English with the Activboard

English is a global language, spoken by millions and taught by many Planet members. This feature aims to highlight how your whiteboard can be used to bring together reading and writing skills, combining the interactive elements of whiteboard technology with a love of language to great effect.

Explore the possibilities

There are many tips that you could use to facilitate your English lesson, to make the subject memorable and help inspire your pupils. Here are just a few suggestions, applicable for both primary and secondary teachers.

Using the flipchart as a book

Think of the flipchart as a big interactive book. You can guide the story through the page turning effects, create suspension by leading on to a different page and even have different endings - simply arrange the order of the end page and ask your class to suggest the outcome.

Sounds with sight

Why not use the sound recorder tool to create your own narrative? Substitute speech bubbles for an audio clip, a great way to get your class involved. You could also use it to record atmospherics such as weather conditions.
 

Imagine with images

Make full use of the resource packs available on Planet, plus your extensive image library within the software, to bring meaning and colour to words. For example, what did Emily Bronte look like? What did the witches of Macbeth wear?
 

Involvement

Create your own storyboard with four images hidden behind a coloured box. Use the dice funtion to select a box and reveal the image behind it. Give your class 10 minutes to think up a story connected to that image.

Deconstruct words

Why not use the deconstruct tool to pull out key words? If you're covering the use of verbs, ask a pupil to identify the verbs in a sentence. The deconstruct function will then replicate the identified verb once selected.

Container correction

Why not use the container tool to reject miss-spelt words? Have two boxes for right and wrong answers and a number of miss-spelt and correctly spelt questions on the whiteboard. Set an action so that the container will only accept the right or wrong answer into it.