IWB some pages with regular polygons from triangles to decagons.

The students used the diagrams to help them formulate their ideas. This became very useful for students to refer back to, share ideas & dismiss common misconceptions.

The initial task was to find out how many dominoes there are in a set. The task then moved onto an in depth investigation using simple addition techniques.

Here the IWB was used as a data collection tools. The last slide is the average of the first 20 slides …………………..

Year 10 History This is a screenshot of student work, where one student has annotated a section of a letter from World War One. After reading the novel “All Quiet On The Western Front” the students had to research one aspect of the Great War and related it back to the book. This student chose to look at war correspondence from all sides of the conflict and look at similarities and differences between the letters. The students, using the interactive whiteboard to highlight and annotate, were quick to identify common concerns and problems that all soldiers faced on the front regardless of which side they were fighting for.

Similarly these screenshots show students using interactive whiteboard to annotate poetry from the Great War. This group of students after analysing a number of poems decided to write and perform a song about the First World War.

The following are screenshots of “Personal Brain” program that I used with my Year 10 English class. This is a great program for organizing and keeping daily records of what each student is doing. I used it with the interactive whiteboard and students had to plan what they were going to research, format for presentation and daily records of what they had achieved. Some students also used this program to present their research to the rest of the class. Initial Project with instructions:

List of topics and assigned tasks for each group:

Examples of the students’ daily record / reflective journal.

Year 7 Geography: This is a screenshot from a lesson involving a labelling exercise. The students had to drag the label (a feature) to the correct landform. I also had the students use the highlighter to draw what they think the landform would have looked like 100,000 years ago. This initiates discussion about coastal processes.

The IWB is used as a centre for discussion and the collation of ideas.

A red name, black date and picture have been provided that piece together. In pairs the students selected a person they would form questions and research. Using ‘Digilearn’ (‘Making A Difference’) section online they research their person’s story. They then have to find the blue statements that represent what they have researched. Using the IWB makes the IWB a central place for discussion and enables the students, at different times, to move between different ideas.