Here is my final report for my SET BC project. Overall, I had a great time using the technology with the kiddos and they learned so much! Perseverance was a theme we worked on all year and it really has improved with almost all my students. Having access to the tech whenever I wanted it, was amazing and we got to do so many other things besides Classroom Suite. Hopefully, I can hit the ground running next year, and get an even earlier start with routines and get the kiddos navigating the technology like pros in no time!
Thanks again to SET BC for making this possible!
Year End Report
Monday, May 29, 2017
Wednesday, April 5, 2017
A review of using Raz Kids from A-Z Learning
I'd heard about Raz Kids in an article that I read a while back (I'm sorry I don't remember where from) and had heard about a few of my colleagues using it and thought I'd give it a try. I went to my principal and she happily gave approval for the $109 US. My idea was to use it mainly for Home Reading and also in class during center time.
For the Home Reading portion, I talked to quite a few of my parents about it during the year's first parent conferences and the parents thought it was a good idea. They liked the idea of being able to access it through their mobile devices and not having to keep track of physical books. I targeted the students and parents I knew were below grade level, and had difficulty keeping track of resources. I thought it was a win-win. I was wrong.
I introduced it through blog posts, agenda messages as well a notes home that included log in information. I got the kids excited about it at school, worked hard to make sure they were independently able to log in and use the program. Even with all that hype and reminders, I have less than half my class of 22 using it on a regular basis. Actually only 4 use it weekly outside of school.
I broke down some reports and came up with these numbers:
I estimated that the total number of hours to date, using 30 minutes as an average practice time, for the year is about 42. That's not including weekends or holidays and non-instructional days. For the entire time we've had the program I have 6 students that have used it for less than 2 hours, 4 of those students are reading well below grade level currently. The other 2 are at grade level. 6 more students used it 2-5 hours, 4 of those are not reading at grade level and 2 are above grade level. 4 students have read 5-10 hours, 2 of them are exceeding grade level and two are well below. The final 6 students have read 10+ hours, 3 are exceeding and 3 are below grade level. Of that 10+ category, only one has more than 24 hours the rest are between 10 and 16 hours.
In the classroom, the students get a chance to use the program once a week and they get about 20 minutes on average to use it. The data above includes the time in class that they get and some of those students only use it at school. The program is incorporated into our Literacy Center time as one of the centers. I also try to get them on (especially the students that need the practice) when ever I can, but really I had planned for this to be used at home more than at school.
So as I am writing this, I am pondering whether or not I will ask for it again next year. On one hand, I can turn over responsibility for Home Reading to parents. It takes up way less space and wastes way less time. On the other hand, if the parents are not going to use it, is it worth the money?
For the Home Reading portion, I talked to quite a few of my parents about it during the year's first parent conferences and the parents thought it was a good idea. They liked the idea of being able to access it through their mobile devices and not having to keep track of physical books. I targeted the students and parents I knew were below grade level, and had difficulty keeping track of resources. I thought it was a win-win. I was wrong.
I introduced it through blog posts, agenda messages as well a notes home that included log in information. I got the kids excited about it at school, worked hard to make sure they were independently able to log in and use the program. Even with all that hype and reminders, I have less than half my class of 22 using it on a regular basis. Actually only 4 use it weekly outside of school.
I broke down some reports and came up with these numbers:
I estimated that the total number of hours to date, using 30 minutes as an average practice time, for the year is about 42. That's not including weekends or holidays and non-instructional days. For the entire time we've had the program I have 6 students that have used it for less than 2 hours, 4 of those students are reading well below grade level currently. The other 2 are at grade level. 6 more students used it 2-5 hours, 4 of those are not reading at grade level and 2 are above grade level. 4 students have read 5-10 hours, 2 of them are exceeding grade level and two are well below. The final 6 students have read 10+ hours, 3 are exceeding and 3 are below grade level. Of that 10+ category, only one has more than 24 hours the rest are between 10 and 16 hours.
In the classroom, the students get a chance to use the program once a week and they get about 20 minutes on average to use it. The data above includes the time in class that they get and some of those students only use it at school. The program is incorporated into our Literacy Center time as one of the centers. I also try to get them on (especially the students that need the practice) when ever I can, but really I had planned for this to be used at home more than at school.
So as I am writing this, I am pondering whether or not I will ask for it again next year. On one hand, I can turn over responsibility for Home Reading to parents. It takes up way less space and wastes way less time. On the other hand, if the parents are not going to use it, is it worth the money?
Wednesday, March 8, 2017
The New Curriculum and Core Competencies
The NEW CURRICULUM. I know you are wondering why it's all caps. I'm not yelling, it's because for the last year this is how is sounds in my head. If you are reading this and not from British Columbia, our government has thrown, introduced new curriculum. It was put out to teachers to try if they wished last year, and made mandatory to use this year. Our district has been very supportive and helpful, but not even they have all the answers, and there are many teachers that are still fumbling around trying to get a grasp on what's happening.
Anyway....
I have found that if I look at the documents individually, I don't find them that overwhelming. I tend to plan using big ideas, so I for one and comfortable navigating this change. That is until someone comes along and tells me I'm doing it wrong...
My interpretation is that we are moving towards more of a continuum of learning, which is great. I also appreciate the idea of more play and exploration, even outside of Kindergarten. I also like the openness of how to teach the ideas. This has made some of my colleagues nervous. I feel like in some areas, there is less to teach so I can really sink into some of the ideas a little more. For my grades, the math seems more manageable and language arts didn't change that much. Some things that I don't like very much is the addition of ADST and having to give grades and comment on that-especially at my age group. I also am not a fan of having to give comments and grades for Social Responsibility, Health and Career. Especially at the grade level that I teach at.
The Core Competencies on the other hand, I do not appreciate at all. Last year, when the CC's were rolling out, the information that I got again and again was that they were not going to be graded or reported on. Now I am told that they will be once at the end of the year. Hmmm. I am wondering how long until they will be reported on all the time or reported on within the different subjects or...
The Primary teachers got together at a planning day and started to look and and share ideas of what this could look like and what we could do. I have to be honest, I still have no clearer idea what the point of the CC's are and why we are having to monitor yet another thing. Like a colleague said recently, "they've taken the unwritten curriculum out of the shadows and now we have to put a grade on that too!"
Anyway....
I have found that if I look at the documents individually, I don't find them that overwhelming. I tend to plan using big ideas, so I for one and comfortable navigating this change. That is until someone comes along and tells me I'm doing it wrong...
My interpretation is that we are moving towards more of a continuum of learning, which is great. I also appreciate the idea of more play and exploration, even outside of Kindergarten. I also like the openness of how to teach the ideas. This has made some of my colleagues nervous. I feel like in some areas, there is less to teach so I can really sink into some of the ideas a little more. For my grades, the math seems more manageable and language arts didn't change that much. Some things that I don't like very much is the addition of ADST and having to give grades and comment on that-especially at my age group. I also am not a fan of having to give comments and grades for Social Responsibility, Health and Career. Especially at the grade level that I teach at.
The Core Competencies on the other hand, I do not appreciate at all. Last year, when the CC's were rolling out, the information that I got again and again was that they were not going to be graded or reported on. Now I am told that they will be once at the end of the year. Hmmm. I am wondering how long until they will be reported on all the time or reported on within the different subjects or...
The Primary teachers got together at a planning day and started to look and and share ideas of what this could look like and what we could do. I have to be honest, I still have no clearer idea what the point of the CC's are and why we are having to monitor yet another thing. Like a colleague said recently, "they've taken the unwritten curriculum out of the shadows and now we have to put a grade on that too!"
Tuesday, March 7, 2017
Studying Light
When I first started looking at my next Science unit, I realized that Light and Sound are usually taught together. I decided not to. I pulled apart the two ideas and taught them separately which I think helped the kids really understand the topics better. We started with sound, and I tied in music outcomes as well. I brought in all the sad little instruments that my school had available and they explored with them. They were not that surprised that I wanted them to make noise, my colleagues were a bit annoyed at first, but I asked for patience and I got it. Mostly. When they came in first thing, there were different sound activities for them to do, using instruments, and they had a blast. As the week went on, I had little experiments that they duplicated or tried for themselves. It was so fun to watch them connect what we were learning during Science time to what they were "playing with" during morning centers. To finish the unit, we took an afternoon and did these explorations that I set up around the room. They completed the activities with a partner and each completed a bit of writing or drawing to go with it.
When we moved to learning about Light, I followed the same procedure just changing out the activities for morning centers. We have had many interruptions in the past few weeks, so we are still working on the Light, but so far they are having fun!Friday, February 24, 2017
100's Day
Here's a post I did about STEM and 100's Day over on my classroom blog.
Celebrating 100's Day
Celebrating 100's Day
Mid year Review
As part of the SET project that I am a part of, we had a mid-year check in to talk about goals and expectations for the project. Really a revisiting of what my original goals were going into the project and what I'm going to do going forward.
My main focus/ inquiry question was; will the daily use of Classroom Suite templates in math increase the students' understanding and fluency with mathematical concepts? Another goal was having the students be more comfortable with technology as a tool. Many of my students see technology as entertainment only.
My students were very excited to have the laptops as part of their daily learning at first, but by Christmas I saw a drop in motivation to use them especially in math. I believe this was because Classroom Suite was the only thing I was allowing them to use at that time. I had assigned activities to them, and they were not progressing as quickly as I had expected them to. I noticed that the length of the assignments were too long for the amount of time they had to practice and then to do the challenge. This was causing frustration for some of the students. I wasn't able to change the length, but I have given them more time and multiple opportunities to do the assignments. I have also allowed them to go to ABCya.com at least every week, so they can do something else on the computers.
My class is a high needs class. I have many ESL learners and many students that struggle with reading, writing and math. Overall, this year, math is not strong with many of my students and I have many that cannot transfer the learning from class to the practice in Classroom Suite. For example, I have 2 students that need to use physical manipulatives while completing an assignment in CS. They don't understand that the manipulatives on the screen are the same. That was interesting to discover.
I am pleased to see the ease with which they navigate the technology. I have very few students now that panic or can't find their way to CS or Raz kids. We have also been using the laptops to work with coding on Code.org and they have been really enjoying that.
Looking ahead to the next 4 months, I want to use the tech for writing and some basic research. I just don't know what that is going to look like yet.
My main focus/ inquiry question was; will the daily use of Classroom Suite templates in math increase the students' understanding and fluency with mathematical concepts? Another goal was having the students be more comfortable with technology as a tool. Many of my students see technology as entertainment only.
My students were very excited to have the laptops as part of their daily learning at first, but by Christmas I saw a drop in motivation to use them especially in math. I believe this was because Classroom Suite was the only thing I was allowing them to use at that time. I had assigned activities to them, and they were not progressing as quickly as I had expected them to. I noticed that the length of the assignments were too long for the amount of time they had to practice and then to do the challenge. This was causing frustration for some of the students. I wasn't able to change the length, but I have given them more time and multiple opportunities to do the assignments. I have also allowed them to go to ABCya.com at least every week, so they can do something else on the computers.
My class is a high needs class. I have many ESL learners and many students that struggle with reading, writing and math. Overall, this year, math is not strong with many of my students and I have many that cannot transfer the learning from class to the practice in Classroom Suite. For example, I have 2 students that need to use physical manipulatives while completing an assignment in CS. They don't understand that the manipulatives on the screen are the same. That was interesting to discover.
I am pleased to see the ease with which they navigate the technology. I have very few students now that panic or can't find their way to CS or Raz kids. We have also been using the laptops to work with coding on Code.org and they have been really enjoying that.
Looking ahead to the next 4 months, I want to use the tech for writing and some basic research. I just don't know what that is going to look like yet.
Tuesday, January 17, 2017
Assessments
Formal assessments are really nothing that I enjoy. This might be because of my experience teaching in the US. I know that they are necessary for admin, parents, report cards, and to some extent my practice, and I really try to include them. For myself, I am doing informal assessing all the time. I teach mostly in small group, so I get a good idea of where my students are with their learning all the time. For example, I do running records 2-3 times a week, and do quick adding and subtracting activities during small group.
I use PM Benchmark Kits to assess reading levels at the beginning of the year and at the end. Sometimes I use it to see if I'm not sure about a student level. I am also a trained Reading Recovery teacher, so I have that assessment to use if I wish.
The writing assessment can be used in the Autumn and Spring and I have yet to find it very useful. I use their journals and other pieces of writing to help me rather than the one cold-write.
I am starting to use self-assessments more with my class, and this is an interesting practice. Many of my students think that they are the best at everything they do (how I wish I still had this confidence), so they give themselves the highest mark possible. Not very effective. I find that conferences work much better, but who has the time? I leave these for bigger projects. Our district love their numbers as much as the next, and we have reading assessments, writing assessments and math assessments at our disposal that are used across the district. We also have a data bank that the district has developed to enter in all the data. I am not finding that technology has made assessments easier.
I use PM Benchmark Kits to assess reading levels at the beginning of the year and at the end. Sometimes I use it to see if I'm not sure about a student level. I am also a trained Reading Recovery teacher, so I have that assessment to use if I wish.
The writing assessment can be used in the Autumn and Spring and I have yet to find it very useful. I use their journals and other pieces of writing to help me rather than the one cold-write.
I am starting to use self-assessments more with my class, and this is an interesting practice. Many of my students think that they are the best at everything they do (how I wish I still had this confidence), so they give themselves the highest mark possible. Not very effective. I find that conferences work much better, but who has the time? I leave these for bigger projects. Our district love their numbers as much as the next, and we have reading assessments, writing assessments and math assessments at our disposal that are used across the district. We also have a data bank that the district has developed to enter in all the data. I am not finding that technology has made assessments easier.
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