Monday, July 14, 2008

Mix Freeze Group

The teachers in the Concord School District amaze me. They had so many great ideas last week at the SMARTboard workshop.

We were discussing how to keep all kids engaged in the learning when using the SMARTboard.

Several teachers use the morning message as a time to get all kids involved. Teacher's pose a question like, "What month were you born in?" in the morning message they write to the kids. The kids then go up to the SMARTboard and move an icon onto the graph to represent themselves. This works well since it is just on of the many jobs they have to do when they first get into the classroom. The data can then be revisited later with the Kagan cooperative learning structure Mix, Freeze, Group. (This ties responsive classroom, SMARTboard and cooperative learning together.)

Another great idea that Lisa had to involve the SMARTboard was to have the students that did not get into a group to make a new group by adding "virtual students." Watch the video on Mix, Freeze, Group to see how this plays out.

Barbara and Kathy have made many morning message graphs that can be found in the smartboard conference in the discussions area of first class.


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