The greatest wisdom I’ve heard in my career was from my Master Teacher, Anthony Tebelskis:
The secret of good teaching is taking kids from the concrete to the abstract.
In other words: Making the hard stuff easy.
Since then, over 10 years have passed and I’ve learned several ways to make that happen. Along with with crucial strategies, I use several “tech toys” in my fourth grade classroom, specifically:
- PowerPoint
- A platform visual presenter
- Blogs for students
- Moodle software
This is the first in a series of four articles sharing how I’ve used technology to take my students farther than traditional means. I will be including actual samples of my work which you are free to download and use, or make your own.
PowerPoint in the Classroom
Microsoft’s PowerPoint is a powerful tool to use within the classroom. It makes abstract concepts more comprehensible than traditional teaching tools.
- Applies real life photos and videos to the concepts being taught, better imprinting memory.
- Animation and video help show importance and relevance of what is being taught.
- Vivid colorful slides as opposed to traditional black and white handouts.
- Digital slides replace the chalkboard or white-board with something much more exciting.
- Templates are easy to develop and can be changed quickly with each new lesson objective.
- Easy references for children to refer back to the slide.
- Frees the teacher from the front of the classroom, moving and engaging learners around the room.
Recently in my fourth grade class in the subject of Language Arts, I first introduced the students to the objective of the lesson with a PowerPoint slide that states clearly what we are about to learn:
Today, we will apply knowledge of synonyms, and antonyms to determine the meaning of words and phrases.
The slide features the words, with definition of key terminology, and incorporates visual images that represent the symbolism of the terms. The two images represent “electricity” which visually introduces background knowledge of dams and electrical towers. These images will later help illustrate synonyms and antonyms in the slide show.
I use the Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI) strategy in my classes, a technique that was developed by Dr. Sylvia Ybarra and a company called Data Works. 
It has revolutionized my class’ scores and it works seamlessly with PowerPoint. It is similar to to the traditional lesson plan steps but some other key elements are added. Each part of the lesson is distinct step, like a slide:
- Learning Objective
- Activate Prior Knowledge
- Importance
- Concept Development
- Skill Development
- Guided Practice
- Closure
- Independent Practice
The next slide shows how the students already know something about the material. This is referred to in EDI as “Activate Prior Knowledge.” The students show they understand what “drought” means based on the idea of a dam in a desert. From here we can teach the students that there are other ways to determine the meaning of unknown words through understanding synonyms and antonyms. This step uses the concept of “scaffolding” or connecting what is known with what is unknown.
Students appreciate the ability to refer back to the slide when asked a question. In addition, they remember the visuals and make connections for more quickly through the presentation than they ever did with traditional “teach from the front” methods. As a teacher, I like the visual engagement as well as the way I can travel throughout the room with a remote. This keeps all the kids on their toes and paying attention.
Integrating PowerPoint Into the Classroom
To incorporate Microsoft’s PowerPoint or a similar slide show program into your classroom, you require a laptop or computer with the software installed and a printer and/or digital projector for displaying the image on a screen from your computer.
PowerPoint includes the ability to print out Notes, pages that feature the slide image with spaces for teacher notes and instructions or left blank for the student to take notes. These can be printed in black and white or color as hand-outs.
In addition to Microsoft’s PowerPoint, you can use the following presentation and slide programs:
- Corel’s WordPerfect Presentation
- Open Office Impress (Open Source)
- Scala
- Smilebox
Links for more tips and information on using Presentation software in the classroom such as PowerPoint here:
- A K-12 Staff Development PowerPoint Tutorial
- Effective Teaching with PowerPoint
- Teach-Nology Tutorial
- How to Keynote in Presentations
- Office XP Tutorial for Educators
My PowerPoint Lesson is available for download: Synonyms and Antonyms with Electricity 4 PPT (1.27 MB)
Teaching requires all your wit and candor to reach the kids. When the copy machine takes more than you have, it kind of wrecks your day, doesn’t it? I want to give you an example of how blogs can be therapeutic as well as educational, as I take you through a day when I was truly at the end of my rope! 
