Set BC Innovative Grant Project: Seaview Community School

Auriana Reznik, teacher

Seaview Community School

Who are we?Seaview is an elementary community school in Port Moody. As a community school, we host after school programs, Strong Start, daycares and camps as well as put on a variety of extra school based events to welcome the wider community into our school life. This can be a quite needy student population.

Who are we as a class? Division 4: Grade 2/3

Teachers:

My name in Auriana Reznik and I am the primary teacher in a grade 2/3 neighbourhood classroom. I am lucky to share the class with Lucy Wood who teaches the class one day a week and is also one of our in-class resource teachers. Nancy Buckles is another resource teacher who supports literacy instruction in the class.

Students:

We have 19 kids this year but a wide variety of academic, social-emotional and behavioural needs that include autism, FASD, severe behaviour, LD, and ADHD. Nonetheless we have many strengths that include curiosity, patience, kindness and a good understanding of self-regulation tools and strategies.

What were the primary project goals?

To use iPads to facilitate the use of the Raz-Kids reading

program during Daily 5 literacy instruction.

To use iPads to facilitate written output with certain students using talk to text and predictive spelling.

To use iPads to facilitate inquiry research and

presentations as we move into the new BC curriculum.

How well did the iPads facilitate reading instruction through the use of Raz-Kids?

The iPads were amazing in providing a way to engage the students in independent, differentiated, meaningful and individualized reading practice. One of the Daily 5 strategies is Listen to Reading. In a kindergarten or grade 1 classroom, that means the use of a traditional listening centre. My question was what could that look like in a grade 2 or 3 class with students who are reading chapter books and novels?

Raz-Kids allows the students to work at their just right level, and at their own pace . The teacher can set the level and then the student chooses which books he or she wants to listen to and then read. The quizzes allow students to respond to reading without having to be proficient writers since they are multiple choice.

The dashboard then gives the teacher feedback on individual and class progress in reading comprehension skills.

I scheduled Raz-Kids as part of our Daily 4 schedule to replace Listen to Reading. There were 4 groups which started the afternoon at a different part of the rotation. This allowed our resource teacher to work with specific groups at planned times. At any given time, the iPads were used for Raz-Kids and Writing.

To begin with, the

students sat at a Raz-Kids table until they got used to m

oving around with

the iPads correctly. Later on, they could choose a spot that helped them

stay self—

regulated.

What is Raz-Kids?

Check for understanding by completing

the quiz

Read the book

Listen to the book

Students learned to follow an independent routine.

Formative Assessment: As the teacher, I could then follow their progress using various tools.

See the overall reading comprehension skills.

Alerts then informed which skills I helped the students with during reading

conferences. I could also structure strategy groups with more than one

student.

I also used the iPads to help with written output.

These were assigned to three different students to use during Work on Writing.

These students generally refused to participate in writing with a pencil and

were more engaged with the technology. They are now more familiar

with the predictive text function and can use the iPads more independently.

However, I had hoped that the technology would help them produce

more quantity and better quality.

Two iPads were set aside to help specific students with writing. Students could use

Pages or Write About.

Writing: Write About App

Write About is a writing app that provides photo prompts, individual student profiles and the ability to email teachers and parents the writing samples.

Students liked the ability to choose the category and photo.

The format looks more like a real journal.

Writing: Using Pages (Word Processing)

Pages allows the students to use the microphone for speech to text. Background noise can be an issue so I am looking to buy a sturdy microphone for next year.

We are learning to use Airdrop to help with handing in this work. However, it is not always easy to find on the iPads and Macbook. I hope to create a step by step guide for next year.

As the year went on, more students wanted to use the iPads for writing. Given that there were only two, we had to talk about different tools for different needs.

I assigned a specific iPad to each child so I could easily find their stored work. To print, I need to email the work to myself to then print later as there are no wifi printers in our district.

I think the students would have been more successful if there could have been a pullout group to teach the them how to use the technology while scaffolding the writing through sentence starters and writing frames.

Unfortunately, the children with written output difficulties also happened to have severe behavioural issues and on many occasions refused to participate or were out of the room. So, I hope to pursue this writing goal with different children next year.

Writing: Book Creator

Towards the end of the school year, we got Book Creator loaded onto the iPads. To start, I encouraged some students to do the tutorial during Centres. I was amazed at how quickly they dove into making their own books! We are still learning to use this app but together with my help, the students were able to create a student Set BC report about their experiences with the technology!

An Introduction into Inquiry

Modelled Inquiry

•Polar Bears

ScaffoldedInquiry

•Students chose an arctic animal.

Using a QR code to get to Kidrexfor the very first time!

Helping student use the iPad to complete his research Into an arctic animal.

This is one example of a finished inquiry project into one of the arctic animals.

Modelling Inquiry with the iPads:how I directed late primary students to appropriate sources of information.

iPad research into how polar bears survive in the

Canadian arctic

QR codes

Teacher chosen videos

Teacher chose polar bear websites designed for kids

Kid RexLearning to use the search

bar

In conclusion:

The students quickly learned to use the iPads to help with their learning in a variety of contexts. They have become an incredibly useful tool for learning for all students.

The apps facilitated differentiated learning by allowing students to work at their “just right” level. In a class with a huge range of ability, each student worked on their own goals and faced new challenges.

The apps helped my autistic student to participate in ways otherwise not possible. Specifically, he could communicate his reading comprehension through multiple choice questions in Raz-Kids. Our Special Education Assistants learned to use the iPads and apps.

Certain apps provided formative assessment and evaluation that informed student-teacher conferences.

The iPads were much more suited to the late primary classroom than laptops. They are sturdier, more intuitive, more portable and more like real books.