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Henrico Education Foundation Grant Award 2012
Henrico Education Foundation Grant Award 2012
Digital Learning Day Participant with VSTE 2017
Digital Learning Day Participant with VSTE 2017
iSMART Grant Awarded by Henrico Education Foundation July 2012
I have had the great pleasure to learn and develop lessons with some great educators. One of my experiences was working in the ACT-ESL Summer Institute. This program was a collaboration with Virginia Commonwealth University and Chesterfield County Public Schools. The goal was to train content area teachers in strategies to support ESL learners in their classrooms. As part of our year long journey, I was able to get constructive feedback on my lessons and also share one of my lessons with my peers. You can view my lessons below.
An outcome of this program, I was very interested in using lower level, high interest texts in my classroom. However, I was unsure of how to introduce them in my lessons. I collaborated with my librarians to write a HEF grant which developed a process based on Project iRead which was a process to increase reading fluency in elementary schools in Henrico County. Our proposed process, which we called iSMART (Integrated Science/Math Altered Repeated Text), worked on the premise that if students worked with leveled content area texts supported by handheld mobile technology (iPod touches) and targeted vocabulary, ESL students would not only increase their Tier 3 vocabulary in math and science, but also increase their reading fluency as they learned the English language. The ultimate outcome was to be increased achievement in our ESL population which traditionally shows an achievement gap. I also extended the process to my Exceptional Education students as many of the same differentiation strategies can benefit their learning as well.
iSMART Process Link
iSMARTgrantfinal.pdfProcess for Math that used the iSMART
Process for Math that used the iSMART
Digital Learning Day 2017 VSTE Youtube LIVE at L. Douglas Wilder MS
To learn more about Digital Learning Day visit:
http://www.digitallearningday.org/
As a member of the Greater Richmond Area Educational Technology Consortium ( or GRAETC - say that ten times fast!), I get to work with the Virginia Society for Technology in Education (VSTE) an affiliate of ISTE.
This year, Wilder had the chance to have a few of our students share the innovative lessons in which they participated to support the national Digital Learning Day. This yearly event is "a nationwide celebration highlighting great teaching and demonstrating how technology can improve student outcomes." Schools are encouraged to log their events for the day and share nationally the innovative teaching and learning happening in our schools.
The lessons the students highlighted included their use of a Sphero. Spheros are programmable robots that introduce coding skills and can also be driven to add a kinetic component to a lesson.
Mr. Lightfoot, 7th Grade Math teacher, used the Sphero to help students understand points on a coordinate plane.
Ms. Walton's students used the Sphero several times during the year to learn calendar movements, predator/prey relationships and practice math skills. In the video to the right, students were either predator or prey and we played a tag game. As we increased or decreased the numbers of predators/prey, we were able to discuss how those changes would impact populations of animals over time.
Enjoy videos of both lessons and see how they learn!
Lightfoot_math.MOVpred_preysphero.MOVReport abuse