Grateful for Gifts and Grants

The new technologies that we have acquired this year at Riverside Elementary School is like waking up to a room full of presents on Christmas morning!

This year we have been fortunate to add 20 iPads and 25 MacBooks to our technology arsenal. Our ESO was kind enough to buy all of our teachers an iPad this past fall. The Riverside Casino and Golf Resort's Washington County Riverboat Foundation, through a grant this winter, allowed us to purchase the MacBooks and the resulting mobile lab for our students. I (we) want to thank everyone who played a part in allowing us to receive these gifts and this grant.  

I am a firm believer that putting new technology in the hands of students leads to increased student engagement, and increased student engagement leads to increased student achievement. It is evident that the students really look forward to using the devices and they enjoy having them in their hands as a learning tool. As a result, seeing our students use these devices is fun. Watching the students exhibit a high level of respect for these devices while using them is neat to see, too. 

However, using the iPads and MacBooks are a new experience so there is a learning curve that goes along with that. After we received the iPads, we were able to send two teachers to a three-day course at the Grant Wood Area Education Agency (AEA). Throughout this course, our two teachers learned about iPad basics, as well as incorporating QR codes, screen casting and story telling applications, and student blogging. These two teachers, along with our Grant Wood AEA technology consultant and myself, have been responsible for passing along this learning to the rest of our teaching staff throughout three professional development sessions. Additionally, we have created a forum for sharing educational apps amongst staff on a regular basis. The MacBooks are still pretty brand new, and the learning for these devices has been fairly informal up to this point.

It is common knowledge that a picture is worth a thousand words. Because of this shared understanding, I have included, below, some of my favorite pictures that I have been able to capture, this year, that shows our students and teachers with some of our new technology.

Part Two...Great Growth

The following four slides are visual representations of our students' growth from the Math and Writing benchmark assessments that students have taken in the fall (end-of-August) and winter (mid-January). They compare how many of our students have met their year-end benchmark goals for proficiency in the fall, versus how many of our students have met those same year-end benchmark goals in the winter. This is worth sharing and celebrating, and it is a testament to everyone's hard work. We are very excited with these results, and very proud of the efforts that contributed to this growth.

The math computation probe consists of 25 problems representing year-long, grade-level math computation curriculum. Depending on the grade-level, students get between three and four minutes to answer as many of the problems as they are able.

The math application probe consists of 18-25 problems representing the year-long, grade-level math concepts and applications curriculum. Each test is three-pages long. Depending on the grade-level, students get between six and eight minutes to answer as many of the problems as they are able.

Students are given a writing probe; they have one-minute to think of a response, and then three-minutes to write a response. Total words written is a count of how many words students were able to write within the three-minutes

The same writing probe that was used to score total words written is used to score correct word sequence. To receive credit for correct word sequence, writing must be correctly spelled and grammatically correct.

This information helps us in determining how students are responding to instruction so that we can make necessary changes. The following pictures represent some of the ways that we are monitoring progress in-between benchmark assessments. Students are setting goals, and students are keeping track of their own progress compared to those goals. These are things that are having a positive impact with our students.

All of our up-to-date benchmark assessment data (Reading, Math, and Writing) is on display inside the glass case across the hall from the office at Riverside Elementary School. I encourage you to check it out the next time that you come into our school. Also, for individual child/student fall and winter data, as well as grade-level expectations for throughout the year, please be on the lookout for a note coming home on Friday, February 14th that will provide those specific results.