Play Games

Download one of the games from SMART Exchange, the Gallery, or the web and display it on the interactive whiteboard. You can easily start a simple game like Hangman, word search, Sudoku, Scrabble, or a puzzle, and ask students or audience members to add to it. For children, get the map of a continent, scramble the countries, and ask them to put it together; have a list of names of countries and have them drag and drop where they belong.

You can get really creative with a map. For example, if you’re teaching the states on the U.S. map, display the map with a sound behind it. If the correct state is placed in the map, add a clapping sound; if the wrong state is placed in the map, have a “Try again” sound played. You can open a window to access the Internet and ask students to fill in facts about states, such as the capital city, population, state bird, and so on.

Puzzles and games are great as ice breakers or teaching tools. Pictionary is a great one! Ask someone to draw a picture and have the rest of the group guess what it is. If it’s a learning activity, you can have a set of words on one of the SMART Notebook pages — perhaps vocabulary words learned during the week — and ask students to draw the words.

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