Something new for "little" & "big" kids

Two ideas from James Hollis's Teachers Love SmartBoards  blog:
Spin and Spell - an interactive game site that has students spell basic vocabulary.  You can choose words to spell from the pictures or have the program choose one at random. 
Idiom starter: SmartBoard lesson with examples that guides students through practice and comprehending idioms, then creating original ones.  This lesson come from The Smart Insider newsletter.  You can sign up to get issue delivered via email. 

Ripples...

Take a look at the Cluster Map (lower right) - unexpected visitors/

Birds on a Wire in Kindergarten

Ms. Magner's kindergarteners used the SmartBoard lesson, Birds on a Wire in an innovative way.  We've all used different ways to line up students to leave the classroom.  Ms. Magner used the numbers on the spinning birds as table numbers to line up her students.  She pressed even numbers and one odd.  Students noticed one bird's number didn't spin.  When she asked about the remaining tables (odd ones) students were able to deduce that the odd numbers were left so the odd birds didn't spin.  This was a great visual reminder and episodic learning for the kindergarteners. 

Dictated by Ms. Magner to Mrs. Meleski at our Smarties meeting.