~ My Journey, My Reflections, My Memories ~: PRoGreSs in IWB AsSigNmenT

29th August 2007 (8th Class)

The class is in the 'Merdeka' holiday mood. Everyone is looking forward to the long weekend as we do not have any any class on tomorrow and the day after, making this the last class before everyone heads back home. :)

Ms Chin facilitated us through the class today.. She explained and clarified to us again the requirements of our Smart notebook assignment. Each person in the group is to produce several activites of at least a minimum of 5 slides. Ms Chin also gave us another round of viewing the samples of work which was shown by Prof last week.

We realised that most of the activities shown are done to cater to pupils from the Lower Level of Primary School whereby the level of difficulty is not that high such as filling in the blanks, matching and completing the missing letters. As for our assignment, we are required to design activities for pupils of the Upper Level which indirectly reflects activities with a higher demand on the cognitive ability. However, I felt that the activities designed using the features of a Smart Notebook are more suitable for pupils in the lower level due to the simplicity of activities which require the pupils to only 'drag and drop' or complete the missing letters with much guidance given. We've raised this concern to Ms Chin and she has advised us to think of higher level of thinking order questions which require the pupils to analyse and apply their background knowledge before obtaining the answers. Another alternative is also to increase the difficulty of the vocabulary expected from the pupils to answer without a choice of words given to them. Hence, pupils would be required to think for themselves the appropriate words to fit into the blanks given.

Another thought that pops out in my mind is the amount of slides that could accommodate all my activities and the list of target group, topic, previous knowledge, and learning objectives for the particular lesson.

Here, I would like to share the progress of my Smart notebook activity. I have decided to do on the topic of 'Plants' for Year 4 pupils. The content focus for my lesson is the basic needs of plant, parts of plant and the seven life processes of plants. These are my first few initial slides which I have done presently.

The activities in these slides require the pupils to complete the parts of a plant and some matching exercises. Other activities include filling in the blanks of sentences which describe the functions of different parts of a plant. Pupils are also allowed to check their answers after they have done just by dragging the box in colour to the space next to the blanks.
Indeed, throughout the process of developing these activities for the IWB assignment, I have learnt to get more 'acquainted' with the Smartboard by many trial and error learning process.

I am glad that through this opportunity, I am able put into practice what I have been exposed to in the previous lessons. Yea, I believe that it takes the boldness to keep trying and exploring this inventive tool in order to discover its true uniqueness and usefulness to be incorporated in the classroom. So, I will keep on exploring.. Yeah!!