Interactive Sentences Unsing ActivInspire

Have you been trying to figure out a way to engage your students a little more while they are in their writing centers creating sentences?  Why not use your ActivBoard and ActivInspire to make creating sentences a little more fun.  There is a tool called Append Text that will allow your students create sentences by Appending (adding text) after a sentence starter word.

To set this up you will need to open ActivInspire and on a new flipchart create your list of words that you want students to use to create sentences.  Then in a blank area of the page put your sentence starter word, remember to put a space after it.  Move the words on the screen in an area where they are not in the way of the sentence they are creating.  You can also use objects to provide a visual component for your students.  This will allow you to reach from Pre K students and up.  

For the rest of the words: Watch the video to see this in action

• Open Action Browser (View - Browsers, or CTRL+B)
• Select the word
• choose Append text from the Action Menu
• Choose the Target Text ellipse button to select the sentence starter.
• In the Text box type in the word you originally selected, "make sure to add a Space after the word"
• Click Apply Changes button

Now you are finished with the set up.  You should now save the flipchart page so that you have a clean page copy for the students to work from.  This allows you to use the Reset Page button to clear what has been selected after each student comes up to write their sentence.