One of the best ways of testing online resources to see if they will work well with SMART Board equipped classrooms is to put it through the "Wesley" test. Wesley is my four year old son and he loves to play on my office SMART Board.
He is learning to read and spell and I was looking for an activity that would pronounce a word and then challenge the user to spell it. It took me only a few minutes to find the Phonemic Processing With Word Building activity from the Room 108 Primary Kids Education Site.
This is a flash-based application that does a very good job letting early learners explore and play independently. The application uses audio to say a word and the students have to drag and drop the correct letters into the spaces provided. Each time they touch a letter it makes the letter sound. They can also touch the "Speak Again" button to hear the word repeated as often as they need. After a few tries, Wesley was on his own and he never looked back.
This site has five levels that will begin automatically or you can start independently on any level. The goal is to get 10 correct answers. If you do, you'll move to the next level. It's simple, but it's effective.
You'll find additional activities on the main Room 108 site that also work great on the SMART Board interactive whiteboard. They even have a "SmartBoard" category.
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This is a very easy way to introduce kids to phonics and build their word knowledge. It's clear to understand and seems like it would keep kids attention. What I really like about it is the building process that it has. It starts out simple, and each level gets increasingly difficult. I think it is important to have a step by step process like this to keep kids intrigued.
Posted by: Bill Lipani | April 20, 2010 at 10:03 AM