Interactive Lesson

          For the past couple of weeks, my technology in education class has been learning how to use the SMARTBoard through the Notebook software. We explored many effects and advantages this tool can offer to teach a lesson. I can say I was trilled when I found out we will be learning how to use the SMARTBoard for I have always wanted to use it. As the class investigated the variety of tools Notebook has, on our own, we were given the task to make a five minute interactive lesson and teach it to the class.

          To begin creating a lesson, we had to choose a grade level and subject to teach. We then had to find the standard that would go with the lesson we wanted to prepare for the class. As I began contemplating what I wanted to teach, I realized that I needed to know what the students in the grade would already know and do not know. I eventually decided to teach a lesson about weather and temperature to a Kindergarten class. While I was making the lesson, each student had to use a lesson plan template to lay out everything we were going to teach. On the lesson plan template, there were many things involved and had to put to make sure what I was going to teach is correct to what I would write. Creating an objective was a bit difficult because I had to make sure I had all the requirements which were the condition, verb, and criteria in the correct order. It was easy to write down what my students should get out of the lesson but I had to make sure I put how well they needed to preform to fully show most of the class understood what I taught.

          After finishing the layout of my lesson plan, I created a Notebook file to make my lesson come to life. At first, I found it difficult to figure out what I could possibly do in five minutes with the activities I planned out. I already knew some aspects of what Notebook could do before actually using it on my own which helped with the process of making slides which my " Kindergarten students" could engage in. Once everything was completed, I had to practice many times teaching the lesson and using the slides to make sure everything worked and was smooth. I found out that it was difficult to actually time my lesson due to the fact that I was not sure how long each activity would actually take since it depended on how fast the students would understand and do the activities I planned out.

          In the end, I thought my interactive lesson went well. I learned even more about the SMARTBoard by actually engaging with it rather than watch a teacher use it during class. Through this experience, I now have more confidence to use the Notebook software and create a lesson for my future class to engage in rather than sit and listen to a lecture. I now know how to write a proper objective and know how to engage, connect, and launch my lesson. This has been a wonderful experience and I would be looking forward to use SMARTBoard in my future classroom.