It Is Easy Being Green with ELMO in the Classroom!

My Students

The best moment of class always comes at the end, when students have written something uniquely their own and over half of them thrust a hand high up in the air, hoping to be called on to share. They read aloud, but some students need to see the writing to give feedback. Enter ELMO.

Our school is innovative and completely teacher-run.

Because teachers make all curricular and administrative decisions, we focus on the kind of learning we know inspires our students: interdisciplinary, hands-on, student-centered, and fun! My seventh and eighth grade students are curious, thoughtful, and they enjoy writing. We are an urban public school in Massachusetts, and many students do not have a working computer and printer at home. Notebooks are still the favored tool for writing drafts. In class, students love to share their work and get feedback, but not all learners can hear a piece of writing read aloud once and understand it enough to give feedback. Middle school students especially need to develop their own voice as writers and as critical readers of the writing of others. Any tool that helps us do that in our classroom is fantastic, but when we can save paper and toner, the benefits aren't just educational, they're also ecological and economical!

My Project

The ELMO document camera allows a student or a teacher to place any object under the lens and have that object projected large on the whiteboard for the whole class to see. With the camera... *Students can share their in-class writing by placing their work under the camera and reading aloud, reaching both visual and auditory learners. *Teachers can take notes into a notebook projected onto the board, so students can better organize their own notebooks (a critical middle school skill) using the teacher's model notebook. *Any artifacts we use in class can be placed under the camera and projected for all to see while I point out the different parts, instead of just the few students up front seeing while others wait for it to be passed around.

This technology will help my students find their voice as writers and critical readers.

Please help them with their favorite part of class, sharing their work. As I have often found in teaching and in life, it all comes down to Sesame Street. Kermit said it wasn't easy being green, but for the new generation, it's not about Kermit anymore. It's all about ELMO.