Teacher guide

Instructional ideas

Engage your class by using the digital backgrounds to capture the students’ ideas, show student thinking, and create artifacts of meaningful discussions.

• Create graphs to organize data and have students evaluate the information.

• Brainstorm ideas, questions, examples, and nonexamples. Organize ideas within a graphic organizer.

Enhance your lesson by using the full whiteboard space.

• Use the expandable whiteboard to place hidden problems or teaching points in different corners of the whiteboard. Use gestures to zoom in and out of the whiteboard to reveal information.

Extend learning by putting your students in the lead.

• Use the SMART Whiteboard as a student collaboration area.

• Add problems, information, or parts of your lesson to a whiteboard. Make the whiteboard part of a student-led station.

Instructional ideas

Engage your class by using ready-made graphic organizers to structure student insights and organize teaching points.

• Use a Venn diagram to compare topics from a unit of study.

• Use the Brainstorming web as a way to organize class ideas for a writing unit.

Enhance learning by using a digital manipulative as a student station.

• Convert the page to an individual Handout or collaborative Workspace.

• Students can lead each other in peer teaching activities.

Extend learning by pairing a ready-made activity with a widget.

• Infuse student choice into learning by adding a spinner with learning prompts to a graphic organizer or digital manipulative page.

• Extend learning by connecting to Lumio. Make lessons available on student devices in the classroom and at home.

Instructional ideas

Engage your class by adding interactive websites to your Favorites, and invite students to interact on the display.

• Annotate articles or current events to capture student connections.

• Use the Browser in small groups as a center for research, finding pictures, and reading articles.

Enhance your lessons by opening a resource on the board and making notes over it.

• Open multiple tabs of pictures to share with students.

• Students make connections by writing or drawing over each browser tab.

Extend learning by connecting to Lumio. This makes lessons available to student devices in the classroom and at home.

• Students can use the browser to conduct research in small groups. Encourage them to write notes on the screen to draw conclusions and foster discussion.

Instructional ideas

Engage your class by preparing daily tasks (such as calendars and morning messages) in a Whiteboard, leaving your teacher computer available for other tasks.

• Create substitute plans in Lumio and send them to the display when you’re out of the classroom. Ensure you are signed in and File Sync with Lumio is enabled.

• Link current events, “On this day in history”, riddles, or interesting facts as warm up material.

Enhance our teaching using material you already have.

• Open a practice PDF page in a SMART Whiteboard for students to access in centers or small groups.

• Copy the material from a USB drive or download files from OneDrive or Google Drive.

Extend learning by creating open-ended challenges and task cards for students to access after they finish their work.

• Create a choice board, like a tic-tac-toe choice board, with extension activities.

• Add a PDF that contains riddles, math problems, or logic problems.

Instructional ideas

Engage our class by creating class or subject-specific folders.

• Organize class notes, student response spaces, agendas, and collaborative brainstorming.

• Create a folder to use for each small group.

Enhance your lessons by creating a folder of activities or rotations for students to complete independently at the board. Tap the star on the folder to pin it to Favorites so students can access the folder from the Home screen.

• Add reference websites, interactive Lumio files, or PDFs to document student thinking.

• Create a folder for student work.

Extend learning by creating tiered folders for differentiation. Assign groups to different folders.

• Create folders for vocabulary review, application practice, and open-ended critical thinking activities.

• Create folders that contain background information with videos or scholarly texts for differentiation and real-world connections.

Instructional ideas

Engage your class with interactive widgets for hands-on learning and interactive classroom management.

• Add the clock widget; choose analog, digital, or both. Students can move the clock hands to practice telling time or to work on elapsed time problems.

• Use the timer widget to help students know when it’s time to rotate stations or time’s up on a classroom task.

Enhance your lessons with widgets to guide student creation and small group learning.

• Use the spinner widget on a SMART Whiteboard space as a starting point for challenges. For example:

  • Create a writer’s spinner with sections for setting, character, problem, and resolution.

  • Create a Math spinner with numbers and math symbols and have students spin it to create their own math problems.

Extend learning by having students use widgets to manage their own learning.

• Students use the timer widget to track different tasks to complete at the board.

• Students use the spinner widget or dice widgets to provide a variety of tasks for other students to complete.

Instructional ideas

Engage your class by using split screen to easily compare, contrast and analyze lesson content.

• Split between a text and the whiteboard so students can analyze vocabulary, author’s purpose, text features, and more.

• Use two texts side-by-side to compare and contrast writing styles, author’s tone, and other reading elements.

Enhance your lesson with split screen by encouraging collaboration with student-led stations.

• Students use a browser window and the whiteboard app to analyze and annotate selected texts to promote discussion.

• Use split screen to interact with interactive lesson content, such as PhET science activities. Use the interactive whiteboard to record notes and track hypotheses.

Extend your lesson by encouraging students to apply problem-solving and critical thinking skills with split screen.

• Use the Desmos app and a ready-made graphic organizer in the iQ whiteboard to have students graph functions in real time and analyze, compare, and make inferences about future plots.

• Encourage discussion and problem-solving by analyzing media in the browser (such as current events, news clips, or articles) and brainstorming about the impacts students can have on those events in an instant Shout It Out! activity.

Instructional ideas

Engage your class by sharing a computer screen to present a video, slideshow, PDF, or anything else you can show on your desktop.

• From your device, walk through step-by-step directions to help students understand what they’re supposed to do.

• Enrich discussions by sharing from multiple devices.

Enhance your lessons by asking students to share videos, images, or work that relates to the subject matter and share their thoughts with the class.

• Students can look for images, news articles, current events, or even songs of connecting ideas.

• Students can create metaphors or similes for the concepts they’re studying to show a deeper understanding.

Extend learning by having students share student-directed productions that use a variety of media and tools to present their ideas.

• Students can display slideshows, original movies, and digital work from their devices.

• Students can share notes and approaches to problem solving and compare similarities and differences.

Instructional ideas

Engage students by adding a Whole-class Whiteboard to a lesson and using it to model a concept, brainstorm, or gather ideas.

• In a Whole-class Whiteboard, students model concepts for their peers by solving a problem in a collective space.

• In a Whole-class Whiteboard, students organize concepts and brainstorm together about a new topic.

Enhance your lesson with a Whole-class Whiteboard activity and have students create a digital poster to demonstrate their understanding of a topic.

• Add a quotation or question to a Whole-class Whiteboard activity to start a digital discussion board.

Extend learning with a Whole-class Whiteboard activity where students can continue to apply their knowledge.

• Have students use the space outside of class to ask peers for help with homework and assignments.

Instructional ideas

Engage your class by adding an Instant Shout it Out! activity to check for understanding, create an exit ticket, or brainstorm on the fly.

• Ask students to share examples and nonexamples.

• Ask students to share key vocabulary then create a summary statement that uses the words shared by students.

Enhance your lessons by adding an instant Shout it Out! for students to share their goals for class and what they accomplished individually or in a group.

• Start a Shout it Out! to and ask, “What challenges are you facing?”

• Start a Shout it Out! to and ask, “What do you expect to complete by the end of class?”

Extend learning by adding an instant Shout it Out! and asking students to compose essay questions or math problems or to submit potential questions for an upcoming assessment.

• Students can pose debate questions for the next class related to the concepts taught that day.

• Have students share and ponder big questions of future impacts and innovations related to the topic.

Instructional ideas

Engage your class by writing or drawing on PDF curriculum resources.

• Work on and complete digital workspaces, such as worksheets, charts, graphic organizers, and more.

• Download a Google Doc or Google Slide as a PDF.

Enhance your lessons by having students use SMART Ink Document Viewer in centers and group collaboration to work on PDFs.

• Students can plan and organize their thinking and connections in graphic organizers, such as Venn diagrams, Frayer Models, T-Charts, or time lines.

• Find an article and have students work in teams to create a piece of Blackout Poetry by leaving only some of the words visible.

Extend learning by sharing saved lesson material on your learning management system for students to access out of class.

Instructional ideas

Engage your class by using SMART Recorder to demonstrate examples, modeling, and explanations.

• Record new ways of solving math problems to share with parents.

• Record and share key processes for students to refer to outside of class while doing homework.

Enhance your lessons by using SMART Recorder to capture student presentations, centers, and small group visual thinking.

• Create digital artifacts of class presentations.

• Use SMART recorder to capture group thoughts and work in rotations at the display.

Extend learning by using SMART Recorder to capture lessons students can access before class, and then work with students to apply the lessons in class.

• Introduce key vocabulary and big ideas before class to enhance prior knowledge.

• Provide an overview of the process so students can receive support in areas they don’t understand during class time. (Flipped Classroom)