I teach a diverse student population who live in a wonderful, small community. Our district has been through some very difficult financial times in recent years. We have also lost many staff members due to budget cuts as well as low enrollment. However, the staff that remains has stayed positive and focused and our students are thriving. This year is off to an amazing start in my third grade class, primarily due to my recent transformation of my classroom into a 21st century classroom.
My students come to school every morning eager and enthusiastic to learn, especially this year as I have started to incorporate technology into all of our subjects throughout each day.
As a teacher, there is nothing better than when you tell a class what we're going to do next and they all shout out, "YAY!" This happens every single time I tell them we are going to be working on Chromebooks.
My Project
We are off to a great start in my 3rd grade classroom this year. I have begun to transform my classroom into a 21st century classroom, starting with incorporating technology into many of our lessons on a daily basis. Working on Chromebooks is new for this group of students and so far they are loving it! Right now we have some Chromebooks that the students are able to share in small groups or with partners, which has been great. We use several outstanding websites to increase their reading comprehension skills and math fact fluency. I have also set each student up with a Google Classroom account and in a short amount of time; all students are now proficient in logging on and using the resources that I have set up in there.
This week I started to incorporate a wonderful approach to teaching called "Genius Hour" during which we need more Chromebooks than we currently have.
During this time, which is 1 set hour each week, the students each come up with their own "passion project." As I teach them how to research, instead of me assigning them what to research they get to choose whatever topic interests them and become the experts, or geniuses, on this topic. With guidance from me, they work on their project for about four to six weeks using the Chromebooks to get their information. Once they are done with their research, they choose from a list of options how they would like to present the information to the class, as geniuses in that topic.
Having more Chromebooks in the classroom would be greatly appreciated as my students become "geniuses" and also as they continue to use them as a tool for learning. Thank you for considering us.
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