Index Pages
Posting Your Class Agenda With PowerPoint
Posting Your Class Agenda With PowerPoint
Many researchers and many principals say that teachers should post their class agendas every day for every class. While there are many ways to do this, some are more time-consuming than others. I use PowerPoint in my class all day, every day, and this class agenda idea worked itself into my PowerPoint world. When I was able to use a Promethean/ActivBoard, I transferred the idea to it and it was wonderful. If I fail to note it below, please remember that this concept works just as well with an ActivBoard/SmartBoard/Mimio as it does with PowerPoint.
I call these agendas "Index Pages" because they remind me of an index in a book. I guess they could be "table of contents" pages, too, but I chose "index" instead. Basically an index page is a single PowerPoint or IWB slide with everything you plan to do during class. Some things you will link to from the index page; other items will just be titles of things that do not require links. Links can be easily made to PowerPoint or IWB files which have lyrics, games, information, music files, and/or videos. You can also link easily outside of your computer. Google Earth and educational websites are examples.
There are many permutations that can be made on this idea. Use the illustration to help you see the process.
Every activity I plan for the week (5-day rotation) is input onto the slide. Any activity that has a corresponding file for lyrics, or background knowledge or whatever gets a hyperlink to that file. The index page will say "America", for example. Click on the link and you will see the slide with the lyrics to "America" and also a sound icon which is linked to the .wav or mp3 file stored on the external hard drive of my computer. Another link might take you to a listening selection or even to a site on audience etiquette via the internet. By using a remote wireless presentation mouse, I can click any link or move forward and backward through the slides from anywhere in the room or even at the computer.
No passing out books or lyric sheets, no getting out posters, no writing on the board, no going back and forth to the CD player is necessary for many activities using this set up. There are times, however, that lyric sheets and writing on the board and posters are the best way to go, of course, but I'm not tied to nearly as many as I used to be. This saves a lot of paper and storage bother.
You may want to download a simplified example. (The links will not work in this example due to some limits within the CMS web-creation system.) Then you may want to continue reading to understand my procedure for creating index pages every week.
Setting up your first index page
Open PowerPoint or Keynote or other presentation software. Start with a blank slide.
Using the table tool, divide your slide into 6 sections. Rearrange the boxes so that there are 3 big vertical ones on top of 3 small boxes.
Use your table tool to merge the bottom boxes into one box.
Choose three colors for fill color, one for each vertical box. I used tints of the covers of my grade level series books as my inspiration for the colors. Do not add color to the merged box.
Save your work and then insert a duplicate slide.
I use the first slide for grades 3, 4 and 5 and the second slide for K, 1 and 2. So at the top of each box, type the grade level you will be working with.
You could save this as your Index Page template if you want. Just save it as "index page" and when you need fresh pages, there they are. Remember to save your new page with a different date or name!
Consider setting up a folder for these pages in your PowerPoint presentations folder. When you are doing links, this makes navigation a lot easier to manage.
The tall boxes will contain the names of your activities. Some will be linked to other items, some won't.
The tall boxes may also contain reminders, announcements or key words that you want to be sure to cover.
In addition, the tall boxes may contain the title and composer of the listening selection of the week and key ideas that the students need to be reminded of. Highlighting this is effective.
The merged box will contain the dates of use for the slide. It is also a good place to add holidays or classes that are absent that week.
In the "notes" view, you can add your music standards, notes to yourself, instructions for that dance that you just can't get straight...... make it useful!
Using an Interactive White Board (IWB) such as ActivBoard or SmartBoard, you could just list the activities or make "boxes" for each grade as you could with a PowerPoint index page. I found it useful to make links to flipcharts (Activboard files) that were stored outside of the index flipchart, rather than having a huge long flipchart.
You may also wish to do a separate page per grade rather than having a common page that covers all grades. You need to make it work for your own purposes.
Changing your index page You'll need to change these pages frequently, of course. Save the file with the dates appropriate. I suggest this format
"04 9-13 07."
Rather than starting over from scratch, consider saving the pages you used this week with next week's dates "04 16-20 07." Then start changing the slides.
First, change the dates on the bottom of the slide. Add special events for the week.
Activities that you will repeat will remain on the slide - no retyping.
Delete the items you won't be using this week.
Then add the new activities. Insert any links to pre-created PowerPoints or to sounds or other files/locations.
Other things to add
The way I insert music is first to rip the CD into my hard drive. Then I link it in the index page.
You can insert downloaded YouTube videos into a separate slide and then link to them from the index page.
Do you get tired of the excuse "you didn't tell me?" (and that's from the parents?!?) Add a highlighted box at the top of the slide - choose a red fill - and drop the reminder text into it. Example: two weeks before the project is due, type "Projects due in two weeks." The following week, type "Project is due next week." The last week, type "Project is due today."
Print out slides for student handouts or even tests. Use the projected slide to point to help students track the words or notes or to help find their places on the sheet.
Create slides with directions for activities. Then they are easy to refer students to during the activity.
Insert timers. Use the automatic advance option to advance to a new slide every 30 seconds, every minute - your choice, of course.
For a thirty second timer, try this. Title your first slide "30 seconds left" and add a graphic of a clock. Title your next slide "10 seconds left" and add the graphic. Title the last slide "Time is up. Please take your seat." Go to the "slide transition" option in PowerPoint to set the slides to advance every so-many seconds. In this case, it would be 20 seconds and 10 seconds. Timers work well and you just put in a link from your index page to the timer. The students can look at the screen to see how much time is left. No questions needed.
Graphic organizers can be projected onto the screen. Write your examples on the screen itself and erase them when you're done. If you have an IWB, you can save the written examples. FWIW- many doc cameras (examples include Avervision and Elmo) allow you to take pictures of whatever you've been showing. You can save that completed graphic organizer that you've been projecting with the doc camera, send it to the computer and insert it into a Powerpoint or IWB slide for later use.
Click here to download a real life Powerpoint index page, warts and all.
The links to the files are not active, but I hope you'll get the point.
In the 2nd and 5th grades, the slide says "program music." It's not a discussion about music that tells a story. These grades will be having a performance in a couple of weeks so I created a "program" slide with all the links to their songs, lyrics, etc. That way next week, I can link to the program slide without having to change anything. It is much neater looking, more visually appealing than having all the pieces listed alongside all the information in the other grades.
Here is a real life ActivInspire flipchart index page. The links have been removed due to the size of the file!
Enjoy, use, adapt, ignore, make it your own. I change it all the time to suit my needs and I invite you to do the same thing. The PowerPoint examples here are from 2007 and my taste has changed somewhat since then. That's fine - it'll give you the idea and now YOU can run with it!
Martha
First Posted - April 11, 2007
I call these agendas "Index Pages" because they remind me of an index in a book. I guess they could be "table of contents" pages, too, but I chose "index" instead. Basically an index page is a single PowerPoint or IWB slide with everything you plan to do during class. Some things you will link to from the index page; other items will just be titles of things that do not require links. Links can be easily made to PowerPoint or IWB files which have lyrics, games, information, music files, and/or videos. You can also link easily outside of your computer. Google Earth and educational websites are examples.
There are many permutations that can be made on this idea. Use the illustration to help you see the process.
Every activity I plan for the week (5-day rotation) is input onto the slide. Any activity that has a corresponding file for lyrics, or background knowledge or whatever gets a hyperlink to that file. The index page will say "America", for example. Click on the link and you will see the slide with the lyrics to "America" and also a sound icon which is linked to the .wav or mp3 file stored on the external hard drive of my computer. Another link might take you to a listening selection or even to a site on audience etiquette via the internet. By using a remote wireless presentation mouse, I can click any link or move forward and backward through the slides from anywhere in the room or even at the computer.
No passing out books or lyric sheets, no getting out posters, no writing on the board, no going back and forth to the CD player is necessary for many activities using this set up. There are times, however, that lyric sheets and writing on the board and posters are the best way to go, of course, but I'm not tied to nearly as many as I used to be. This saves a lot of paper and storage bother.
You may want to download a simplified example. (The links will not work in this example due to some limits within the CMS web-creation system.) Then you may want to continue reading to understand my procedure for creating index pages every week.
Setting up your first index page
Open PowerPoint or Keynote or other presentation software. Start with a blank slide.
Using the table tool, divide your slide into 6 sections. Rearrange the boxes so that there are 3 big vertical ones on top of 3 small boxes.
Use your table tool to merge the bottom boxes into one box.
Choose three colors for fill color, one for each vertical box. I used tints of the covers of my grade level series books as my inspiration for the colors. Do not add color to the merged box.
Save your work and then insert a duplicate slide.
I use the first slide for grades 3, 4 and 5 and the second slide for K, 1 and 2. So at the top of each box, type the grade level you will be working with.
You could save this as your Index Page template if you want. Just save it as "index page" and when you need fresh pages, there they are. Remember to save your new page with a different date or name!
Consider setting up a folder for these pages in your PowerPoint presentations folder. When you are doing links, this makes navigation a lot easier to manage.
The tall boxes will contain the names of your activities. Some will be linked to other items, some won't.
The tall boxes may also contain reminders, announcements or key words that you want to be sure to cover.
In addition, the tall boxes may contain the title and composer of the listening selection of the week and key ideas that the students need to be reminded of. Highlighting this is effective.
The merged box will contain the dates of use for the slide. It is also a good place to add holidays or classes that are absent that week.
In the "notes" view, you can add your music standards, notes to yourself, instructions for that dance that you just can't get straight...... make it useful!
Using an Interactive White Board (IWB) such as ActivBoard or SmartBoard, you could just list the activities or make "boxes" for each grade as you could with a PowerPoint index page. I found it useful to make links to flipcharts (Activboard files) that were stored outside of the index flipchart, rather than having a huge long flipchart.
You may also wish to do a separate page per grade rather than having a common page that covers all grades. You need to make it work for your own purposes.
Changing your index page You'll need to change these pages frequently, of course. Save the file with the dates appropriate. I suggest this format
"04 9-13 07."
Rather than starting over from scratch, consider saving the pages you used this week with next week's dates "04 16-20 07." Then start changing the slides.
First, change the dates on the bottom of the slide. Add special events for the week.
Activities that you will repeat will remain on the slide - no retyping.
Delete the items you won't be using this week.
Then add the new activities. Insert any links to pre-created PowerPoints or to sounds or other files/locations.
Other things to add
The way I insert music is first to rip the CD into my hard drive. Then I link it in the index page.
You can insert downloaded YouTube videos into a separate slide and then link to them from the index page.
Do you get tired of the excuse "you didn't tell me?" (and that's from the parents?!?) Add a highlighted box at the top of the slide - choose a red fill - and drop the reminder text into it. Example: two weeks before the project is due, type "Projects due in two weeks." The following week, type "Project is due next week." The last week, type "Project is due today."
Print out slides for student handouts or even tests. Use the projected slide to point to help students track the words or notes or to help find their places on the sheet.
Create slides with directions for activities. Then they are easy to refer students to during the activity.
Insert timers. Use the automatic advance option to advance to a new slide every 30 seconds, every minute - your choice, of course.
For a thirty second timer, try this. Title your first slide "30 seconds left" and add a graphic of a clock. Title your next slide "10 seconds left" and add the graphic. Title the last slide "Time is up. Please take your seat." Go to the "slide transition" option in PowerPoint to set the slides to advance every so-many seconds. In this case, it would be 20 seconds and 10 seconds. Timers work well and you just put in a link from your index page to the timer. The students can look at the screen to see how much time is left. No questions needed.
Graphic organizers can be projected onto the screen. Write your examples on the screen itself and erase them when you're done. If you have an IWB, you can save the written examples. FWIW- many doc cameras (examples include Avervision and Elmo) allow you to take pictures of whatever you've been showing. You can save that completed graphic organizer that you've been projecting with the doc camera, send it to the computer and insert it into a Powerpoint or IWB slide for later use.
Click here to download a real life Powerpoint index page, warts and all.
The links to the files are not active, but I hope you'll get the point.
In the 2nd and 5th grades, the slide says "program music." It's not a discussion about music that tells a story. These grades will be having a performance in a couple of weeks so I created a "program" slide with all the links to their songs, lyrics, etc. That way next week, I can link to the program slide without having to change anything. It is much neater looking, more visually appealing than having all the pieces listed alongside all the information in the other grades.
Here is a real life ActivInspire flipchart index page. The links have been removed due to the size of the file!
Enjoy, use, adapt, ignore, make it your own. I change it all the time to suit my needs and I invite you to do the same thing. The PowerPoint examples here are from 2007 and my taste has changed somewhat since then. That's fine - it'll give you the idea and now YOU can run with it!
Martha
First Posted - April 11, 2007
