4-touch SMARTboard activity

Y'all. Teaching is hard work. And what's even harder than that is creating engaging activities that my 8th graders won't find too elementary and will still learn. I am not a big fan of the worksheet. I am, however, a big fan of repurposing worksheet questions into an engaging activity. 

When I moved to my new campus, I saw there was this huge SMARTboard in the hallway (kind of in a common area). I thought it was weird and assumed that maybe teachers didn't have them in there rooms as I had last year at my old campus. Nope, I still get one in my room. What is fancy about this one is that four students can "write" on the board at one time! Now, we can illustrate multiple ways to solve problems, race each other in a review game and so much more!

I decided to reserve the board for our first test review this past Thursday. I created a simple smart notebook file that had the problem with a line down the middle if the screen to reserve space for each team to work the problem out. Because of the unit we were in, I decided to just have two teams. It worked great! 

The original rules were that the whole group worked out the problem before sending a representative up to work out the problem. They could bring notes or whatever they needed. However, as they made a mistake, teammates would come up to the screen to help and before I knew it, half the class was trying to answer the question. Of course, they were working and I certainly didn't want to stifle that. 

There were several times that I had to stop the game because they would get SO into it that there would be actual shrieking. Now, while this didn't bother me so much, we were surrounded by several other classrooms and had to control our noise or we wouldn't be allowed back!

Gotta love teamwork!