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Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Excited about words!

So, last year, my good friend was telling me about this great idea that she had seen on teachertipster.com where you play pictures of sight words on a digital photo frame.  She teaches 1st grade, and that seemed appropriate for her classroom but not so much for mine.  Anyhow, I have been thinking about it for a year.  What a great idea.

Well, I had some grant money come my way this spring, so I decided to get myself a digital photo frame and make it work for my room.

One way that I expose kids to new vocabulary is through our classroom Word of the Week.  The kids are introduced to it and practice it in a number of ways throughout the week both in the classroom and in homework.  Most of my kids do pretty well with retaining the new words, but I do have some who struggle with remembering these words.  I am hoping that this will help with everyone having better retention of the words.

Here is an example of what one word and what it will look like. Somehow, I don't have the first screen which introduces the word: COLOSSAL.



I am going to place the frame in a place with a lot of student traffic so that the kids can see it easily.  The words will be words from previous weeks, and they will be in constant slideshow mode.  I haven't decided how many words to have going on at a time, but right now I am leaning towards a rotation of about 4 different words each week.

So, here is how I made it.  I used SMART Notebook 11 and made each page in that.  Each word starts with a page with just the word on it, a definition page, some sentence pages, an etymology page, a page of related words,  a page of synonyms, and a visuwords.com map for the word.  The word COLOSSAL is its own document, and each WOW will have its own SMART document.  Once I finished it, I exported it as an image/jpeg. I put all of this onto the flash drive, put it into the frame and voila!  I have my word slideshow. 

What do you think?  I think it is so cool, and I can't wait to continue to make more images for my WOWs.  I am hoping to complete them this summer before school so that I am not scrambling to do them during the school year.  Wish me luck!

3 comments:

Lisa R. said...

This is a BRILLIANT idea!! I have to go out & get a digital frame for my classroom now! Thanks for sharing. :)

Lisa
Learning Is Something to Treasure

Unknown said...

This is so awesome! I am stealing it. I have seen the tip from TeacherTipster as well. This is a perfect way to integrate the photo frame into upper grades. Thanks for sharing!!!

~Becca @Fun is Found in Fourth

Pat's Paper Passion said...

Here is a site http://www.vocabahead.com/ that has cartoons in video format. One day a week for writing we take a vocabulary word and use it for a writing activity.

I love the digital frame idea. What format will the frame take and can you use a flash drive to transfer? Have you tried making your WOW in ppt? Do you just display the word in the frame?

YEARS ago ( and that tells you how long I've been teaching) there was a booklet with vocabulary words and the meanings were illustrated in cartoon form. I wonder if I could still find that book at school(!).
Pat

A Time to Share & Create


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