Creating containers in your lessons is a great way to make your flipcharts interactive. With containers, students are able to get immediate feedback as to whether an answer is correct, by the container playing a positive sound. Students also know their choice/answer isn’t correct, when the container won’t allow an object to be placed in it. Containers can be challenging to make; however, the more practice and the more creating of containers that you do, the better you will become, and the easier containers will be to create.
Here are the steps to start making containers:
Below I will begin by making containers for nouns and adjectives. You can choose whatever subject fits your next lesson the best and adapt this to suit your needs. Here are the steps.
1. Containers can be an image or a shape. I usually use the shape tool and create rectangles like these. I have also given each one a title by creating a text box within them. I typed nouns on one rectangle and adjectives on the other rectangle. See picture below.
2. Now, I am going to type several nouns and adjectives on my flipchart page, on the outsides of my boxes. These are the words that students will have to sort, or place in the boxes. This will give me a formative look at how well the students can differentiate between these two words. See the pic on the next page to look at the nouns and adjectives that I typed.
3. Next, we have to give each of our words a name (keyword)
so the box can identify it. To do this, go to your browser (control b or view browsers) and click on the white piece of paper (property browser). Click on one of your words. Click on the three dots (the browser button) next to the keyword box. Click add. Type in either noun or adjective depending on your word. Then type ok. In the keyword box, you should now have the word that you just typed. See pic below:
4. Do this with all of your words. Click on each word individually, in your property browser click the 3 dots (browser button), click add, type noun or adjective, click ok. Stop when all of your words outside the boxes have been named. It’s time for the next step.
5. Now, we get to assign the actual containers (green rectangles in this case.) Click on one of the rectangles. I am going to start with my nouns rectangle. Then, go to the same property browser (control b or view browsers, click on the white piece of paper.) Scroll down until you see the word containers. If it’s blue and not open, click the + sign and the container properties will open up. If this doesn’t happen, make sure you have one of your rectangles selected or clicked. The pic below shows what your containers property box should look like before you have done anything to it.
Here are the steps to setting the container.
Under can contain - click the arrow down to keywords (we are selecting keywords because we gave each of our text a keyword earlier on.) Remember, the keywords are the words that will determine what our containers or rectangles will accept. Skip the contain object box. Click on the browser button (...) next to contain words. if you have the nouns rectangle clicked, type noun. If you have the adjectives rectangle clicked type adjective. The keywords are case sensitive so it’s very important what keywords you gave your text. If you don’t remember, just click on one of your words and look at the keyword at the top to check.
For contain rule, leave it set as completely contained. For reward sound, you can not have a sound and leave it false, but that’s not very fun....lol, so I usually click true. This gives the students immediate positive feedback. Next to reward sound locations, click on the browser button (...)
and search for a sound file on your computer. Leave the last box return if not contained set to false.
Repeat these steps with the adjective container. Make sure that next to the contain word section your type adjective. This is what your container properties box should look like with the information of the noun rectangle container filled out. See pic below:
Now for the last step.
Click on each of your words. Make sure your property browser is open and the container properties are showing. The only thing you are going to click for each of these words is return if not contained. You are going to click on the arrow and move down to true. Doing this for each of your words will make them pop back, or spring back to their original location if they are not correct, or not accepted by your containers. SAVE YOUR FLIPCHART at this point before trying your containers. Now, they should work. If they aren’t working, make sure you are in presentation mode. (This is the blue snowflake in the top, right hand corner of your Inspire program.) if it’s red, that is design mode and the containers will not work in this mode.
Some reminders: The rectangles (containers) won’t accept anything bigger than they are, so make sure your text is able to fit within each of the boxes. I hope this helps make container making easier. Enjoy!
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