It never feels like a chore to them, particular if it involves something interactive like playing a game. The children tend to love technology, and it’s a great way into learning. SMART has enabled me to split up the classroom and do some focused teaching for 20 minutes, then let the students do another activity that is more learning through play. If I’m trying to get an entire class to do a task at the same time it can become complicated. Splitting the children up into smaller groups is a great way for me to get some high-quality teaching in with my focus group. If a particular child is struggling with their handwriting task they can just walk up to the board and press play themselves. In the lesson I just hit play on the screen and the children can see how letters and words are being formed.

Before the lesson I use the page recorder, which allows me to capture my own handwriting. For English the SMART Board really comes into its own when I’m teaching spelling or handwriting. In Year 1 they are still at a very young age and are making the transition from learning through play – with a SMART Board I’m helping to bridge that gap by giving them a game that’s fun and exciting to do. If they end up getting a few answers wrong we can pause the game and look for the solution together. It’s them driving the learning rather than me, and it’s a case of them discovering the right answer rather than me just telling them. I want the entire class to have input so I bring students up in groups to interact with the board. I start today’s lessons off with Maths and have already devised a lab activity on the SMART Board. We can come back to this throughout the day so the children know what they’ll be doing next. I’ve also used the board to create a visual timetable of all the events happening at school today. They can get on with this task straight away, which is particularly helpful as I can spend some time talking to parents. Today it was practising spelling, so I set up a picture clue on the board telling the children which books they need to get out. When I arrive in the morning I load up the board with an ‘early start’ task. I teach all subjects, so in the morning we focus on Maths and English, then in the afternoon we are topic-based around a theme. Now I teach 5 and 6 year olds in Year 1 at Castlechurch Primary School in Stafford, and SMART is integral to my working day (my classroom has a SMART 6000 with Notebook 17.1 software).

Smart notebook 17.1 key