LH+Class+room+Grant

Project Abstract:

We will provide students with opportunities to increase awareness of how math is used in the world. We ask the question, will this training increase overall student performance in math? Students ask members of the community what part math plays in their profession. They will then use the available technology to develop a video of their interactions. This format enables students to present their new awareness as they connect to the lives of adults.

Project Description

The project that we plan to replicate is the called Math FM developed by the Acworth Center School. In this project students were involved in interviewing members of the community to find out how they used math in their everyday jobs. Students in grades K-4 then created a podcast, which incorporated the interviews and reviews of math games and books.

The goal of our project is to build upon the idea of interviewing members of the community to provide students with the understanding of how the math they perform in the classroom is connected to real jobs and real people. The difference between our project and the one we are replicating is that this project will happen at the second grade level, but the sharing of it will reach district-wide and beyond. They will begin by brainstorming a list of community members to interview, write and practice interview questions, create tables and charts to document the project, investigate and write math book reviews, website reviews, and math game reviews. These investigations are embedded in the core areas of language (speaking, listening, reading and writing). Our intent is to then teach all four classes of second grade students how to use Garageband, i-Movie, flip cameras and mp3 players to develop and share this production. Whole-group instruction can be provided for classes on how to use these tools using Smartboards. Students will work collaboratively in small groups on laptops and Smartboards to create the production. The final presentation will then be shared to the Portsmouth community.


 * Technological integration information – Susan please add

Our district is committed to integrating technology in all content areas. In fact, it is a goal from our school board during the 2008-2009 school year. There is no doubt for many of us in the educational technology field that the integration of technology with classroom content improves student achievement. Thoughtfully planned, such lessons engage students to a higher degree than traditional teaching and lead to the development of 21st century skills such as complex thinking, creative problem solving, and collaboration (Hamilton, 2007). Integration is when classroom teachers use technology to introduce, reinforce, extend, enrich, assess, and remediate student mastery of curricular targets. Integration is an instructional choice that includes collaboration and deliberate planning - and always requires a classroom teacher’s participation. It cannot be legislated through curriculum guides nor will it happen spontaneously. Someone with vision needs to model, encourage, and enable integration, but only a classroom teacher can integrate technology with content-area teaching (Hamilton, 2007). This grant will allow classroom teachers to direct and guide the integration of these tools into their project and direct the assessment of student’s learning. This grant will give students and teachers the tools to communicate what they have learned about the importance of math in the workforce. Because much of integration’s success depends on collaboration, planning, and equitable access, in all likelihood this project will succeed and can be used as a model for the district in how to enable integration through other grade level teams at the elementary level.

This project will improve students’ motivation to learn math, it will chronicle students’ technological savvy and will improve their knowledge in other STEM content areas. Modeling 21st century thinking, we feel that it is important to put the aforementioned tools in the hands of children at a young age. This will allow them to work within a teamwork model while building their knowledge and efficiency with technology. In the area of science our NECAP results indicate that females underperformed male counterparts by 25%. This project enables young females to connect to the work of professional female scientists who use math, and allows them to envision a life of science for themselves. Portsmouth is a community burgeoning with technological industry, engineering, and research. This cache of professionals will be tapped for our project to develop a stronger school/community link.

Our district has an initiative of developing digital portfolios for students. Our project is appropriate to this situation in order to document children’s acumen in technological understanding in an expeditious way. This is essential due to our high population. We have 90 students in second grade. This project can be shared with the other hundred second graders in our district and it can be revised to meet the needs of other grade levels in our district as well as our community’s non-public schools.

This project involves a number of individual content areas such as reading, writing, math, technology and science. It will support acquisition of state standards (GLE’s):
 * Note to self: fill in GLE’s here

The focus of our project asks, “How does math relate to your life?” The interdisciplinary project based learning units of study that branch out from this project are: How do we form quality questions? How do we give a quality oral presentation? How do we research information? How do we think critically? How do we collaborate successfully?

This project is aligned to the following ISTE ICT Literacy Standards

Standard 1. Creativity and Innovation Students demonstrate creative thinking, construct knowledge, and develop innovative products and processes using technology. Students: a. apply existing knowledge to generate new ideas, products, or processes. b. create original works as a means of personal or group expression Standard 2. Communication and Collaboration Students use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively, including at a distance to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others. Students: • interact, collaborate, and publish with peers, experts, or others employing a variety of digital environments and media. • communicate information and ideas effectively to multiple audiences using a variety of media and formats. • contribute to project teams to produce original works or solve problems. Standard 6. Technology Operations and Concepts Students demonstrate a sound understanding of technology concepts, systems, and operations. Students: transfer current knowledge to learning of new technologies.

As a team we consider ourselves life-long learners and view ourselves as members of the 21st century. We recognize the importance of technology and have set goals to increase our facility with many up-to-date teaching tools. As a part of this project, our team has committed to three specific learning goals. These goals include using a flip camera to create a film in i-Movie as well as using Garageband and Podcasting with students to help facilitate the production aspect of the project.

We are committed to integrating technology into all elementary classrooms within our district. We hold the title of district technology trainers, where our responsibilities include laptop training, holding workshops for teachers on digital tools, implementing new technology tools in our own classrooms, and educating ourselves about the various ways technology can be used in the classroom setting. Our passion in this area is evidenced by our commitment to training and we feel willing and able to conduct the scope of work involved in implementing this project.

The Portsmouth School district is considered in need of improvement based on our NECAP testing scores. This deems us an appropriate choice for this statewide collaborative effort to afford us the necessary tools and resources to better our teaching. Our school works with a teaming model. Within this model, our grade level works collaboratively on a daily basis, team-teaches, flexibly groups children based upon needs, and plans project-based units of study that align to state GLE’s. We have operated in this way together for over four years and consider ourselves leaders in the effort to collaborate. Given this commitment to the school, our students, and each other, we feel that we are excellent candidates for this grant.

Our school has many structures in place that support our work in project-based learning. We are afforded common planning time as a grade-level team. This enables us to think deeply and plan units of study that integrate core content areas. We also enjoy uninterrupted blocks of time each day to teach these units of study. This enables students to think critically without distractions. Our Professional Learning Community is comprised of a hierarchy of professional educators from Superintendent to Paraprofessionals dedicated to individualizing education for students based on assessments. Our school schedule is formatted to include time reserved for teaching our professional peers. This arena would enable us to share our newfound knowledge and expertise and would allow us to solidify our own understanding. We envision a staff facile with the technology of the 21st century. As a district, we are offered the opportunity to use professional in-service days and early release days to share our video production with our peers. We encourage teachers from non-public schools in our community to participate.

Harvard researcher, Howard Gardner, has documented eight different forms of intelligence. As a team we recognize these documented intellectual strengths within ourselves, and work collaboratively to produce a rounded view. Our team members have specific intelligences in the areas of linguistic knowledge, organization, visual-spatial aptitude, and logical-mathematical abilities. We also each possess the propensity for interpersonal and intrapersonal skills which help us work together, be reflective, and present information well.

Given our commitment to creating project-based learning units of study, collaborative planning, team teaching, and personal goal setting, we are sure to adhere to all dates, meetings, guidelines, trainings, celebrations and other protocols inherent to this grant. In an effort to revise our district’s technology plan a technology council has been formed. This group is comprised of school board members, administrators and teachers. As a part of this initiative, we have the committed support from our district’s technology council to pursue all possibilities for innovative training and implementation of technology-driven units of study within our classrooms.

The 400+ students of Little Harbour school will be positively impacted by the project-based learning unit we create with the second graders. Our video will be shared with Kindergarteners and first graders to increase their knowledge of how math exists all around us. We will also be using our classrooms as a Smartboard lab that will be accessible to the entire school community. We will use our common planning time to offer our space and resources for teachers who would like to utilize them in their own teaching. This will coincide with trainings we will be doing within the school to share our lesson plan ideas and knowledge of the Smartboards