Blog

   PROMETHEAN BOARD: Demetris Jones, a kindergarten student at McNair Elementary School, uses the ActivPen tool to match upper and lowercase letters on the new Promethean Board in Lisa Schreiner’s class. Each time a student correctly matched letters, the rainbow on the board became more colorful.

Promethean Boards, or interactive whiteboards attached to a projector and a computer with an Internet connection, are becoming increasingly common in the Hazelwood School District. Currently, the District has 405 of the devices in its schools. Teachers who use them report increased student participation and learning, while seeing reductions in discipline issues and office referrals.

   At McNair Elementary School, the school’s PTA wants to raise enough money to buy a Promethean Board for every classroom. Over the summer it purchased two units, giving the school a total of five and it plans to buy three more, so in the short-term there will be a Promethean Board at each grade level.

The PTA’s goal also ties to one of the District’s Values – “We will commit to implementing innovative solutions while dismantling ideas that no longer work for students.”

Recently, in a kindergarten room where Lisa Schreiner and Amy Hagedorn co-teach, Schreiner and her students sat on the floor, forming three sides of a rectangle around the new board. They reviewed the alphabet by saying each letter twice and using it in a word – “a-a-apple,” “s-s-snake,” and so on.

“Reviewing skills like letter identification or letter sounds with interactive games on the white board is really fun for kindergarteners,” said Schreiner.

“The Promethean board makes reading and math fun because it engages the visual, auditory and kinesthetic learner,” said Schreiner.

“The visual learner is engaged by the bright, colorful images. The auditory learner is engaged by the speech, sound effects and/or music. The kinesthetic learner is engaged by being able to interact hands-on and physically move things around on the board.”

Next, the students reviewed matching uppercase and lowercase letters. Schreiner called up the first student, gave him the ActivPen, a stylus designed for use on the whiteboard, and everyone watched the boy drag the small “a” to the big “A” with the pen. When he did, the program emitted a sound effect. It made a different sound when students mismatched letters.

After all of the students matched all of the letters, a congratulatory horn sounded, which made the students giggle.

“The sound effects and immediate feedback is very motivating,” said Schreiner. “There are so many great interactive whiteboard games to review skills.”

“We use it for interactive writing every day, and the kids are getting so good at using the different tools on the board,” said Hagedorn.

The group reviewed sight words, “a,” “and” “the” among others and the students used a highlighter tool to show Schreiner they knew where certain words appeared in an exercise on the board. The teachers said the students also love to see their favorite books in action like “Pete the Cat” on the board or “The Kissing Hand” read by the author, Audrey Penn, on an Online Storytime website hosted by Barnes & Noble.

Jason Maxfield, a fourth-grade teacher, also has a new Promethean Board in his classroom this year. District fourth-grade classes are departmentalized, which means students have different core subjects with different teachers. Maxfield teaches math and reading.

“The kids respond better to the visuals on it,” he said. “Instead of me doing all of the talking, I can put something on the board and they can discuss it. The students see the benefits of getting this kind of technology into the classroom. They love going up to the board to do different activities. It’s so popular that sometimes, they start to argue over who gets to go up there.”

He described some other advantages of having the unit in his room.

“I can have one group working up at the board, which allows me to work with other groups at their desks. It also allows me to plan more lessons ahead of time,” he said.

Maxfield is happy that his school’s PTA aimed high. “It’s going to be a hard goal to reach but they see it as something that’s definitely worthwhile.

“I’m still learning to use the board. I have been to four or five Promethean training sessions and I’m just scratching the surface of what these things can do.”