Individual Needs 2018-19

November14, 2018

Home Learning Menu Reflection
The grade three team has spent considerable time developing and refining a home learning choice menu to allow opportunities for students and parents to choose home learning options that would be the most beneficial. Our team originally met weekly to work to fill the menu with option and has worked increase the number and variety of options. Early in the year, the emphasis has been on ensuring that students are completing their weekly home learning. As a class, the students of 3SS decided that a logical consequence for not bringing in home learning on Friday would be to lose choice time on Friday afternoon. This consequence has been a motivator for students to complete their weekly choices and bring them to class.

During our data strand work with Alex and Sherridan, John and I have been working collaboratively to develop a way to digitally track the choices students are making so that we can more effectively consider the impact of their choices on their learning. The process of designing a google form has lead to frequent discussions and a great deal of time and effort.

As John and I grappled with various ideas regarding how to best collect, organize, and use student home learning data, we attended a data strand session during which Sherridan shared a visual model of different types of school data and how they interconnect. John and I immediately realized that the data we had been working toward collecting would give us insight regarding how well our home learning program was impacting learning results. The related to two of the four domains.

I then suggested to John that if we could eventually collect student data and periodically share the data with the students themselves we could then incorporate their perception(a third data category) of how their home learning choices have been benefiting their learning. This process of developing a digital home learning choice tracker, implementing it's use, learning how to represent and process the data and then invite student reflection is proving to be a very challenging and time consuming endeavor. John and I both believe in the potential benefits of the project so we intend to continue working through challenges until we can ultimately use the 3 types of data(school processes, student learning, and perceptions) to evaluate the success of our home learning program.

January 29, 2018 Revising Our Home Learning Menu

Since my last post, I had been collecting student data on home learning choices each week using Google Forms and was working closely with John as part of our data strand work to learn how to best process and use our home learning choice data to assess how it was impacting student learning. I was excited about the plan detailed in my last post--to have students periodically considering their choices and reflect on the benefits or lack thereof that there home learning choices had had on their growth.

Our team had been collaborating on the menu throughout the year and we had been struggling and grappling with the process of every few weeks finding the time to hash out all of the choices for each new menu. We had debates regarding how effective our menu was and how we might be able to improve and revise the menu. Calley joined us to facilitate several meetings which was extremely helpful and after some team soul searching regarding how we felt individually and as a team about home learning and our menu, we decided to change our approach. This has altered the plan I had in place for student reflection.

The team decided to remove many of the choices from the previous home learning menu in effort to place more effort on math. We were fearful that too many of the other choices were pulling students away from choosing math options which Calley and the team felt had greater benefit than some of the other options we had been providing. On the new menu, students were still given choice of math games, and skill/ability level on required math assignments. We wanted the Bridges math pages to be timely and relevant. Previous some students had been working on pages that required skills we had yet to practice in class. We designed the new menu to be more specific about which pages to do and when. The pages are differentiated to needs by selected specific problems for students based on the skill level and offering an extra layer of challenge for more advanced math students. See the photos below to see the evolution of our home learning menu.

New Revised Menu for 2019

Original 2018 Home Learning Menu

March 20, 2019  Piloting Prodigy to Meet Student Needs

Individual Needs Reflection April 10, 2019

Most students have been spending at least the minimum amount of 15 minutes per night on Prodigy. Some students haven't been doing the home learning which is fairly typical of any type of home learning on any given week. Some students are spending a great deal of time using the program since they find it to be a fun video game. Some students have claimed that their parents won't let them play because they think it's a waste of time. One parent, in particular, sent an email to express their disapproval of our decision to use the program. This was her feedback:

I also wanted to let you know that I personally like very much the fact that there were some real paper homework to do, it was a good way also to check what ******* did and review with her the homework.
I honestly don’t like very much the fact that they do now the math homework on the computer for few reason:

1) Handwriting 
2) More of time in front of the screen 
3) No possibility to check and review with the child.
I know this is not your decision but just wanted to share with you my point of view.... after so many year in the school I really appreciate that finally there were some clear homework (in real paper!) to do at home!!
It was also very clear for me to follow with unit you were working on. 

I thanked the parent for their feedback and explained that we were testing the program because it provided instantaneous feedback and it automatically adjusts the skill level to match her daughter's specific needs. 

I have found the data that Prodigy provides to be very useful. For example, after a certain amount of questions, the program "places" each child based on the skills in different categories. This provides a very insightful snapshot of students' overall achievement in different areas. Here is the data for my class: 

When I click on any of the circles it gives the names of the students contained within. This is very helpful in determining which students need extra assistance in a given area and which students might need to be challenged. 

The program offers a variety of detailed reports which show exactly which problems students have attempted along with the answers they provided. 

I think there are a few great benefits of the program. The first is that the problems that it provides are individualized and tailored to each students' needs. The second advantage is that the data provided to teachers is clear, extensive and immediate. The last benefit is that kids enjoy playing. The program seems to be a fun way to practice math which makes home learning less of a chore and more of a joy.