Saleeby Uses SMART Board in Language Arts Lesson at LMES

To view a video highlighting this lesson on FCS Tube, please click here.

I had the privilege of visiting Mrs. Ashley Saleeby's classroom at Laurel Mill Elementary School on Thursday, January 6, 2011 to see her students learning a lesson on their classroom SMART Board.  I immediately felt at home with the classroom environment and was excited to see what the students were learning that day.

The students were fourth and fifth graders who come to Saleeby for instruction on a regular basis.  Their lesson for the day was about compound words.  The lesson was very interactive and allowed for all students to participate.  This technology assisted them in reinforcing the content they were in the process of learning in the lesson.

One of the first lessons I saw was the identification of compound words that were hidden in the graphic displayed on the SMART board.  The students had to go up to the board and move the "magic circle" around to find the compound words.  They had a lot of fun searching the screen for these words!





Then, students had the chance to go up to the board and write in the compound word that was missing in each sentence displayed.  The compound words were located in a word bank at the bottom of the screen, and they had to use that to determine the correct word to fill in the sentence.  The students also enjoyed going up to the board to write in the words.







They also had lots of fun with the compound word riddles.  They saw the riddle on the left, and had to scroll the riddle to the right to display the answer.  This is a great example of the creativity teachers have in allowing students to see the answers to questions by moving the text from one side to the other by utilizing different background and font colors to make it work.



Then, students had the opportunity to go up to the board and review the key concepts they learned initially about compound words.



One of the fun parts for the students was to watch an interactive video on the screen with a scenario about how the word "cupcake" is formed.  The students figured out the word before the video displayed the answer!  I was very proud of them!  I know Mrs. Saleeby was, as well!

After the video, the students went back to their tables to do another fun activity to reinforce the lesson.  The students had puzzle pieces at the table.  These pieces had to be put together to form compound words.  Once they put the puzzle pieces together, they wrote out the words on paper and drew pictures of the compound words.  On the SMART board, Saleeby displayed several compound word examples and how the words are formed.  The screen was set up very similar to the way she had the students diagram their paper to write the words and draw the pictures.









Then, Saleeby went up to the board and displayed several pictures with words on the top of them so students could form compound words.  With their help, she circled each part of the compound word to form it.  Then, students went up to the board and formed many other compound words.





At the conclusion of the lesson before students had to be dismissed to other classes, they divided their papers and made sentences out of the words they learned.  They had to underline the compound word in the sentence.







The students loved the lesson, and so did I!  I could tell the SMART board is used on a regular basis in Mrs. Saleeby's classroom.  I enjoyed my visit and look forward to my next blog posting!