FUNKY FLIPCHARTS AND INTERESTING INTERACTIVITY BY LESLEY WELSH (IOW CONFERENCE 08)

My final session at the Isle of Wight conference appropriately was with Lesley Welsh, a new friend I had met over the course of the weekend. Of all the areas of ICT and new curriculum, the interactive whiteboard is the area I am most comfortable with, and most proficient at using, but I was keen to see what ideas Lesley came up with and any tips she was able to pass on. (Thanks to Lesley for her electronic copy of a lot of the ideas below!)

TIPS FOR USING YOUR IWB
-Drag some pictures out of the resource library or import them from another application, revise them with pupils then move them around and get them to guess what it is under the spotlight. -Use the Primary resources in the resource library for MFL teaching
-Use the camera tool for importing images, thereby ensuring that you can enlarge the photo without losing the pixel qualities. -Make a team game using pictures of vocabulary, for example. Use the reveal tool and encourage two teams to shout out what they are seeing – the first team wins the point.
-Rub out to reveal. Put blocks of colour over certain words in a text, perhaps choosing those which relate to a certain grammar point you’re studying e.g. adjective endings. Pupils predict, then rub out to reveal the answer.
-Type a number of words onto a flipchart page. Pupils come to the front and rearrange them -Create a focus circle – give pupils some words around a circle and they need to come up with as many combination sentences as possible in a time limit (thanks to Ros Walker for this idea).
-Copy and highlight texts from the Internet. Use the fill tool to highlight certain words and use these with your classes. This can illustrate grammar points and keep pupils up-to-date on current affairs. -Use recordings from native speakers to liven up your presentations.
-Link to Internet sites with the latest news clips and music sites to show your pupils the real France/Spain, etc. -Use songs and lyrics to create a lively gap-fill exercise and do the feedback on the IWB. This will again help pupils focus on grammar points
-Use a voting system to ensure full participation and encourage shyer pupils to interact
-Use a variety of question types – test spelling, grammar, comprehension.. Use pictures and target language text to ensure that tests don’t become a simple translation exercises.
-Use the tickertape facility to play a memory game

Some of these ideas I use frequently, some I have used and had forgotten and some I never knew in the first place. The interactive whiteboard is a valuable teaching tool in the classroom, providing that the activities are varied and the teacher is guiding.