I am moving to 4th grade for 2015-2016, and it is an important part of our curriculum for students to use computers for lessons, practice, and assessments to prepare for the M-Step and future work. It is impossible to give 20 students sufficient computer time with only 6 computers.
My students will be 4th Graders who will be working with a variety of internet programs such as Study Island, MobyMax, iXL, the Michigan eLibrary, Sumdog, and Typing Web to foster their growth on the National Core Curriculum and prepare for the M-Step.
They also need lots of practice doing research to find non-fiction articles to pair with fiction books that we read. They need to be able to compare two articles on a similar topic and write comparison documents. The Fourth Graders need to be able to express their opinions and tell their stories in formal and informal documents. They need experience saving and sending these documents to me for correction and scoring with our district rubrics.
My Project
I would like my students to use the Chromebooks to access lessons and practice sessions that correlate with Math and Language Arts Core Standards daily. I would like them to be able to take assessments through Study Island and Renaissance Learning as well as MobyMax and OpenEd as soon as they are ready. At the present time I can only give my students each one 15-20 session twice a week. I would also like them to prepare their writing documents on the Chromebooks as soon as their ideas are organized. They would then be able to edit them alone or with a partner and then save them into Google Docs, and print them for a formal presentation. I very much want technology available to them according to the needs of a learning opportunity or project without having to wait days for a turn.
Now my students' opportunity to work on a computer is very limited.
They are always waiting for turns to use the 6 computers we have in the room. I want them to be able to look up lessons based on individual need, at a variety of levels, as necessary to make progress at each student's own pace. This would be followed by appropriate assessments that I could monitor and follow up with continued lessons in class.
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