PowerPoint

PowerPoint used to be the "tool" that everyone used to present information or an interesting to give a lecture that included pictures, tables, charts, graphs, and words. After viewing the link provided, I concur that less is more. PowerPoint is useful as it provides a visual for students who need it and can help students get the key points of a lecture or lesson. The presentation needs to be kept short in length and minimal words and ideas need to be presented on each slide. I don't often see a PowerPoint presentation done at the elementary school level to teach students; however, students use it to prepare oral presentations. They like to add graphics, neat pictures, different colored fonts, and cool transitions to their slide shows to make them interesting.

We have had the opportunity to learn many new tools and different ways to present our lessons in this class. PowerPoint, like other mediums for teaching are one more way to make it interesting for not only the student, but the teacher as well.

I created this PowerPoint to teach an introductory lesson on Slope for a 7th grade PreAlgebra class, which was part of the chapter on Linear Functions. The lesson started with a review of material from a previous class. After the short review, the PowerPoint was started, showing the video clip, followed by the vocabulary words associated with slope. The vocabulary words were done interactively with the students actively participating in "rise" and "run". After the PowerPoint was completed, a hands-on lesson using white boards and an overhead completed the lesson plan.