Week 4
  Desktop publishing is a must for the elementary teacher. Students as well as parents love and are more attentive to brightly colored, graphic oriented brochures, letters, and notes. Material generators such as Printmaster have become staples in our classroom. Students also use it to publish their work. They write a book of poetry and add pictures at Christmas time. Writing stories ceases to be a chore when students can edit without rewriting. Headers for projects, letters to our special friends, brochures to invite parents to Family Night, and posters for all subjects are a few ways students use desktop publishing.
   The Premethean ActivBoard is also a must have tool. We use it daily for presentations, demonstrations, clikcer-based interactions, graphing, calculating, powerpoints, practice involving games and drills, telling time, and even as a random selector.
   Test generators in addition to worksheet and puzzle generators have become more important since the advent of common core standards. Puzzle generators are fun practice activities for multiplication facts and spelling or vocabulary words. Activities to reinforce and assess common core standards are not readily available, so test generators have provided a way to design and have access to materials.