It’s not a new school year, but a new calendar year has begun. Teachers know that one of the most challenging times is returning from an extended break. It’s a time of reminding students of your classroom expectations and procedures or even starting some new ones. While this is a challenging time, unique ways of presenting your lessons can do wonders for getting back into the swing of teaching and learning. Promethean offers tools to assist you in getting this new year off to a great start with the ActivPanel Classroom Essential apps, and innovative software solutions like Promethean’s ActivInspire.
The Promethean ActivPanel Classroom Essential apps offer innovative ways to bring interaction and excitement to your everyday lessons. The new Annotate app is easy to use and allows powerful options to help you mark up anything displayed on your ActivPanel screen. Using the new Spinner and Timer apps provide an effortless way to bring some gamification to any lesson. These applications are now offered as Promethean Web apps for use with the Chromebox or OPS-M. Using the Promethean Whiteboard app to create interactivity is easy—just capture your worksheets using the Screen Capture app to create reusable whiteboard lessons. You can open any .jpg or .png file on the whiteboard and share the saved .pwb files with colleagues using the cloud connect option or through a connected USB drive.
ActivInspire is Promethean’s award-winning software for creating and delivering engaging and interactive lessons. With ActivInspire, students can explore your material in new ways. Quickly create interactivity using Rub and Reveal or Drag Copy actions, or upload files to add to any lesson. Visit the Promethean Resource Library to find already created ActivInspire flipcharts to quickly save, download, and present.
Grab and go resources and ideas
ActivInspire flipchart templates and ideas
- Begin each day or class with “Good News” shared by your students. Download the flipchart for this idea.
- Create a new Attendance flipchart with these ideas.
- Create a classroom game with these ideas and templates.
Add some music to your teaching
- We Are Teachers has curated a list of school-appropriate songs to bring some pep or relaxation to your classroom.
- Scratch Garden – Laughing and Learning for Young Minds on YouTube is filled with songs for teaching Phonics, Science, English, Math, Art, and more.
- Edutopia gives you 6 Smart Ways to Bring Music into the Classroom.
- Waterford.org writes about 50 Ways to Teach Using Music in Your Classroom with links to ideas for brain breaks, games, as well as, books to bring music into your lessons.
Play some games with your students
- teachhub.com has some Fun Review Activities and Classroom Games to Do Now.
- Teaching Expertise has 23 Review Activities For High School.
- Edutopia has a great article about How to Use Gameplay to Enhance Classroom Learning.
Enhance your curriculum
- Ditch That Textbook has 25 virtual field trips for your classroom with easy-to-access links.
- Discovery Education houses Interactive Virtual Field Trips.
- We Are Teachers has a great list of History Facts That Will Shock and Amaze Your Students. These would be great to share for conversation starters!
- 50 STEM Activities to Help Kids Think Outside the Box can be found at We Are Teachers.
- Berkeley.edu has some great ideas for Alternatives to Tests for upper grades.
- More ideas for Alternatives to Tests for every age can be found at We Are Teachers.
Digging Deeper
Use Promethean Solutions to jump-start your lessons by taking the Creating Activities course.
Check out our quick ideas each week with ProTips.
