Teachers can present online games on the Smartboard as a way to help students practice recognizing /ee/ and /ea/ sounds. Roy the Zebra (roythezebra.com), a website designed to teach young students how to read, offers games focusing on the long e sound. Students drag /ee/ or /ea/ sounds into a word to help Tom, a zebra, get ready for bed.
Starfall (starfall.com), a company that produces educational reading material, offers the "Make A Word: Long-E" game, in which students drag letters to make a word containing a long-e sound that matches the given picture. The game sounds out the letters as they are placed in the word.
Create sorting activities using the Smartboard that require children to sort words and pictures based on their vowel sounds. Create a chart with a column for long Es and a column for short Es. Drag tiles with words that contain these two sounds on them, then have children take turns coming up to the board and dragging the words into the correct column. A similar activity can be done by providing students with a group of pictures on the edge of the screen and having children drag the pictures that contain an object with a long e to the middle of the board.
Some educational publishers offer interactive storybooks that can be used to teach students about the long e sound and other vowel sounds. Scholastic (scholastic.com) offers interactive storybooks based on the popular series "Clifford, the Big Red Dog" by Norman Bridwell. Students can take turns placing the correct word into the story, or raise their hands whenever they hear a word with a long e sound. Starfall also offers an interactive book called "Pete's Sheep" that includes a lot of words containing the long e sound. Children can click on every word in the story to hear it sounded out.
Use the highlighter tool on the Smartboard to help students learn to recognize the long e sound when they read. Place a passage on the Smartboard that contains numerous words with /ee/ or /ea/ sounds. Let children come up to the board and highlight those words, then read the passage with students placing emphasis on the words with those sounds. Use multiple passages to give all students a chance to participate and help students see the long e sound in a variety of writing styles.