Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Issue 1
Great Ideas
How to use the ActiveTeach Digital Students Book
Joan Saslow and Allen Ascher
2 run the disc on any brand of interactive whiteboard, with the benefit of being able to
use all the additional software tools that come with it. The ActiveTeach Digital Students Book is carefully designed to be simple and flexible, requiring no special training to use.
they meet the needs of your class and enhance your personal teaching styleand to offer more alternatives for how to present or practice new language. Some teachers may choose to keep the Digital Students Book turned on and available throughout their lessons in order to have quick access to it when it is needed. Others may choose only to use it occasionallyduring those lessons when they think it will be most beneficial.
To the lessons ActiveTeach presents the complete Students Book in clear, full-color, digital form. Navigation through the Students Book pages is easy using the CONTENTS tab, which allows you to choose and display any two-page lesson. You can also access the Learning Objectives charts at the beginning of the book and all the Reference sections at the back, including the: Grammar Booster (available in all levels) Vocabulary Booster (available in Top Notch Fundamentals) Writing Booster (available in Top Notch 1, 2, and 3) Top Notch Pop song lyrics (available in all levels)
Alternatively, you can navigate from page to page at the bottom of the screen by choosing the forward or back arrows. Or you can click your mouse on the page number box between the arrows, type in a page number on your keyboard, and instantly jump to that page. If you want to jump to the optional Grammar Booster, Writing Booster, or Vocabulary Booster during a lesson, you can get there instantly by clicking on the booster icon on the page. And when youre finished, a simple click brings you back to the lesson you were teaching. To the audio When you want to play the audio, clear on-screen audio icons give you instant access to each track. Youll never have to search for CDs or audio tracks again. And you can use the pop-up on-screen audio player to pause, skip, or replay any part. To the video Click on the VIDEO tab and the drop-down menu instantly connects you to any segment of the Top Notch TV video program. The easy-to-use video player permits you to display closed captions, skip or replay any portion, or pause for discussion. To the songs In ActiveTeach, both the audio and video versions of Top Notch Pop are instantly accessible. In the Review lesson at the end of each unit, there are two onscreen audio iconsone for the original song and the other for the instrumental-only karaoke version. You can also choose to play either version of the audio while viewing the Top Notch Pop song lyrics page. Alternatively, you can use the VIDEO tab to play either of the two versions on Top Notch TV. To the Internet If you have Internet access in the classroom, you can visit the Top Notch teacher website at www.pearsonlongman.com/topnotch. Choose Web Resources
Great Ideas: How to Use the Top Notch ActiveTeach Digital Students Book Top Notch Professional Development Series Issue 1 2011 Joan Saslow and Allen Ascher
and the unit you are teaching, and you will have access to a full array of authentic documents and content related to that unit. To give your lesson extra impact, you can browse the Internet for authentic text, photos, or audio files from ANY website of your own choosing.
Instead of holding up pictures that students can hardly see or trying verbally to direct students where to look in their books, ActiveTeach provides easy-to-use zoom-in tools that allow you to enlarge any section of the page for a more effective lesson. Charts, illustrations, or exercises can be displayedup closefor a more dynamic presentation, clearer modeling, or whole-class practice. The built-in ActiveTeach Interactive Whiteboard (IWB) software allows you to save time and avoid confusion by giving clearer instructions. Instead of having a class of students with their heads buried in their books, you can focus students attention to the front of the class as youor your studentsdemonstrate and model how to do any activity in the book. Using the IWB software tools, you can underline, circle, highlight, or hide any language you want to emphasize or practice to make your lesson more successful. You can draw arrows, stick figures, speech balloons, and other symbols anywhere on the Digital Students Book pages. You can even draw directly on images of the Top Notch TV video or web pages from the Internet to make your lessons come alive.
The IWB software allows you to use the ActiveTeach Digital Students Book as a basis for creating interactive activities that you might never have thought of trying with the book alone. ActiveTeach comes with these exciting tools: