Observation #1: The Changing Day of the Instructional Technologist

Observation Day 1

Previously on this campus, the students took a DBA, District Benchmark assessment. The results were not as high as the campus was wanting so the campus is pulling together all resources to work with students to help them excel on the upcoming STAAR exam. Kristina Tran started the morning working with a small group of students. The task of this intervention is extra practice/help in reading skills. Tran worked with the students having them read a small packet first then briefly discuss before answering questions independently. The first task before the students is a comparison and contrast of items. Then the text goes on and a question dealing with maps comes up. Students are questioned by explaining why they choose their answers. She works on strategies such as referring back to the text and reading all the answers before choosing their selection. The group meets and works together for a little over one hour. This intervention is very familiar to me. Last Spring 2018 I was hired by the district to be a Ninja reading interventionist. All my students made advancements in reading levels with a few students going up 4 levels in reading and one going up 5 levels in the time that I worked with them. I enjoyed my time with them and finished the program in April. Out of the interventionists, my students made the most advancement. This could be attributed to the fact that I have recently taught and many of the other interventionists were retired teachers, some of which still lead with teacher-centered ideas. Students in the group are coached while they work on several questions. They are informed to be prepared to be called on randomly and will need to be able to explain how they got their answers. After they work for a bit, she encourages them to get up out of their chair and stretch after they get to problem six. though two did stretch, none of the students stood up. Tran calls randomly on the students to read the question and answer. Redirection to a student is quick and non-disruptive to the group activity. All students agree on the answer and another student is called on to explain how they came to the correct answer. The group is reminded that they are supposed to have at least one sentence explanation for each question. This way when they are called on they can refer to their notes to refresh their memory. students struggled with one question. Tran modeled reading the question then going back into the text to try and find the answer or supporting statement. Another important aspect of the intervention was the activation of prior knowledge in helping students connect with more understanding of the text. She did not let them pass on with just giving an answer, they always had to support their answers. At one point they also had to compare their previous answer to their new one. Why did they change their mind? what information did they use to change their answer? She modeled thinking on the question they had the most issue with. Once again students are encouraged to get up and stretch before continuing. She spoke to them about their own learning, metacognition, and strategies that they use to answer questions. One student tries to take over the lesson by talking over Tran and she uses an ignoring strategy to deal with their behavior. This successful strategy leads students onto their lessons as they follow the lead of the teacher. Though this is not always successful, Tran, an experienced teacher, would have been able to easily change to another strategy to deal with the student. It was difficult for me to sit and watch, as a teacher of 23 years I wanted to follow my instinct and try strategies of my own. Since the behavior wasn't major it was easily dealt with. At 10:10 students were given stickers and shown a video of an avalanche to boost lack of prior knowledge. Students were quite engaged to see what an avalanche looked like. Only one in the group knew what an avalanche was going into the lesson. Tran and I discussed the mini-lessons that would be given in the afternoon and made plans for me to observe/help next Monday-Wednesday on the elementary campus. Then I will teach mini-lessons to 5th graders on April 8 and 10th. Students are going to be moving into the testing season and things will start becoming more irregular as the staff moves to assist in any way they can, such as the IT doing reading intervention. The success of the campus, though heavily weighed on the teachers' shoulders, is shared across all staff. I find from past experiences that a staff dedicated to helping students makes a huge difference. Even simple encouragement from the nutrition and janitorial staff can give the students that boost of confidence to do their best. Tran will be conducting lessons with groups of 5th graders. A large group of students comes in and settles down. They are two computers short for the class so two students are grouped together. Today's class is going to teach them how to use classlink. Students log in using their personal credentials. There are three additional computers that won’t work correctly for some reason or another. Students with nonworking computers or sharing indicate significant distraction and lack of focus on directions. There are accounts that had to be adjusted for students, which Tran was able to handle from her end rather quickly.

www.classlink.com

Classlink is a site that lets students tap into icons instead of having to repeatedly login to apps they need. With this site, they log in a single time and browse apps that are campus and teacher supported. This is a fantastic site! Instead of students browsing around randomly, they have direction via this site.

Class one was quite talkative with a few particular students that needed some redirection. The redirection was successful overall. The challenge with class one is that so many students were on various levels of the instructions. Class two came in and were given instructions on how to ask for help and the expectations of the class. This is an introduction to classlink for these kids. This is a single sign-on service. It remembers the password and makes the system simpler. Classlink can be used at home, it is an internet program, not an intranet one. There is a cost for use, but this is definitely a useful program for the students. No longer do they have to keep typing in their credentials every time they get into a program, it remembers and does it for them. Students have an opportunity to explore the apps available to them.

Another important part of these lessons is the explain that when doing research it would be wise not to rely on google or Wikipedia due to the lack of credibility of some sites. Sites that are listed on the classlink are PebbleGo Next, Britannica, Brainpop, and Gale. Lessons were concluded with an emphasis on using authentic resources for research they will be starting soon in their classes.