Interactive PowerPoint

Making a PowerPoint presentation interactive involves a lot of work, but hopefully pays off in the end.  Rather than just slide after slide of bulletted lists that put kids (and adults!) to sleep, interactive PowerPoints mean that kids are working individually or with small groups to find the answers to questions. 

I made an interactive PowerPoint to teach kids about continents and oceans, a third grade SOL.  Figuring out how I could get it to look how I wanted took some work.  The process is time consuming.  It’s a great thing for the kids to do, but I’ll probably be making these over the summer when I have more time rather than during the school year.  Teachers can make these for any concept in any subject area.  There is a wealth of information on the Internet and it is easy to link the slides to sites that provide students with the information they need.  When students are working to create something, answer a question, or solve a problem they are more involved in their learning and retain the information much better.