For some, the month of May signifies that another school year is just about ready to wrap up. As educators and students alike look forward to what summer brings, this can be a challenging time to continue engaging students as their interests and motivations may be a bit more unfocused.

Need some inspiration to engage your students this month? Here is our collection of themed lesson content for May:

• May Calendar and Morning Meeting: Enjoy this calendar and morning meeting pack with your students as they show you all they have learned this year! Students can practice skills using the featured calendars, morning meeting activities, attendance chart, daily graphing activity, math activities, and more.
  
  
• Grades K–2 End of Year Review: This math and language arts review lesson provides fun, engaging content to use with your kindergarten through second grade students as you review concepts taught throughout the year.
  
  
• Grades 3–5 End of Year Review: As the school year comes to an end, it's time to review content covered throughout the year with your students. This renovated and expanded math and language arts lesson is perfect for third, fourth, and fifth graders. 
  
  
• Renovated | Telling, Asking, and Exclamatory Sentences: Have your students practice identifying and working with different types of sentences with this fun and engaging lesson.

What’s in Your Teaching Toolbox?

You may not realize it, but you might already have what is needed to engage your students in your arsenal of teacher tools. MimioStudio™ classroom software has many features and tools, allowing teachers a great opportunity to hook students. While presenting a lesson, you may find yourself needing to focus student attention on one area of your screen. Or, you may have various pieces of information that you want to show in stages. There are some great built-in presentation tools at the ready to help in your journey of mastering all things Mimio.

Two Tools, Limitless Possibilities
The Reveal and Spotlight tools, found under the Applications button on the MimioStudio Toolbar, can be used with anything you present on your computer: Mimio files, websites, movie clips, PowerPoint files, documents, etc. The Reveal tool takes the place of the old-school method of putting a piece of paper on top of something you may have presented on an overhead projector. When the Reveal tool has been activated, you’ll see a grey screen with directional arrows take over your entire screen. Depending on which arrow you click and slide, you’ll be able to uncover lesson material from either top to bottom, bottom to top, left to right, or right to left. The Reveal shade begins with 0% transparency. However, by using options available in the top-right menu, you can change the shade to make it more transparent.

Along the same lines, the Spotlight tool will begin a circle spotlight area that can be moved around to focus on any area of your screen. By clicking outside the spotlight area and dragging with your stylus, you are able to move the spotlight to focus on any area. By clicking and dragging on the spotlight border, you can change the size of the shape. Once again, you have other options that you can change regarding the spotlight tool once you click on the options menu found on the top right of the spotlight screen. You’ll be able to change the transparency of the background shade, the size of the spotlight area, as well as choose between other spotlight shapes including star, square, rounded square, rectangle, and rounded rectangle.

There are many ways to use this fun tool to make simple lessons more engaging and interactive. As an example, a science teacher may have a website showing a periodic table image and ask students to come to the board and use the rectangle Spotlight tool to focus in on a metal or non-metal. A math teacher could use the rectangle Spotlight tool to focus on each step of a multi-step problem. A language arts teacher could display a reading passage and have students use the Spotlight tool to focus on main parts of the passage, or even use the Reveal tool to guide the reading of a selected area. Like most tools found in MimioStudio, the power of each is in how imaginative you can be. You can learn more about these tools in our upcoming “MimioStudio: Presenting Lessons” Quick Learn session, offered on May 14 at 7:00pm and May 30 at 8:00pm.

 
Easily Add Content to Your Lessons
Creating engaging and interactive lessons can take some time when a teacher wants to ensure maximum student impact. This might be a bit more challenging with the end of the year approaching, but we still need to find what’s best for our students. As teachers, we are routinely searching for new ideas or adapting ideas from others to fit our classroom needs. One of my all-time favorite tools that makes a variety of things easy is the Screen Clipping tool. This tool allows you to capture anything on your screen and clip it out to use in anything you want. This includes using it with MimioStudio, websites, PowerPoint, Google Docs—you name it! Yes, there is a similar tool for Windows users, but the convenience of the Screen Clipping tool right by my side as I use the MimioStudio software makes it number one in my book!

This gem is found within the MimioStudio Toolbar and will be an option when you click the Insert Tool button. Once you select Screen Clipping, your screen will turn grey, giving you four options for how to clip at the top of your screen. You will be able to clip a rectangular, ellipse, or free-form drawing shape, or even screen clip the entire screen. Once you make your choice, you’ll then use your Mimio stylus or mouse to draw around the area you want to clip.

Once you pick up the stylus or release your mouse, the area will be clipped and automatically pasted into a MimioStudio Notebook page as a single graphic. You’ll then be able to manipulate the graphic, save it, or copy/paste into any other application you choose. I find myself using this tool to clip pieces of just about anything I find, such as important tables, graphics, and quotes, and add them to various presentations or documents I create for staff. If you haven’t used the Screen Clipping tool yet, it will be life changing! See how to use this tool in lessons and learn from other teachers in our upcoming “MimioStudio: Adding Content” Quick Learn session, offered on May 7 at 7:00pm and May 23 at 8:00pm.

Interested in checking out more of the Quick Learn sessions offered this month? Click here to view our complete list!