The past week has been spent gathering feedback from the Wakelet PD session that I provided for the middle school teachers and planning the next steps for staff development. I created a Google Form to gather feedback from the middle school teachers. Only 2 of 6 teachers responded to the survey, but I also had 1:1 conversations with several of the team members, as well as the middle school assistant principal. All of the feedback was positive. The teachers believe that Wakelet and the Immersive Reader are both relevant and valuable tools. The teachers were honest and admitted that they had no plans to utilize Wakelet until the second semester. They plan to work with creating Wakelet collections for the second semester over the winter break.
It was agreed that the high school teachers would benefit from the Wakelet session, but in order to maximize participation it would be best to wait until the start of the second semester. I plan to provide this training to the high school teachers, and to also follow up with the middle school teachers once they have had a chance to experiment with Wakelet. I also hope to collaborate with colleagues to further develop the parent resource website and to create a teacher resource website as well. My field experience has been overwhelming at times, but overall it has been rewarding and educational. I have developed new skills and new insights and am excited to see what's next and how I can use what I have learned to have a positive impact on education in the future.
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I produced this video to highlight the various stages of my field experience at Cross High School. Highlights and personal reflections were included to capture the progression of my experience from an initial needs assessment to evaluating the success of my efforts.
On November 20, 2019 I provided a thirty minute professional development session to the middle school team at my school. The subject of the PD session was Wakelet and its embedded immersive reader. I developed a PowerPoint presentation as a resource for the teachers and highlighted the features of Wakelet during the session. Please watch the attached video blog for a synopisis of the session.
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I have spent the last week considering how to continue to support my school community and decided that I needed to provide some tools to the teachers that would be useful based on their needs. I had several one on one discussions with fellow teachers to in order to get a better understanding of what challenges they are facing and/or what needs they have regarding planning lessons. I heard about STEAM units that teachers were being required to develop and requirements for personalized learning. I also heard about the challenges of providing for varying abilities of students within their classes. I had already planned to introduce teachers to Book Creator because it is very simple to use and allows 40 books to be created for free. I also want to make sure that all teachers are aware of Microsoft’s Immersive Reader and its capabilities for supporting learners of varying abilities and learning preferences. Because Wakelet is another tool that I think teachers would find useful, and the Immersive Reader is integrated into the application, I decided that this would be another great tool to introduce to teachers.
To be completely honest, many of the teachers that I am talking to our brand-new teachers and are entering the pre-Christmas survival mode stage. I do not want to overwhelm them, but I do want to provide them with some easy-to-use and useful tools, which they may not implement until after Christmas. I’m hoping to spark interest and provide support to those who want it. I plan to create some short screencasts that can be used as a reference at any point, and I will also schedule a recurring weekly drop-in after school. I plan to briefly highlight one tool during the drop-in and then respond to specific requests for support from teachers. I’m hoping that this casual atmosphere will promote a community of sharing and foster growth within the school.
After providing a presentation on Lexiles and Quantiles at our recent Parent Tech Night, I wanted to provide an ongoing resource for parents who attended, parents who didn't attend, as well as teachers. I decided to create short tutorials with very specific objectives. The plan is to provide interested parents and teachers with the information that they want, where and when they need it. The tutorials will be housed on a Weebly blog page. Each tutorial will be specific to one learning objective and be 2-4 minutes in length. This will allow individuals to find the exact information that they want, quickly and easily. A short email will be sent to teachers that includes a brief summary of the blog content and a link to the blog. Teachers will be encouraged to share the information with their parents via their personal class communication system. The blog link will also be shared with the Title I facilitator to be included in the monthly Title I newsletter. I plan to continue to add resources to blogs for parents and teachers.
The first blog post will be for parents and teachers and include tutorials regarding Lexile and Quantile measures. Four tutorials were created and our shared below. The tutorials explain the meaning of a Lexile measure and the meaning of a Quantile measure, in addition to introducing two resources based on these measures. The first resource, Find-A-Book, uses a child's Lexile to identify books that are in the child's reading range and match his or her interests. The second resource, Math@Home, uses a child's Quantile to provide math resources intended to be used to support the child at home. A link to the Parent Resources blog is also provided below.
I presented at Parent Tech Night this past Monday, October 14th. My presentation was one of several technology-based presentations. The event was combined with Freshman-Sophomore night which was designed to inform parents about requirements for graduation. Overall turnout for the event was low, with approximately 20-25 families in attendance. Everyone attended the first presentation regarding digital citizenship and then parents could choose two additional presentations to attend.
The objective of my presentation was to inform parents about Lexile and Quantile measures. I wanted parents to understand the meaning and purpose of Lexile and Quantile measures, and how they could use these numbers to access web-based resources at hub.lexile.com. I presented two sessions, with the first having six parents in attendance and the 2nd having three parents in attendance. I’ll start with a few of the bumps in the road that I experienced.
Overall, I think the parents were receptive and appreciated the information. The results of the survey are summarized below.
Although the attendees expressed an interest in a parent website, I’m not sure how to best approach the idea. Only a small percentage of parents attended, and my school, historically, has very low parent involvement. So, I’m not sure if a website was created how many parents would utilize it. I also am not sure how many teachers and/or staff would be interested in creating content for the site besides myself. I was the only teacher that presented at Tech Night, and only two other classroom teachers attended. More input needs to be gathered from stakeholders in order to develop a plan that would be supported by and benefit the majority. And finally, watching the video was uncomfortable but provided a valuable learning opportunity for me regarding my presentation skills. I already knew that I talked with my hands and said ‘um’ too often when presenting, especially when I am presenting content for the first time. There were many variables that impacted my session which were out of my control, but if presenting in the future I will try to do a better job of planning for a variety of possibilities. I’m glad that I had planned to have paper copies of the survey available and that I had handouts for participants to take home with them. The video that was recorded is posted here for documentation purposes. For parents and teachers, I will be creating and sharing a screencast of my presentation. I think this will be more beneficial to those looking to learn about Lexiles and Quantiles. I will share the screencast in a future post. A copy of my PowerPoint presentation is also included with this post. Parent Tech Night is fast approaching. I originally planned to videotape my presentation, but I don’t have anyone to assist so I’ve decided to move away from that plan. I also do not feel that this would be the best presentation for sharing after the event. I’m creating a PowerPoint presentation that I will use during my presentation. After the presentation, I will create a Screencast/recorded PowerPoint that will be posted on a parent resource website for participants to reference. It will also be available to parents who were unable to attend and faculty members who are interested in the topic. Additionally, I’m hoping to use the opportunity to get feedback from parents regarding what training they would be interested in attending in the future and what type of content that they would like to see available on a parent resource website. I plan to create a survey that parents will complete during or after the presentation. I will have two options for parents. One option will be a paper version and the second version will be a digital version which will be accessed via a QR code. I chose to create the screencast presentation after the “live” presentation so that I can incorporate questions parents ask during the presentation, in addition to feedback received from the survey.
With limited outside guidance within my school to steer me in any one direction, I have spent the last two weeks analyzing the results of my needs assessment and speaking with some of the people who responded to the survey. There was not a strong consensus among the respondents for any one type of training or instructional support. There was also a general lack of interest in formal training sessions. What I determined is that there are several teachers in a “survivor” mode. They are feeling overwhelmed and just need to have someone to go to with a problem and get it addressed as quickly and easily as possible. So, that’s where I focused my efforts over the previous week, making a difference one teacher at a time. To best meet their needs, I met with teachers whenever was before school, after school and during my planning period when possible.
The first teachers that I met with this week were the assistant teacher and the substitute teacher that are teaching the students in the middle school self-contained special education classroom. The class has been without a permanent teacher since the beginning of the year, and as a result of how technology is set up the substitute and assistant are unable to access many of the programs that are typically used in the classroom. They were very interested in getting students started with the READ 180 program, but unfortunately were not able to access the digital teaching materials and have students who are not able to access the student software. These issues need to be addressed from the district level to truly be fixed, but that will not be done quickly. I worked with them to create a work around for accessing the digital teaching materials that can be used until the district is able to address the problem. This does not allow them to access everything but allows them to access what they need to teach the daily lessons. I also worked with them to identify alternative software that the students could use for reading support, until the district can get the students set up in the READ 180 student application. We decided on reardthory.org for several reasons. The teachers can create their own accounts and monitor student performance, it is free and simple to set up, and students can self-monitor their performance. We finished the week with a plan to begin implementing the READ 180 blended learning model with most of the READ 180 curriculum and some modifications for the students. We will monitor and adjust while we wait for the district to do their part to address the lack of access to the digital teacher materials and student application. Next, I met with Ms. Dalton. She is the 7th grade ELA teacher and a first-year teacher. She wanted to be able to monitor her students’ Chromebook use and was having problems with her Smartboard. To address the issue of monitoring her students, I helped her get her LanSchool account up and running. We then spent some time going over the most important features for monitoring. She plans to use the software for the next week and then we will get back together to address any issues she had and to look at some of the advanced features of LanSchool. I then helped get her configure the settings for her projector and SmartBoard. We went over some basic troubleshooting tips and I shared tips for using some of the interactive features of the Smartboard to enhance her lessons. Finally, I met with Ms. Ravenell, the Title I facilitator. She needed help setting up a spreadsheet for tracking Title I expenditures. We worked together to set up the spreadsheet and I provided her with some tips for adjusting the spreadsheet as needed to meet her needs. Ms. Ravenell is also facilitating the Parent Tech Night so we discussed the presentations and how to continue to meet the needs of the parents. We discussed creating a parent website with resources that specifically target parents. I will be working on options to create this resource and will then get back together with Ms. Ravenell to discuss and plan. The next week will be sent continuing to address the needs of teachers seeking assistance and planning for the Parent Tech Night.
A needs assessment survey was sent to my fellow educators at CHS one week ago. The number of responses to the survey was not as high as I had hoped for. A summary of the responses is embedded below along with an attached document with the same information. We are a small school meaning that I only sent out request to complete a survey to 41 individuals. I included 29 middle and high school teachers, 5 classroom and lab assistants, and 7 administrators. After my original email, a second email, and a personal request to several teachers I received a total of 16 responses, which equates to a 39% response rate. I received responses from 7 high school teachers, 2 middle school teachers, the media center librarian, 3 assistant teachers, and 2 administrators.
The 41 survey requests included 11 teachers new to the building and 2 administrators new to the building, which equates to 32% of the survey pool. Only 2 new teacher and 1 new administrator responded to the survey, which equates to 23%. The surveys were sent to 6 middle school teachers and 23 high school teachers, although some of these teachers do teach middle and high school students. Two of six middle school teachers responded (33%) and 7 of 23 high school teachers responded (30%). My field experience proposal assumed that I would target middle school teachers, four of which are new to the building. After reflecting on the responses to the survey, I plan to develop training content that has the potential to support the needs of as many teachers as possible who are interested increasing their technology knowledge and skills. Some of the responses to the survey were not what I would have predicted. This was particularly true regarding areas that addressed integrating technology into instruction, using technology to differentiate instruction, students using technology to create products that show higher levels of learning, and knowledge of what technology resources are available. I would have predicted that teachers did not feel as competent in these areas. Although outside the scope of what I will be doing for my field experience, I would be curious to learn how the perceptions of the teachers align with the reality of the instruction that is occurring in the classroom. For example, are students routinely using technology to create products that show higher levels of learning. The results did not indicate overwhelming preferences for training in any one area. Several respondents were interested in receiving training in the various Google applications. Therefore, I plan to create at least one training opportunity that addresses integrating Google applications into instruction. I also plan to create an online space to house technology-related resources for teachers. This will include information about applications that are available to meet instructional needs and videos and tutorials to support use of these applications. As a side note, I learned that unfortunately we do not have access to Canvas as an LMS. There is not an option for me to create a course in Canvas, but only to participate in courses as a student. I plan to either create a Weebly page or a Google classroom to house content that I create. One teacher indicated that they wanted help with READ 180. A 1:1 conversation with this teacher reflected that they were mostly interested in how to structure the format of a READ 180 classroom, as opposed to the READ 180 software. I have planned to meet with this teacher individually to provide recommendations. The instructional coach/Title I facilitator requested help with using Google Sheets to track Title I expenditures. This is a unique need to her position, so I plan to spend some time with her individually to assist with setting up a spreadsheet to meet her needs. I also surveyed teachers to see when or in what format they would prefer to receive training. I had assumed that virtual/online training would be the preference, but most respondents indicated that they would prefer training during late-ins, with virtual/online training being the second preference. Unfortunately, late-ins only occur monthly and include an hour of time for staff development. I already know that this time has been dedicated to training related to CHS being a failing school and remediation from a Title VI complaint, so options for me to provide training during this time will be unlikely. I believe that providing virtual/online resources for technology support will be the most effective way to meet the needs of the teachers. My next step is to begin developing content and to seek out as much feedback as possible on an individual basis. I truly hope that I can find a way to benefit as many teachers as possible when it comes to technology integration in the classroom. ![]()
Although not a part of my field experience proposal, I have been asked to present at our Parent Tech Night. The event will be hosted in mid-October. The topic for my session was left up to me. After considering what other presenters were doing and what I could offer that would most benefit our parents, I decided to host a session that informs parents about Lexile and Quantile scores. Specifically, how parents can use these scores to access online resources to support their child's growth in reading and math. First, I plan to explain how the scores are obtained and what the scores mean regarding their child's current level of functioning in reading and math. Then, I will present valid online learning resources that can be accessed at home which will support growth in reading and math. My goal is for parents to understand how they can use their child's Lexile and Quantile level to find resources that are appropriate for their child's current level of functioning and that will be most likely to support growth.
Many teachers in my building don’t truly understand Lexile and Quantile scores and are unaware of free resources available that are based on these scores. Unfortunately, this includes some math and ELA teachers. I am hoping, that even though this event is for parents, some teachers may be interested in attending. I’m also considering having the presentation video-taped so that I can make it available to teachers virtually. |