SBTS EdTech

After careful writing and editing, 4th grade students at Cunningham Park Elementary School imported their book reviews into Wordle to create colorful “word cloud” visual representations to hang around their classrooms.

SBTS in Neighborhood C have been busy getting our teachers up and running with all the technology that is available in our schools.

 All Kindergarten teachers have been trained in the KMRA and are ready to begin assessing students and collecting online data in order to have a consistent and ongoing view of student progress and areas of need in mathematics.

SBTS are already working on training teachers on how to create their own common assessments using ASPIRE in eCART, with some, creating and entering their own questions. 

We have been working with classroom teachers and specialists to set up class blackboard sites that are ready for students to access.  Blackboard is being used in a variety of ways including; posting announcements and websites for students to access for extra practice or to gain the needed background knowledge for an upcoming lesson.  United Streaming videos have been posted in BB for students to view at home or on their own during centers time. Students are creating their own wiki’s as a place to recommend books for others to read, plus they get to read and comment on other book recommendations and make connections!  Students have also been blogging with classmates as a way to brainstorm for projects or discuss books they are reading.

SBTS are working with teachers to create SMART Notebook lessons that allow curriculum content to be taught in an interactive way that captures student attention and works to engage each learner in the process.

As many teachers review geography skills in the beginning of each social studies curriculum, mapmaker’s toolkit was utilized at many of our elementary schools. In 4^th grade students’ created maps of Virginia where they demonstrated knowledge of the geographic regions in VA. Fifth grade students worked on perfecting their map reading skills by locating states and countries using latitude and longitude coordinates and pinning these areas on their maps.  They also created maps that demonstrated their knowledge of direction and the hemispheres’.  Sixth grade students created maps of the 8 geographic regions as these regions are the basis for how and where settlement began in the United States and will be key in helping students understand settlement in the US.

At Weyanoke Elementary school teachers are working with the SBTS and other resources teachers to use technology to analyze data and create common activities and assessments.

The 2nd , 3rd  and 4th grade teachers are collaborating with their SBTS and 2 SUM teachers to improve student scores in math.  These professionals are creating common activities and assessments and then meeting to analyze the data. This project materialized as teachers were looking at SOL math scores and noticed a disparity between boys and girls, as well as, in certain math strands. In order to work towards a solution to this problem the SBTS organized a plan to implement Destination Math in grades 2-4.  The SBTS trained the 2 SUM teachers and the grade level teachers in the use of the Destination Math software.  The group planned common activities and tests for each grade level that targeted the areas of need.  They are currently working collaboratively to analyze the test results during common planning times and then use this information to drive their math instruction.  In the future the SBTS and teachers are going to use this same approach in creating Aspire tests in grades 2-5.

Science SOL scores indicated that girls were outperforming boys 4:1. The SBTS, 2 resources teachers and all grade level teachers are now working to create common assessment in ASPIRE that highlight the lowest science strands.  The teachers are using the data from these teacher created assessments to determine the strengths and weaknesses of the students.  They are now working to locate remediation activities that would best serve the students.

Fifth graders at Colvin Run Elementary are one of four FCPS schools participating in a Global Classroom project as part of their social studies curriculum. Students in one 5th grade class have been participating in a special part of the project, using video conferencing to connect with students from Oldbury Wells School, Shropshire, U.K., sharing and learning about each other’s cultures.  This collaborative learning experience was highlighted at the Governor’s Luncheon on October 26th as the 300 luncheon guests, including Gov. Tim Kane, shared in a live video conference between Colvin Run 5th graders and the students from Oldbury Wells School in Shropshire U.K. The video linked here was shown at the luncheon and outlines the Global Classroom Project.

Building Community through Technology

As part of a Language Arts lesson, first grade students at Cunningham Park Elementary used Pixie to write sentences introducing themselves to their classmates. They said, for example, “My name is Johnny, and I like to ride my skateboard.” Next, they drew pictures of themselves doing the activity they selected and then they imported a photograph of themselves into their Pixie drawing. The final step was for students to record themselves reading their sentences (with great care taken to be sure there was one-to-one correspondence between the spoken and the written words.) The final project was assembled and posted to Blackboard. The audio from the project was recorded to CD, and one set was printed and bound. These books and CDs circulate among the first grade classrooms, and now all first graders know a little bit about each other. This was a perfect way to begin teaching writing to first graders while building community and making personal connections!

At Cameron ES, a September training was conducted on Photo Story and Movie Maker. The goal was to get cameras into the hands of teachers who in turn would do the same for kids. The results have been fabulous! Students and teachers at various grade levels are creating photo stories and mini movies that are posted to Blackboard for all to see. The principal spotlights some of them on Cameron Morning News.

Grade 1
School Bus Stop Safety
Students created a mini movie to discuss the importance and procedures for exercising good safety tips for the bus and walkers. Students created posters in groups with various tips and then generated their scripts from the posters.

Grade 5
Social Studies
Students created timelines of their lives, including pictures and memorabilia, on poster board. They took photos of each timeline and narrated them using Photo Story. Students enjoyed sharing their videos with family on Blackboard.

Grade 6
Language Arts
The principal works with a small reading group daily. After reading about the solar system and the planets, kids created posters and a script to create a Photo Story about the Solar System. The kids were engaged and loved the entire process from start to finish.

5th Graders at Island Creek ES told the story of Pangea and continental drift by animating Google Earth screen shots of continents in Scratch. Click link to see a sample: http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/6ghokie/723479

At Hayfield ES, a fifth grade teacher and SBTS worked together to create persuasive commercials in Movie Maker. Students worked in cooperative groups and used a classroom set of digital cameras to practice the art of video recording. After the final videos were created and downloaded to the school server by the students, the SBTS trained the class in using Movie Maker. Students successfully added a title and credits, edited the video and created separate clips with transitions and video effects, and added music from a free music production site. The videos may be posted to Blackboard so that students can access them anytime/anywhere.

Neighborhood D is using Delicious!  We have set up a neighborhood site on Delicious that we are sharing between ourselves.  The idea is that we give the link: http://delicious.com/tech4u to our teachers, as a resource for finding educational websites and tell them when they have a new one to send it our way.  This will keep us all updated with some great sites and an easy way to search for them.  Teachers can then pick and choose what they would like to put on their 24-7 site for students.

In the Professional Learning Community that is Cunningham Park Elementary School two of the main questions are “What will we do for students who haven’t learned,” and “What will we do for students who have already mastered material we are teaching?”  

This school year, as part of that philosophy,  changing groups of students in grades two and five who have mastered concepts being taught in their math classes as evident on pre-assessments work with Scratch programming to enrich their mathematics instruction and foster critical thinking and problem-solving skills.  They use Scratch to solve challenges presented to them and are surprised when they discover they’re using math to complete their tasks!

These groups change frequently based on their teachers’ formative assessments, so the group often combines students who know a great deal about the tools in Scratch mixed with students who are seeing Scratch for the first time. Watching these students collaborate to solve problems and seeing their satisfaction at a classmate’s success is amazing.  Students learn innovation and creativity skills, problem-solving, collaboration and critical thinking and have a great time doing it!