Handwriting on and interactive whiteboard- almost a complete disaster

My first week on prac... oh well it has been an exciting, but very exhausting week. I was allocated a year two class with 23 lovely students and a brand new interactive whiteboard!

Everyone is very excited by this new technology in the classroom and my cooperating teacher is using it for most lessons, so I was asked to incorporate it into my lessons too.

Great! I had just learned so much about some fantastic interactive websites and surely that would be a great addition. And it was, I used it for maths and science without any complications, but then I had to teach “Handwriting”!

Oh dear, I’m still struggling to write in the NSW foundation handwriting on paper and a whiteboard, but ah well, how different could it be on the interactive whiteboard?!? So when I go home, I got my own whiteboard our and practised writing the letter H and the sentence that goes along with it.

After a good half an hour of practise, I felt confident with my handwriting for the practised words.

The next morning I woke up early so I decided to go into school a bit earlier than usual just to practise once or twice on the interactive whiteboard. When I got there and set up for the lesson, I began to write.

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OH NO! The pen wasn’t lined up properly with the whiteboard. There was at least a cm between where I started to write and where the writing showed up. And the whole point of a handwriting lessons is that I need to show the students exactly where to stop and start within the lines. AND my writing looked like that of a child’s. It was all wobbly. I went over to the whiteboard and checked that I could still write like a practised the night before, and there, it looked fine. Just on the interactive whiteboard it didn’t!

I was so glad that I had come in so much early than I thought necessary so that I had now time to practise on the interactive whiteboard.

By the end I had managed to compensate for the difference in writing and the lesson went well. But I will definitely continue practising my handwriting on the interactive whiteboard!