Keeping Students Engaged Using The SmartBoard

How can I keep my students engaged in my lessons and why is keeping students engaged important?  These are questions that my field experiences have answered for me.  SmartBoards are a great way to keep the students engaged and open to learning.  Therefore, I am going to share a lesson in which I have used the smartboard to enhance my lesson.

In my lesson, the students will be learning about the properties of solids, liquids, and gases that will then help them identify if the different examples I give to them in the sorting activity are a solid, liquid, or gas.  

The first slide of my activity is my way of telling my students what they are going to learn in a very simple way.  I will have my students read that statement of objective out loud with me.  That requires students to say out loud what they will be learning which will help them remember it better.  The second slide is my teacher input.  That slide contains all the information that the students need to know in order to correctly and efficiently complete the sorting activity.  This slide is what I will teach.  In that slide I have the properties for a solid, liquid, and gas along with a picture example of each.  This is to give the students a visual representation of each.  I will read the information on the slide and allow the students to raise their hands to share what the pictures for each are.  Then when they say what the pictures are of, I will help them justify why that item is a solid, liquid, or gas by using the description provided beside that picture.  For example, in slide 2 I have described a solid as having a definite shape and size.  Next to that definition is a picture of an apple.  Students will tell me that the picture is of an apple and I will help them justify that is a solid by saying “An apple is a solid because it has definite shape and size.”  The third slide is the student activity.  This is when I will allow the students to complete the sort on their own.  I will call on students one at a time to come up and move a word into the category that they think is correct.  I will then have them justify their answer using the information taught.  That aspect will be very similar to what was done during the second slide but the difference is that the student will justify their answer themselves.  

Allowing the students to come up to the SmartBoard really makes the lesson interactive and fun for the students.  Making learning fun is what makes the students learn and remember the content.  With 16 different examples, each student can have their own turn coming up to the SmartBoard too.  This lesson is so beneficial to the students because it not only provides visuals but it also makes the lesson interactive and interesting.  Lastly, this notebook is useful for the lesson because it teaches content that can be very difficult for some students to learn and understand in a very simple format.  Kids learn better when it’s something they are enjoying to learn and what better way to do that than a fun sorting activity.