Week 4: PowerPoint Presentations

Since I have become a little more familiar with PowerPoint and all that it offers, I was very excited to use this program with my kindergarten students.  I knew that if my lesson was going to be effective, it needed to include lots of graphics, sound effects, and plenty of opportunities for my students to get involved.  With this particular group of students, a simple slide show of information definitely wouldn't cut it!
With the end of the year approaching, we decided to do a unit on our five senses.  I thought this unit would be a great opportunity for me to use the PowerPoint program with my students.
The PowerPoint I created was used as an introduction for the unit on our senses.  I was most proud of the first slide.  Since most of my students weren't familiar with their five senses, the first slide included a person with no eyes, ears, nose, mouth, or hands.  As the students told me what was missing, I would click on those parts and there was a short audio clip explaining which "sense" each thing represented.  The students immediately wanted to share all of the ways they use their five senses.  We then did a sort of "nature walk", but on the PowerPoint.  As each picture came up on the screen, the students shared which senses they would use if they were in that location.  They really seemed to enjoy the presentation and were very engaged.  Their favorite parts were definitely those where there were graphics, sound effects, or games for them to play.  I really feel like they learned a lot about their senses because they were so engaged with what they were learning.
If I did this again, I would create it to not only be an introduction, but to be a presentation we could pull up all throughout the unit with games and quizzes to be used as short assessments.  After seeing how much fun my students had with this program, I look forward to using it with other classes in the future.  I was a little skeptical at first just because I always thought about PowerPoints being more of a "lecture" tool, but after learning about all of the neat options, I will definitely be using this program more often.