design for simplicity - Promethean Planet

design for simplicity
1. Keep instructions clear and flipchart pages clutter-free.
• The trick is to try a variety of strategies and make instructions short and clear. No
ambiguities.
• Keep flipchart pages clutter free and avoid too much text.
• Symbols and pictures can say things more clearly.
Blacanni
Promethean Planet Forum
2. Use large graphics and sound.
“Make sure pages are simple and that any graphics are large enough to see. Use a lot of sound and
reinforcement.”
Regina
Promethean Planet Forum
Here is an example of a voting page:
• Its directions are short and clear
• It is clutter free and avoids too much text
• Students can click on the book to show the letter on the lines if they are not sure of the answer
• The ‘book’ icon opens up another page

orrow from other teachers
3. Use ready-made flipcharts from Promethean Planet!
“Any flipchart can be used with special needs students – unless it is all auditory based [for deaf
students.] We can use a lot of downloaded lessons as they are, for others we just make adjustments
– change a particular vocabulary, add a few more visuals.”
Mari Liles
Texas School for the Deaf
use movies/animation for greater impact
4. Include movies in your flipcharts to aid in comprehension.
“It’s important for us to have movies in flipcharts so students can get a better idea of what the teacher
is trying to get across, for example - an owl moving its head around – you need a picture or movie for
that!”
Mari Liles, director of technology
Texas School for the Deaf
Austin, TX – US

5. Use the Activsoftware screen recorder to reinforce skills or concepts.
“I often use the screen video tool in the software
to demonstrate an activity and play back the
activity as a reference.
“This way it can be called upon at any point in
the lesson.”
Kevin Ruddell, Year 1 & 2 teacher
Danecourt School
Kent, UK
include sound for audio learners
6. Use the Sound Recorder to record verbal directions.
“Instead of written instructions I would record my own voice for my students to listen to. This worked
so well I did it with other groups of children, too!”
Marnie
Promethean Planet Forum
In the flipchart page below, the directions are written. But by clicking on the ‘girl icon’ students can also
hear the directions. This page also uses the ‘containers’ feature of Activstudio so only letters that belong
on the line will stay with a nice reward sound. The rest of the letters will bounce back to where they were
originally.
You can download this lesson directly from Planet and use it in your classroom.

incorporate visual cues
7. Select appropriate font and sizes.
“It’s important to remember that what size of font you use, and also the text color are dependent upon
the visual learning difficulties my pupils have in the classroom.
“Obviously a bigger font is much easier for many pupils to read, but this isn’t the case with all pupils,
so you really need to vary the techniques used according to the abilities of the class.”
Kevin Ruddell, Year 1 & 2 teacher
Danecourt School
Kent, UK
8. Use lots of color, and the highlighter tool for those who need more visual
support.
“The Activboard is great for visual cues
such as ‘regrouping’ in math where I can
use a different color showing
regrouping, especially with subtracting
across zeros. That's just one specific
example.
“I also use the highlighter to show key
words - something that can't be done
with dry erase board and chalkboards.
This is advantageous for math word
problems, and language use which is an
extra challenge for my deaf students.”
Caroline Koo, elementary teacher
Texas School for the Deaf
Austin, TX - US
To get a great idea for teaching subtraction with regrouping, check out this flipchart!
9. Try the paint bucket to emphasize words with one click.
“The paint bucket in Activstudio will allow students to fill
in any word just by clicking on the word, with paint
bucket tool selected. It fills up the whole word in one
click!”
Lisa D
Promethean Planet Forum

10. Use the spotlight and reveal/blind tools to focus attention.
“I use the blind [reveal] tool to slowly reveal part of a shape, drawing attention to what I’m teaching
on the Activboard and then offering the class the opportunity to guess the correct shape.”
Kevin Ruddell, Year 1 & 2 teacher
Danecourt School
Kent, UK
integrate with third party applications
11. Use Boardmaker to quickly add symbols to text in your flipcharts
Several teachers at the Texas School for the Deaf in Austin, TX (US) mention that they use
Boardmaker to help create flipcharts with lots of symbols and images. Board Maker is a picture
communication symbol program. It brings up symbols and text that go together to help students
understand the text.
Connie Potersnak, Special Needs Department Science Teacher at the Texas School for the Deaf
uses Boardmaker with her Activboard to bring stories to life. Connie comments: “The Boardmaker
pictures, as well as the scanned pictures, can help allow my students to understand story order or
sequence.”
Mari Liles further adds: “We use it [Boardmaker] with special needs kids who have other language
and communication barriers. Maybe the student has cerebral palsy and doesn’t sign as well, or the
student doesn’t have great mobility.
“The kids point to symbols, so for some students who are severely impacted, they use this as a sole
means of communication – they point to symbols instead of, or in conjunction with, sign language.”
Here is a page from a submitted flipchart that uses Boardmaker-type symbols to represent key words
in the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance.

12. Use Activsoftware tools to supplement off-board activities.
As well as using the Activboard for flipchart-based work, Kevin Ruddell has also used it as a learning
tool for warm-up activities, in particular, using the dice function.
“As I use the Brain Gym series of CD’s as a mental warm-up activity in the morning, I find that I can
use the dice tool to select a song off the CD for the class to sing.”
Kevin Ruddell, Year 1 & 2 teacher
Danecourt School
Kent, UK
13. Bring life to your existing applications with the Activclassroom.
“We use ‘Cloze Pro’ daily to reinforce vocabulary development. ‘Clicker’ is an outstanding program for
creating stories, doing sentence word order, and creating books. You can use sign language pictures
and fingerspelling with this program. I use so many programs that it is hard to list them but BrainPOP
and Education City are two great examples because they offer the print version and my deaf students
have access to work independently.
Carilynne Gay, 1st Grade Teacher
Texas School for the Deaf
Austin, TX – US
Several teachers on the Planet forum also mentioned that they use BrainPOP with their special needs
students. Both BrainPOP and BrainPOP Jr. are sites exploring hundreds of topics, and work
extraordinarily well on an Activboard.
BrainPOP videos can play full screen on the Activboard and can show closed captions for the hearing
disabled. After watching a BrainPOP movie, students can use the Activotes to answer questions.
Further
information on using BrainPOP in your Activclassroom can be found on Planet.

introduce movement for improved motor skills
14. Provide students with easier access to the Activboard with the Activwand.
“The Activwand really helps students who are small in size to be able to access everything! It is
awesome to use the Activboard as a learning center across the curriculum areas. The students use
the wand and it allows them to work a variety of programs independently.
Carilynne Gay, 1st Grade Teacher
Texas School for the Deaf
Austin, TX – US
“The Activwand works great with wheelchair kids, and kids with fine motor skills problems.”
Connie Potersnak, Special Needs Department Science Teacher
Texas School for the Deaf
Austin, TX – US
15. Use the Activpen to help improve motor skills.
To improve the handwriting and motor skills of his class, Kevin Ruddell uses a very simple technique
with Activprimary using the Activpen to trace lines.
“I start off with as large as possible pen size, which I then use to draw a line. I then ask one of my
pupils to come up to the Activboard and trace over the line, either up or down, or left to right. As
mentioned earlier [See tip #??], this is a perfect activity to use the video capture tool.”
Kevin Ruddell, Year 1 & 2 teacher
Danecourt School
Kent, UK

16. Let the Students Write Big!
17. Use matching activities for better hand-eye coordination.
“One strategy I've found
successful is having pupils write
words which they are having a
particular problem with on the
Activboard, but have them write
the words really big.
“Having to do this seems to help
them remember, sort of like
writing in sand has been shown to
help!
Blacanni
Promethean Planet Forum
To improve hand-eye coordination, Kevin creates a simple flipchart for matching activities, in which
his students have to match up the word to an image.
“For this activity I would create a flipchart with various images, and then ask the pupil to draw a line to
the word from the correlating image. By selecting a thicker than average pen size for the line, my
pupils are able to match the images up much easier.”
Kevin Ruddell, Year 1 & 2 teacher
Danecourt School
Kent, UK

teach young students using activprimary and
lots of images!
18. Entice young students to participate using Activprimary.
“My Activclassroom includes a motivating set of tools and the kids love to interact and use the variety
of features. The Activprimary tools are easy to use and they allow very young students to explore and
to work independently with the activity.
Carilynne Gay, 1st Grade Teacher
Texas School for the Deaf
Austin, TX – US
19. Use images to teach young students mathematical concepts.
Everyone knows that pictures are a more dynamic medium than text, something which Kevin Ruddell
makes full use of in his numeracy lessons.
“When teaching numeracy I tend to use images instead of numbers for my infant class, and a mixture
of numbers and images for my older pupils, which helps them understand numeracy in a much more
simpler format.”
Kevin Ruddell, Year 1 & 2 teacher
Danecourt School
Kent, UK

take advantage of the activclassroom’s
versatility
20. Use the Activboard for a variety of teaching activities – centers, individual
instruction, group activities
“We use the Activboard for centers, individual instruction, and group activities. One of my favorite
activities involves the basal reader. We have made flipcharts with the stories, and using the
Activboard allows a fantastic visual experience that is so important to our deaf students. We do
picture walks, character studies, and choral read using these flipcharts.
I also use the Activboard to do the morning message and daily language activities. It allows the
students a visual and interactive experience that engages them and creates a motivating learning
environment.
The big plus is ‘visual learning’ for our kids and the ability to design flipcharts that meet the individual
needs of our students.
I cannot imagine teaching without my Activclassroom. I use it ALL day, EVERY day.”
Carilynne Gay, 1st Grade Teacher
Texas School for the Deaf
Austin, TX – US