Kindergarten students sit in semi-circle fashion before a StarBoard screen. On the screen are pictured several fruits and vegetables beside a balance scale.
“Which fruit do you think is the heaviest?” asks Miss Fink. Students make their guesses. Some think it’s the pineapple.
“Which do you think is heavier: a banana or a pineapple?” asks the teacher. “Let’s weigh them.” A student goes to the StarBoard and, with an electronic wand, moves a banana onto one side of the scale and a pineapple onto the other. “Why did the scale go down on the pineapple side?”
“Cause it weighs a ton!” replies one boy.
“Well, not a ton,” laughs the teacher, “but it weighs more than the banana.”
In adjoining classrooms, kindergarten teachers Sherra Fink and Nicole Halstead use StarBoards to teach weights and measures, and how to make comparisons and predictions.
The interactive whiteboards were installed in the kindergarten classrooms last January. Now every K-5 classroom at Fruit Valley Community Learning Center has a StarBoard with built-in software thanks to generous donations from Great Western Malting.
Built-in software is geared for different grade levels, and teachers have flexibility in how it’s used. The same weights and measures program used for kindergarten students also is used for older students, who add, subtract and multiply the weights in grams to make comparisons.
The teachers use the StarBoards for morning work (calendar, weather, shapes, colors), and to enhance lessons in math, science, social studies, music, and reading. Students are more active in their learning, and they’re demonstrating their knowledge before others in the class. “I love to see the kids teaching us. They are so engaged this year,” said Fink.
She notes that children often have limited language skills when they enter kindergarten. She and Halstead use the Internet to post pictures next to new words to help students understand and remember them.
“It feels like we can teach a lot faster,” says Fink. “There is never a lost moment.”
