Are you are looking for some creative ways to get to know your students or just some interesting ideas for classroom management? 

Well, here are some that you might try out! 

If you have a digital camera, then it may be lots of fun to take pictures of you students and use them as part of your lessons.  Here are some 10 tips I put together for you!

(1) Take small group photos of your students.  You can take individual ones if you have time but group shots are quicker, maybe students 5 at a time.  Use the camera tool to make them separate files.  See Activtip video called "A Personal Touch."

(2) If you use the camera tool, the area selector will stay the same size as the last "capture" so all of the images will be the same dimension (time saver!)

(3) If you use the freehand tool, you can create outlines of the students which could either be just the head or a whole body shot which can be fun too on different backgrounds.  Use the free hand tool while attached to the Activboard with the pen as this makes the tracing much easier than with your mouse!

(4) Select all of the students' images by dragging them around with the area selector and choosing align centers.  This puts them in a nice tidy stack which you can group together enabling you to drag the whole group into your resource library whenever you need the set photos in a pinch!

(5) Get to know the ActivInspire object browser as this can help you put the photos in different orders.   This way the same students don't end up on top (selected) if you are using them to "call on" a student.  Check out this Activtip about the Object Browser!

6) You can use the images for creating work groups or teams.  Here's a another nice flipchart that is helpful for choosing teams: Star Team Chooser by Karen Angler.

(7) You can give the photos a label using the ActivInspire caption function. Here's a nice Activtip for this one!

(8) You can use speech bubbles with the student's photos to have them make comic book scenes or plays.  The Shapes Tools is perfect for this as it has an editable speech bubble as a choice!  See Activtip.

(9) You can make matching activities matching students with their names using ActivInspire's Container feature.  See Activtips about Containers.

(10)You can type a text object with the student's name and group it with the student photo so that they can move about as "one."  Learn about Groups here.

* Make sure that you get permissions for student photographs if needed.

Have a great year!

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