With all the emphasis on technology, hopefully you have access to a Smart Board or a Promethean Board. Connected through a USB cable to a computer, they can function like a giant touch screen computer and can be used for instruction, to reinforce lessons, to teach specific computer programs and for just plain instructional fun!

Group Instruction

Emotional Literacy: You will find lots of excellent resources, like Do2Learn which provide interactive games and pictures to help your students see emotions and talk about them.

Computer Literacy:Some students will return to the same computer programs over and over again, especially fun interactive programs like Starfall. Starfall is a great program to get students to use the computer, to manipulate the screen and work independently, but is only an entry point. Other parts of computer literacy may include:

• Do group searches using Google or other search engines. I like to create a file of pictures from Google Images to use in student writing. You can save those images on a flash drive and let students take images they want from their writing
• Introduce word processing skills by creating documents as a group. You can demonstrate how to physically place pictures, choose and pull text from place to place, or use your pen to demonstrate edit marks.
• Create graphs and use spread sheet programs. When you are teaching graphing, you can collect data and enter it into a spreadsheet program like Microsoft Excel.

Reading Instruction One of my favorite online resources is Reading A to Z, which provides all of it's books in Smart Board formats.

They also have a read aloud companion RAZ Kids, which will read books from their lineup.

Group Games

Math Drill games like those in Coolmath.com may be fun ways to review math facts or math concepts you are reviewing during class. You can create teams, either having them come up in the order in which they are on a list (on the board) or according to the seating chart.

Simulation games that help you understand a concept for science or social studies may be great ways to reinforce content. Free Simulation Games.com has a broad range of simulations you can use with your students.