Ferryway 2.0

Third grader solves a math word problem for her classmates

Students will have more opportunities to think and create digitally as we enter our third year of Expanded Learning Time (ELT).   The Ferrway School has used the ELT grant over the last two years to integrate technology into classroom instruction.  A quick review of blog posts from last spring highlight some of the innovative approaches that teachers used to inspire their students.  Technology Specialist, Robert Simpson, who coordinates the effort with the school’s Technology Leadership Team delivered a short multimedia presentation during an opening day meeting of all faculty and staff.  Download PDF (840kb)

The presentation gave an overview of last year’s activities which targeted grades 3-6.  All students in grades 3-6 had multiple lessons that incorporated the use of the Qwizdom Student Response System.  Qwizdom helped teachers engage all students during their lessons by requiring that they respond to questions embedded in a PowerPoint presentation.  The image to the left shows a third grader solving a math problem based on a question that students each answered using a remote.  Once students saw the correct answer displayed they demanded to know how to solve the problem.  To complement classroom instruction, several Ferryway teachers who completed the digital media workshop class created online multimedia presentations.  Ms. Ambrose, a third grade technology leader, created a dynamic MCAS presentation that students watched with their parents in their homes.  A 3.5 minute photo slideshow was shown composed of pictures documenting last year’s technology integration efforts.  The slideshow was created with Adobe Photoshop Elements, a software program available on the school’s mobile HP laptop cart.

One challenge that teachers face as they confront the vast universe of digital tools is where to start.  A handout on becoming a better digital media teacher was distributed featuring a concept map.  The online version is available on the Ferryway wiki.   Teachers were encouraged to register for the fall digital media workshop series to build their skills.

Based upon student surveys we know that a majority of our students have Internet access in their homes.  One interesting idea to harness the technology skills of your students is to challenge them to create a tutorial on a difficult area of your curriculum.  The idea was presented by Alan November at this year’s National Educational Computing Conference.  I created a  concept map from my notes and shared it as a handout.  What 5 subject areas do your students need more help to master?

The Earth in peril from My CTRL Z

We are pleased to announce that we received an Adobe Youth Voices (AYV) grant this summer.  Ms. Prince and Ms. Mahoney, our 5-8 art teacher, both attended a week-long summer institute on youth mentoring and digital media.  The AYV program provides over $35,000 in software, equipment, training support, and curriculum resources.  The Ferryway AYV program will focus on students in grades 7 & 8. We watched My CTRL Z produced by Vivekavardhini High School students living in Bagalore India for inspiration.  Our students will have the time, technology resources, and 21st century curriculum experiences to learn how to communicate in a media rich world.

Stay tuned to the Ferryway blog to see how we are doing.

I usually don’t accept any talking or getting out of line while walking in the hallway, however when my class sees Mr. Simpson, they can’t control themselves.

Is he coming to our room?

Is it time to do Qwizdom again?

Please, please, can we use it today!!

The look on my students’ faces when we see Mr. Simpson is priceless.  They smile ear-to-ear and have a look of excitement and hope that they will be the students participating in Qwizdom.

Our most recent Qwizdom experience was a great success.  In my first experience with Qwizdom, I tackled a Literacy lesson.  This last time, I took on what I thought would be a more difficult task with Qwizdom: MCAS Math Prep.  After creating the Qwizdom presentation and using it with my class, I realized that Qwizdom was a wonderful tool to use to better my instruction in math.

Prior to implementing the lesson, I was concerned about how students would show their work, which was something I had stressed over and over again through the course of the year.  The students were able to easily write down their answers on a piece of graph paper and then select their answer on their remote.

Now, that all the third grade classes have been able to experience using Qwizdom, we, as a team, have been able to take a look at how each class has performed on the same lesson.  The other teachers and I used the Graph Slides to better plan our upcoming Math review to help prepare students for the May MCAS exam.

We found a multi-step question involving fractions to be extremely difficult.  The students had to find one-third of 12 and then subtract what they found from the total of 12.  They also had to be able to figure out that the person in the story gave away one-third, meaning they kept two-thirds for themselves.  The wording of the question required lots of pre-thinking in order to figure out where to go with the problem.  It required students to find a fractional part of a whole number.  The students also had to be able to realize that if you were giving away one-third, you must be left with two-thirds.  This is definitely a difficult problem to solve, but one the students must be able to complete on the state math exam.

It was clearly displayed through the “Graph Slides” that the students struggled with this problem.  There was no one wrong answer that a majority of students across all third grade classes seemed to choose.  This let us know what we needed to cover was how to approach the solving of this problem from the very first step.  I saw my students struggling while trying to solve it, so I put some images and number sentences on the board while trying to talk through getting the problem started aloud.  I think that this helped some students in my classroom who were completely stuck on where to go.  Another teacher let her students work through the problem the best they could and then had a group discussion of strategies after they entered their answers.   This led to great discussion of the different problem solving strategies that students could use to find the answers.  It also allows us, as teachers, to see that many students need review on multi-step word problems and using fractions.

Personally, I found the Answer Slides to be an extremely helpful teaching tool.  It allowed me to highlight numbers and vocabulary from the questions to show the students what they should be looking for in the questions.  It also allowed me to place number sentences on the slides to show how to solve the questions.  On some answer slides, I was able to pose questions to help those students that were confused or answered incorrectly to start asking themselves the right questions to get to the correct answer.

The morning after the Math lesson, I asked students to write down what they thought of the Qwizdom experience.  Here are some of their responses:

I think that using Qwizdom for lessons is a good way to get better and better at subjects because you won’t need to pass out work, do the work, and pass in the work.  You just need to pass out the remotes, get it ready, and start.

I liked Qwizdom because it’s easy and I like seeing if I got it right or wrong right away!

I love, love, love Qwizdom!

I would like to do it again!