Incorporating the Activotes into your classroom!
If you are like most teachers you would really like to use the Activotes within your classroom but you feel that you cannot fit them in. Most teachers that I talk to feel that they either aren't comfortable with the Activotes or they just don't have the time. Today I will give you some ideas to help you become more comfortable with the Activotes.
- Pass out the Activotes first thing in the morning and don't pick them up until the day is finished. (If the Activotes are already on the students desks you don't have to worry about passing them out and wasting the time to do so.)
- Since they are already on the students desks use them to answer simple questions like... Do you understand?, Are you ready to move on? or Should we stop and review? With questions like this you don't have to have a right or wrong answer but yet the feedback from your students will benefit their understanding of the concept.
- You don't have to use them for everything that you are doing but if they are on the desk I am sure that you will use them for more than you think. (Lunch count, understanding, quizzes, polls and much more.)
- The more that you use the Activotes the more comfortable you will become with them and eventually you can use them to create tests and take scores or use them with websites (BrainPop) that already have quizzes attached to them based on the Activotes.
- If you need help with the technical aspects of using the Activotes I have attached an Activote Guide that I have created to help you out. (This guide is also available on the Helpful Hints section of the blog)
If this is helpful please let others know and they can get the same valuable information from our blog.
Thanks for the information it helped a ton!
ReplyDeleteThanks! I'll try it next week. My worry (4th grade) is that they'll get knocked to the floor and get broken. It does make sense to have them handy though. Since we share activotes, it would take some scheduling to be sure both classes can use them this way.
ReplyDeleteThe biggest problem with the Activotes is having to share them with another teacher. Almost all the recommendations in your posting involve having a set of them in each classroom. My tech saavy teammate, who has what amounts to as "custody" of the things, will let me "borrow" them for a specific activity, but "needs" them right back because they always have something they need them for right away. I'm not willing to make an issue of it for a variety of reasons including keeping the peace. I've quit making any attempt to use them part-time because of the set-up and transition time involved and because the learning (and retention) curve on using them effectively is steep and only flattens out when you can use them daily and they are readily available. I need my own set and an hour of somebody's time and I'd be using them all the time. Wish I could use my own name, but I'd never see them again for sure if I did.
ReplyDelete