Fantastic idea for Early Years and KS1

[Margaret Allen]

In the TES this week, Jill Haigh from St John's Primary, Walsall had a brilliant idea published.

Getting children to register themselves in the morning is always a good move ...

She wrote....

I put their names on one side of the board and on the other side of the board, a column headed "I am here". When they arrive, they take off their coats and go straight to the whiteboard to drag their name from one column to the other. Some need help with their name writing, so sometimes I leave off parts of names and they need to complete them using the pencil tool.

I think this is a superb way of getting the board used effectively and purposefully - well done Jill.

Any more good ideas?

I suppose you could always get the children to practice their handwriting skills by using the handwriting recognition facility within the "special tools" (hammer and spanner).

The beauty of this idea is that once you have typed their names in all you need to do each morning is open up this page.

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[Ali H]

I use a similar idea for recording and assessment purposes with my year 2 class. I've saved the children's names and individual photos into a resource file. If I want to identify individuals or groups of children linked to answering or asking specific questions, I just pull their name or photo onto the board near that object.
It's worked with "We asked a question on the carpet today", "Which shapes can I name?" "We are good listeners" and lots more. I use this method a lot to add to my comments when marking, or to assess speaking and listening.

[Margaret Allen]

A development on from that idea is to create a square shape which is the same size as your photo image. Make sure this shape is on the top layer and your image is beneath this. You can then have great fun "erasing" this shape to reveal them underneath.

Obviously you can save your "shape" in the resources area.

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[Jowen1]

Jill Haigh has contributed more files to link to the page below.

http://www.schools.walsallgfl.org.uk/interactive/walsallboards.htm