My students need portable tablets so that they can conduct research on authors, famous historians and events, and places around the world and to access online curriculum.
"If there is no struggle, there is no progress" - Frederick Douglass. My students love to challenge themselves and seek out answers. I have an aspiring group of young future authors, scientists, and even teachers that need to enrich their minds through research and exploration.
I work at a Title 1 school in a low income community.
The majority of our population is Hispanic with several non-English speaking students and students with little or no home support. All of our students receive free breakfast and lunch. I was fortunate enough to move up to second grade this year with my first graders from last school year. My class is comprised of mostly high achieving students who strive for success. I have four ESE students who range from being language impaired to autistic. My students love engaging in friendly academic competition and challenge each other often. As in any class, I have students who need extra coaching, assistance, and intervention to keep up with our rigorous pace and the demands of preparing for end of course exams in all subject areas. As a result of our rigorous pace and having to utilize our class computers to meet the requirements of our reading and math on-line intervention programs, it leaves no access to the computers for research.
My Project
My students will use the tablets in small groups or individually to conduct research on science and social studies topics, to type paragraphs generated from the various graphic organizers that we use in class and even participate in virtual science labs. They will use the tablets to access enrichment or reteach curriculum resources that I have assigned to them as well as listen to leveled readers on-line. My students would like to learn how to make PowerPoint presentations and Prezi's of their own to present to the class. I will also integrate the use of the tablets into my workshop rotations in which my students will use on-line glossaries, thesauruses, encyclopedias, etc, I will also use them for students who are fast finishers to participate in on-line academic games. My students love to use the computer for research. It breaks my heart to have to tell them that we need to keep the computers free for the students who need to complete intervention sessions on-line.
With the rising use of technology in our daily lives and how schools are moving toward digital curriculum, my students, some of which don't have a computer or access to one at home, need to be able to be exposed to different modalities of technology to enhance and enrich their learning capabilities.
Having portable tablets, my students will be able to move around the room, in quiet spaces, or even use them outside to do more than we were ever able to do because of lack of resources.
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