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New Learning: Assistive Technology & Cultural Responsiveness

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New Learning: Assistive Technology & Cultural Responsiveness

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In my coursework, I have learned so much about assistive technology. Assistive technology (AT) is defined as: products, equipment, and systems that enhance learning, working, and daily living for persons with disabilities.
I specifically learned a lot about resources and tools for helping students in reading, writing and math. I also learned about many types of resources and different technology tools that can help benefit special education students, English Language Learners and even regular education students.

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I created this helpful document that highlighted 5 of the tools that I felt would be beneficial and impactful to add into my classroom. These are tools that I previously had not explored or had learned about. Learning about this tools had opened my eyes to the possibilities of introducing them to my classroom behavior system for management and organization.

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tools & tasks for behavior and life skills

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Technology doesn't have to increase or create distractions in the classroom, but if used without a purpose, it most likely will. When you're integrating technology, you want to make sure that it aligns with the learning goals and ultimately helps students reach those goals. When balanced well, students can achieve great things, stay focused, and move toward their ultimate goal.

As with anything, the key to quality classroom management is to have a plan, to ensure that technology integration is consistent, clear, and supports the learning objectives and goals. Make sure that your class time includes an active learning and creating piece that will yield student engagement. Teachers will never be able to control it all, but they can put steps in place to limit the uncontrollable. If you follow the pieces listed above, managing a technologically equipped classroom should be a great experience (Edutopia, 2014)

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A Tech Tool that I enjoyed learning about that would help with organization  was Classroom Screen.  The goal of Classroom Screen is to support teaching and learning in the classroom. The creators want to make it easier for teachers to help their students get to work and help them focus on their task. I like the features of timers, the traffic light, being able to post a message and the calendar. I think that this could replace many of the the other things I use to manage volume, time, messaging/calendar (morning meeting) type things and have it all conveniently in one place. This tool would have many of my separate management tools that I already have in place in one spot on the screen for all students to be able to see and access.

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One of my favorite tech tools that I have learned about in more detail was Class Dojo for classroom management. It’s a simple, fun way to manage classroom behaviors and keep your lesson on track. On ClassDojo, you award students points for positive behaviors and subtract points for negative behaviors.

Each student has a customizable “monster” avatar with their points total displayed. The app lists predefined positive and negative behaviors, but you can also create your own. Parents are able to track their child’s Dojo points in real time, and the app generates weekly behavior reports for parents as well.

I like Class Dojo a lot because it can be used for positive reinforcement and it is directly sent to parents for open communication on the behavior and expectations that are occurring at school. This is a tech tool I am looking into implementing next school year with my own class to help motivate and create a better behavior system for my students.

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I created this really helpful poster that provides applications and tools that students, educators and parents can use that will help benefit them if they are struggling with reading and specific aspects of reading. These tools can supplement and help them increase their reading capacity. A favorite of mine is Lexia, which is used with my tier 3 reading students and it has been very beneficial in supporting their reading skills. AT does play a role in both learning to read and reading to learn. For learning to read, there will be many students in K-3 who will use a variety of devices and strategies to help them understand and decode new words, as well as piecing together sentences. Also, for reading to learn, students can use different types of AT to help them understand and comprehend certain texts that will be teaching them new information.

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I researched multiple AT tools that would help a variety of learners who struggle with mathematics in the classroom. The one that I believe would be really beneficial for students would be text to speech or dictation. Especially for my first graders who have a significant amount of trouble in math with word problems when doing computerized quizzes and assessments.

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One of the tools that I really enjoyed learning about that would be beneficial for my first graders was pre-writing mind maps and graphic organizers. My students struggle significantly with planning and organizing their writing. Both of these tools that I investigated were especially helpful for my struggling writers. In the post below, you will see how I implemented a graphic organizer for one of my struggling writers and how it helped her to write a "how-to" book.

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First graders are writing how-to teaching books on topics that interest them. Autumn struggles with planning and implementation and needs support with focus, penmanship and execution of ideas. In these lessons you will see students needing to plan how-to books, edit and revise, and work to have stamina as they write. Autumn struggled with planning an idea, staying focused on that one idea and writing with neat penmanship and proper punctuation. In this trial I worked with her on implementing tools that would help her be successful in choosing a topic, planning with a graphic organizer with a word bank and picture sequencing, working on spacing with a highlighter and sentence structure, she also was given a divider to focus on her work. In this, you will see Autumn’s SETT framework, the lessons we did as a class, her tasks and tools for success, and her written work.
In lesson two, I had Autumn take her graphic organizer and bring a how-to booklet to my table. We took the how-to
organizer and planned out what we would write each page of the booklet. We took our sentence writing on the organizer
for each step and started off each page of the booklet with that sentence.

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In my coursework, I also completed lessons on literacy critiques that touched upon culturally responsiveness.

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I researched books for first graders that would explore diversity and different cultures. These books are all books that I have access to in my classroom and I implement them during read aloud or morning meeting. We have thought provoking conversations about acceptance and treating others with kindness.

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This is a lesson that I conduced off a read aloud from the annotated bibliography. We had great conversations about this book and the students were engaged in activities and discussions about being different and coming from different backgrounds.

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In the future, I plan on implementing some of these tech tools to improve my classroom management skills. I want my students to feel motivated and apps like Class Dojo and Classroom Screen. Class Dojo will allow for them to have a school/home life connection easily and motivate them through gamification and digital "monsters" to earn points. With Classroom Screen it would allow for them to feel a sense of organization within the classroom with everything they need on the board in front of them.
I have learned a multitude of tech tools that would help me to better my management and organization, but I think it is best to start with these and see how they go and then move forward in implementing other tools to help motivate my students and make my life as an educator more organized.

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AT: In the future, I hope to implement more graphic organizers and mind maps for my students in writing. I also have learned about so many reading and math tools that would help my struggling students to receive more independent practice on their skills. I love the text to speech features and the free reading programs that I have discovered through this program. All of these factors will help my students become more independent and successful in their learning.

Cultural Responsiveness: In the future, I will continue to implement read alouds that will have my students learning about students that are different from them. I have learned that the conversations that they can have around literature have been extremely worthwhile and beneficial to their understanding of the world and those around them.

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Formal Assessment Critique:

Name of the Assessment: Developmental Spelling Assessment

Subject Area: Literacy

Grade Level: 1

Author/Publisher: Lucy Calkins and Colleagues from the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project

Date of Publication/Development: 2019

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When it comes to assessing student learning, the coursework has taught me that as teachers we have to ensure that grades provide an accurate reflection of each student’s actual level of achievement.

When it comes to assessing, I think that I easily get overwhelmed with the process and then wonder what I am going to do with all the information that I have gathered. I learned about the steps for the assessment developing cycle: three common sense stages: planning, development, and use. And the eight steps in the cycle: identify the purpose, specify the targets, select appropriate methods, decide on relative importance of the targets and sample well, write or select the items, review and critique the assessment for quality, administer and score the assessment and examine the results and revise as needed. I think the breakdown of this cycle and the steps were helpful to me, because a lot of the times I have felt overwhelmed with this process and what to do with all of the information and data. Moving forward, I have to think about who is going to use the information gathered, how the information is going to be used, what types of information am I going to need, if it's formative or summative).

I am going to be more aware and cognitive of the assessments that I am required to give and I am going to be more flexible when it comes to creating my own informal assessments. I want my students to be getting the most out of assessments and this coursework taught me how to deeply understand, critique, and create assessments for student learning.

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Learning Standards Addressed: The learning standards that are being measured with this assessment are end-of-kindergarten phonics features, with kindergarten style writing (labels), but with a first-grade storyline. Teachers use this at the start of the year to see what their students remember from kindergarten. I think that this would fall under the Common Core Standard: “CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.1.2 Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing. And: “CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.1.2.E

Spell untaught words phonetically, drawing on phonemic awareness and spelling conventions.” Students are listening to a story and then writing what the missing words are on the labels, using all they know about phonics features and spelling patterns.
Assessment Target: This assessment targets the knowledge target skill. Knowledge targets represent the factual information, procedural knowledge, and conceptual understandings that underpin each discipline. Students are calling upon all of the knowledge that they have learned in kindergarten about phonics and using what they know to show the skills that they have successfully learned or what they need to continue working on. The basis of this assessment is to see where students' knowledge of phonics skills are at the beginning of first grade. According to Chappuis/Stiggins, “We want them to be able to apply knowledge to reason, perform skillfully, and create high-quality products, but we also must understand that knowledge targets form the foundation for each of the other types of targets - there is no such thing as knowledge free reasoning, knowledge free skilled performance or knowledge free product development (53)”. I believe that this developmental spelling assessment shows a basis of their knowledge that helps them to use the skills being assessed to further their learning in reading and writing. This allows the teacher to have a foundational understanding of concepts and skills that students understand or struggle with.
Was the target match suited?: I believe that the target method match was well suited to assess this specific content for stands and learning targets. But, I do believe that it could be changed to be more successful and useful for the teacher. First, I will explain why I believe that this is truly a knowledge based target method. In this assessment, the teacher is assessing students' ability and understanding to use knowledge from kindergarten to spell words that follow the phonics skills that were taught in Kindergarten. The teacher is looking to score students' knowledge on spelling words with: the initial consonants, final consonants, short vowels, digraphs and blends. The teacher reads a story and the student fills in the missing word on a labeled line. This fits under the knowledge/understanding target because students have to recall/recognize the sounds that they hear in the word that is said, think about the letter sounds and then write and label the word. Teachers are assessing to see if a student understands and has the knowledge of these letter sounds and then the ability to write and label a picture with the letter sounds/word that was given to them. After giving this assessment to students, it was clear that many of them can be frustrated with the layout of the assessment and how the labels and pictures are placed. This is something that I will discuss in how I would want to modify this assessment. This assessment does indeed follow the Common Core content standard of spelling untaught words phonetically, drawing on phonemic awareness and spelling conventions. This is exactly what the developmental spelling assessment is scoring for, we use it to find what concepts and skills were learned and what ones need to be retaught.

The DSA does comply with the five keys to quality classroom assessment.

Key 1 - Clear Purpose: Who will use the information? - For the DSA, teachers take the information gathered to see what students need more work in learning for their phonological awareness. Teachers will use the information to reteach in small groups or whole group lessons certain skills like naming blends/digraphs or vowels/consonant sounds. Students will have a background in these phonics skills, but are now given this assessment to show their knowledge in this skill area.

Key 2 - Clear Targets: In the DSA, I believe the learning targets are clear to teachers. We are assessing their knowledge of their phonological skills and spelling. It is also clear to students that this test is seeing what they know about letter sounds and how to spell missing words. The phonics curriculum in kindergarten and first grade is driven in phonemic awareness, so students are exposed to the instruction that is being assessed in the DSA.

Key 3 - Sound Design: I believe that in this assessment, the methods match the learning targets. As I wrote about above, I think that the scoring rubric/sheet can be revised to make it more clear to teachers who are scoring it, but I think the test is one good way to see what knowledge students have in their phonics skills. This assessment is looking to see what concepts and skills students know and where we can teach them from this point, so I believe that this represents learning appropriately and will help teachers create assessments for formative use.

Key 4 - Formative Usefulness: This assessment definitely guides next instructional steps, as I stated above. Teachers take the information based on individual students or whole class results to see if there are trends in areas that they are succeeding in or struggling with. After analyzing the results, teachers will formulate lessons or small groups to reteach or continue teaching next steps for phonological awareness. Although, students will not receive feedback and act on, other than working in these small groups or receiving reteach lessons on the skill. Students will not be offering any feedback to peers in this assessment. Nor will they be self-assessing and goal setting, being in first grade makes this difficult but they will continue to work on the skills that they are struggling in. But being in the primary grades, it is hard to be successful in goal-setting and peer/self-assessment when it comes to these types of assessments.

Key 5 - Effective Communication: This information from the DSA is tracked on a scoring sheet that is filed in the students portfolio. If students received a low-score, the teacher can readminister the DSA when needed. Students also take another DSA prompt/assessment during mid-year and then again at the end of year that tests the same skills and more that they have learned throughout the year. It allows teachers to see growth and then target what is still needed to be learned or retaught. Although this is solely based on the teacher tracking this information and data, the student is not involved. If a student needs more practice in a certain area, as the teacher I would reach out to the parents and communicate that the student would need additional practice at home practicing the skills. The information and data gathered allows the teacher to see a baseline for what phonics skills and concepts the student is strong in and what they need more practice in. When more DSA’s are administered throughout the year, the teacher is able to see growth in each student's phonological awareness.

I have three areas that the Developmental Spelling Assessment could improve on.

As I wrote about above, the first aspect of the test that I would fix is the scoring rubric. I think that it needs to be more detailed in how to score different types of answers from students. Because as I said, students can write a variety of answers that can be confusing to score. The scoring rubric needs to include examples of what happens when there are reversals, wrong vowel/consonant usages or students with speech issues that may have difficulty spelling words.

My second modification that I would make would also be on the rubric. I would make more room on the rubric to write the students' needs for further instruction. For example, if they struggled with digraphs, I would like there to be more space to write my next steps for instruction. Currently, there is just a tiny box that says “make plans to give the child additional support”. I think it would be helpful to have a larger space on the rubric that allows for next step planning. I also think it would be smart to leave space in the scoring rubric for additional testing dates, if a teacher decides to retest the student they can track their growth and progress on the same scoring sheet. With that, you would be able to see where a student began and then grew, as well as seeing what the intentional goal/next steps were at the previous testing date.

My last modification that I would make to this assessment is that I would have the full story written with fill in the blanks. I don’t mind that they are filling in the blank line to show where the student is writing the answer, but I know that many students struggle with labeling the picture in the correct location. I would modify the assessment to have the story written with the pictures above and the missing words would fill in the blank. Many of the times, my students write the word on the wrong line and label the wrong picture. It can get confusing for them, and I think that it would be a relief for them to be able to read and follow along with the story and then fill in the missing words.

Overall, I think this a great baseline assessment for finding out students phonological awareness. I do think that it can be improved in a few ways to make it more user friendly for grade one students and teachers, but overall it does the job of telling us what phonics skills students know and what skills they need additional support in.

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I developed an assessment for my first graders to complete, as I recognized improvements needed to be made to the assessments conducted by the iReady curriculum.

See Below.