Sight Word Books Using Interactive Writing on Mimio & Book Creator App!

Did you know that you can use your interactive whiteboard or projector for interactive writing? It is so easy! The kids love it and you can save yourself some chart paper. The files are also printable, so after you finish an interactive writing project you can print, laminate, bind and place in your reading center! Keep reading to see some awesome examples from Mrs. Elenbaas' kindergarten classroom.

I am often asked how to effectively use interactive whiteboards in the classroom, and using them for interactive writing or shared reading is such a simple, effective way to utilize these tools. Watch this short video to see how Mrs. Elenbaas uses her Mimio in her classroom to make an interactive sight word book for the word "the".

Mrs. Elenbaas made this using Mimio Notebook software. She wanted to make a book about their school, Broadwater, so she took pictures of the school, her classroom, etc. She then inserted these pictures into a Notebook page using "insert" > "file".

Select the image or file you'd like to insert, and it will show up in your Notebook file. If the image you'd like is on a website or on your screen already, you can use the "screen clipping" option to take a quick screenshot and insert into your Notebook file. You can then resize the image to fit your page correctly by dragging the corners. Mrs. Elenbaas did this for each image she wanted the students to write about, putting each one on a separate page.

Mrs. Elenbaas then used the text box to add lines onto her pages. She and her kindergartners are working on the sight word "the", so they will write the word "the" on each line using interactive writing.

When they are finished, she will print their "The School" book and it will be added to their reading center.

She then extended this activity by having students begin to make their own "The School" books using the app Book Creator (you could also use the app ScribblePress for this - it is available for free to teachers in our district if you send a HelpTicket).

She taught students the basic elements of Book Creator, and they began their own "The School" stories by typing their title onto the cover. They then learned how to use the camera in Book Creator to add photos of their classroom to their book. The next steps will be using the pen tool in Book Creator to add the word "the" to their pages, and then reading each page using the audio tool. These can be easily exported as videos into Seesaw!