My students need to have their own Chromebook during class to access our online Social Studies curriculum and write original plays in our Play Writing class.
My students are a diverse group of 6th and 7th graders attending a Spanish Immersion program in North Portland. Close to half of our students qualify for free and reduced lunch. The technology kids access at school is the only technology some of our students access.
During a typical day in our classroom, Chromebooks are used in a variety of ways.
During Spanish, kids take their weekly vocabulary and comprehension tests online. It is graded instantly and they get immediate feedback. During Spanish writing, kids look up words they cannot find in paper dictionaries. Online dictionaries find all forms of the word, making the process less frustrating for students. During language arts, kids read news articles, at their own lexile, about a variety of topics. They take comprehension tests on the articles and can write prompts. They conduct research projects efficiently, creating lists of sources and notes in Google Docs. They write reports or create presentations in Google Apps. In my play writing enrichment class, students collaborate, edit, and share their individual scenes and edits on Google docs.
My Project
Meeting the rigorous Common Core Standards is challenging when using outdated curricula. The best resource we currently have to supplement our Language Arts adoption is Newsela, a kids' new website with customizable reading levels, quizzes and writing prompts. Since I have Chromebooks in my classroom, we can access this resource online, saving time and resources involved in printing the articles. The more Chromebooks we have in class, the fewer kids will need to share.
It is always challenging to find quality curricula in Spanish Immersion.
The current Spanish "textbook" for our Social Studies adoption has no illustrations, photos, maps or diagrams. Fortunately, we have access to the digital version as well that has most of the aforementioned resources.
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