10 interactive whiteboard lessons for in the classroom using stickers

A smartboard. A smart whiteboard in the classroom. You can do so much with it, though it’s often not efficient enough if you’re teaching a classroom with 20 students or more. What if you could give every student their own interactive whiteboard?

Of course, many educational tools allow your students to use their tablet, pc or smartphone as a whiteboard. One of them is BookWidgets. You might know BookWidgets to make other interactive exercises like crossword puzzles, bingo and memory games, flashcards, automatically graded quizzes and so on.

In this blog post, I want to show you how you can build creative and interactive lessons with BookWidgets' whiteboard widget (or the whiteboard question in the quiz widget). Use this interactive whiteboard in the classroom or as homework. Of course, there’s already some inspiration on this topic right here. These interactive whiteboard lesson ideas will be a bit different, using BookWidgets' new “sticker” option.

Adding stickers to an interactive whiteboard

The whiteboard “widget” or exercise allows a teacher to:

• give instructions so students know what they should draw or type,
• add a background image on which students can draw or type
• add “stickers” so students can choose between images that are already uploaded by the teacher. Students can enlarge stickers or make them smaller and rotate them. Students can find the stickers hidden below the “star icon” on the whiteboard.

You’ll see that the interactive whiteboard lesson ideas below are a combination of all options, with a focus on the stickers.

As a teacher, you need to add images which can serve as stickers. Open BookWidgets, create a new whiteboard widget (or choose the whiteboard question type in a quiz widgets or worksheet) and click on “Add sticker” in the “general tab”.

Check out the lesson examples below so you get an idea of what those stickers can be.

10 Interactive whiteboard lesson examples using stickers

These digital whiteboard lessons are free to use. Just share the whiteboard exercise link with your students. Create a free BookWidgets account so your students can send the results to you and so gather or check their work.

I added whiteboard lesson ideas for primary school and for high school. Sometimes the lesson resources can be used for both if you make some changes. It’s the idea that counts and will inspire you 💡 I tried to give you a mix of whiteboard lesson ideas so you get a clear idea in what courses you can use this exercise.

Need to know! Students can find the used stickers by clicking on the “start icon” in the whiteboard exercise. Students can drag and drop the stickers, enlarge and minimize them by clicking on the “loops” and rotate them by clicking on the “arrows”. Click on the “V” to place the sticker.

Interactive whiteboard lesson example for languages

1. Prepositions of place

Let your students read an instruction text describing a scene. Your students have to use the stickers to build the scene as it’s described in the text. The text focuses on prepositions of place. You’ll see if your students understood the assignment if they can manage to build the scene close to the scene in the image below.

Click on the image to give it a try.

Tip: If your students have some extraordinary drawing skills, you can let them draw the scene without using the stickers.

2. Describe a person - ESL

Describing a person is taught in the early stages when learning a new language. In this case, students have to use the whiteboard stickers to “style” the person that’s described in the instruction text. Of course, there are many distraction stickers so students have to read the text very closely.

Click on the image or link below to dress up “Mave” and “Steve”.

3. Fiction or non-fiction

This lesson is pretty clear. Students practice their understanding of the terms “fiction” and “non-fiction”. They have to use the whiteboard stickers and place the correct icon on the right book. The “robot” sticker points out a fiction book and the “info” sticker points out a non-fiction book. Students can zoom in on the image to take a closer look at the book titles.

Interactive whiteboard lesson example for math

4. Geometry - Origami cat

If you want to teach your students spatial awareness, you can use this interactive whiteboard lesson idea using geometric shapes. They have to replicate the black origami cat with the stickers that are given. Of course, they still have to enlarge or minimize and rotate the stickers in a way they can represent the cat. You can find the solution in the image below.

Try it out without peeking. Even for you, this will need some thinking!

Interactive whiteboard lesson example for STEM

5. Dual switch diagram

When teaching your students the basics of electronics, this short lesson plan can help them practice the theory. Students have to draw the electrical wiring of this dual switch diagram. They can use the stickers to do so. Be aware that there might be some distraction symbols as well.

Interactive whiteboard lesson example for geography

6. Mountain ranges in Europe

This interactive whiteboard exercise is clear as a whistle. Students have to indicate Europe’s mountain ranges with the give colored stickers. You can just let your students draw on the map, though using stickers makes it easier and more structured for the teacher to review student work.

Interactive whiteboard lesson example for biology

7. The human body

Here, students have to drag and drop the human organ stickers on the background image. Your students have to label the organs as well.

To make this exercise more challenging, you can just write down the organs they have to draw themselves on the human body background image. This way, they have to remember the shape of the organs as well as their place in the human body.

Interactive whiteboard lesson example for economics

8. Demand and supply

This exercise is very important when teaching economics. Students have to read (and understand) the instructions, so they can complete the whiteboard exercise about supply and demand.

In this case, I used colored sticker dots so the teacher has a clear overview of the student’s work. If you let your students draw freely, it’s often unclear or messy.

As I’ve mentioned before, you can also include a whiteboard question type in a quiz or worksheet widget. This is the perfect exercise to combine with other questions on that topic.

This whiteboard question type can also be used as a digital draft paper so students can give a definite answer to the questions on their assignment.

Interactive whiteboard lesson example for history

9. World’s most famous explorers

When you’ve taught your students all about the world’s famous explorers and their life stories, you can give them this whiteboard exercise to practice. Can your students recall what routes the explorers sailed?

Let them place the matching stickers next to the correct route. To make it a bit harder, you can instruct your student to add the most important accomplishments or dates like “1492”, when Christopher Columbus discovered the “new world”.

Not enough challenge? Add a background image of an empty map and let your students draw the routes themselves.

Interactive whiteboard lesson example as self-assessment

10. Trafic light assessment

The last example is a fun way to visualize your students' learning process or achieved learning objectives. Students can use the colored-traffic-light-dot-stickers to indicate whether they’ve reached a lesson objective or not. They also have to indicate their general feeling or “metacognition” on where they think or feel they are regarding the lesson topic and objectives.

This gives you a snapshot of where the student is in his/her learning process. You might find students in need of additional instructions or students that need to be challenged more.

Wrap up

I hope you can use these 10 lesson ideas with an interactive whiteboard in your lesson practice. Or just create your own interactive whiteboard (and much more) right here.

Spread the word and share this post if it gave you some new ideas. ✨