Week 4

PowerPoint is a program that I have become fairly familiar with.  Lately, I have used this program with a third through fifth grade group of ELL students.  We had been learning about different animals and how each animal lived and what its habits were.  We were preparing for our trip to the zoo, because many of my students had never encountered many of the animals, and definitely did not know how to say their names in English.  I created a PowerPoint that was a review game of the animals.  I downloaded a sample Jeopardy board off the internet and I changed the categories to fit my class needs.  Pictures and sounds are key for my students.  The less confusing words they are, the more likely they are to retain the information.  One of the columns on the Jeopardy board I made into animal sounds.  When the student selected this column they would be presented with a link that would play the animal sound.  The students would guess as to which animal that was, and once they had given their answer I would switch to the answer screen where there would be a picture of the animal with the animal's name written in BIG, BOLD letters.  The students were very excited to play this game!!  They had a great trip to the zoo, and they would even walk through the zoo quizzing each other on what the animal names were.

I knew that this style of Jeopardy board existed on the internet, but I was very proud of myself for figuring out how to insert a sound into a specific slide.  This really was a hit with the students and I was glad that it worked as planned.  Usually, there are at least a few hiccups with a project like this, but the presentation went off without a hitch.  If I did this presentation again I would also include some harder questions.  I was focused on my lower students and catering to their needs, but in doing this, my higher students became a little bored.  They were still engaged with the game, and were excited to play it, but the questions were too easy for them.  It will be a tricky balance for me to use a whole group game like this with my students, so that I keep the higher ones engaged, but don't completely lose my lower students.  Overall, the students loved the presentation, and that it was in a different format than the ones we had used previously in the year.  They were able to be actively involved with this game, and they took a lot of information away from it.