Impact on Student Success
Year One Resources
IXL Learning
IXL Learning is an application that I use weekly, giving students the chance to show their understanding of content knowledge. This program accelerates learning through repetition using various question styles.
When planning my lessons, using the Understanding by Design framework, I would review the various IXL lessons to assess which would provide my students with the most support during that unit. IXL typically has multiple activities for Social Studies that are specific to events or standards. I would use these activities along with the standards that were identified during my PLC meetings to assign students specific lessons to help me check for understanding. The feedback that IXL provides shows me if students need further clarification on anything specific or if they have mastered the content within the lesson.
Example of Student Success (Part 1)
Pictured above is the first use of IXL as this student was introduced to the program. This is the assignment that they turned in and it shows that they only answered five questions over a period of 18 minutes. Throughout the year they learned that they can continue to answer questions on a specific topic and once they have answered all of the questions they can repeat the same questions with slight alterations. This allows for the student to see the same information but now look for different details.
Example of Student Success (Part 2)
Pictured above is the final use of IXL from this same student this year. This assignment shows that over the course of the school year and as they have learned how the program works they can spend time answer questions to better understand the content. This student improved over the year dramatically and it showed as they increased the time and effort they put in to this useful program.
Blooket
Blooket is a web-based quiz game application for group competition or solo study. Students can compete as teams or individually to earn rewards while reviewing information.
At the start of each day my students log in to Blooket and prepare for the review game. Blooket offers a wide range of games for the students to use to review information in a quick time frame, usually about 3-4 minutes. As soon as we are done I review the class score and highlight any all-star students. I will then quickly start another quiz to let them jump right back into it and try to improve their scores. Every day I saw improvement and over time it helped them commit the information to memory for easy recall for later assessments.
The above image shows the initial round of review questions that one of my classes completed at the start of the day. They answered the same 15-20 questions roughly twenty-five times in a rapid time frame. The students had been working on these questions for two days prior to this which explains why this score is fairly good. For these questions, I try to make them recall questions that we can later build off of so that they know what they are looking for when analyzing text.
The picture above shows the second round of the review questions that the class did within about one minute of the previous review. It is clear that my students made a strong improvement when introduced to the questions again in a new setting just after this initial review. This rapid review that is done each day combined with the spaced repetition of seeing this information each day has helped the students improve on their recall of information going into assessments.
Statements from Educational Leaders
Jenny Pramschufer
Instructional Coach
“Your energy is contagious. Students were engaged and excited to begin the lesson. It was evident that your learning environment encourages students to ask questions and to productively struggle through rigorous assignments.”
Troy Martin
Principle
“You had great use of the essential elements of a lesson. Agenda, hook, I can statements, checking for understanding, and use of Nearpod. Great Job!”
Year Two Quality Resources
Minecraft Education
Minecraft Education has been a valuable tool in my classroom. Students are able to take current units that we are studying and show their understanding by building structures or scenes from what we have talked about in class.
Sample Lesson Using Minecraft Education: Minecraft Reformation
Formative
Formative has been one of the most valuable assessment tools I have used over my first two years of teaching. They provide a wide range of question options that allow students the chance to show their understanding in different ways.
Sample Assessment Using Formative: Renaissance Visual
EdPuzzle
Edpuzzle assignments are ones that I love being able to customize to fit the needs of my classrooms. There are so many valuable options in using the Edpuzzle library or uploading a video of my choice to build questions to check for understanding. Using the scheduling options and data as supplemental resources to build my classroom understanding around.
Sample Edpuzzle Video Assignment: Catholic Reformation