How I Have Used Technology Thus Far in My Classroom

As I mentioned in my "about me" section, I teach both Mathematics AND Special education (mild/moderate) for elementary and middle school students. My Sp.Ed. Directed Studies (DS) course is a class designed for included students with learning disabilities to receive assistance with organization and homework or extra help being re-taught lessons to help gain understanding in all content areas. These students meet with Mrs. Richardson and me three times a week instead of taking an elective so they have a better chance of passing their middle school classes. 

One Tuesday morning in mid-September Mrs. R came up to me and said... "Here we go again. Just as expected, our students aren't turning in their assignments on time." Although ALL DS students are required to show their planner with all their class assignments, it was very unlikely that they will look in the planner again once they got it checked. This got me thinking..... How can the students SEE what they have to do?

Although I am new to SmartBoard technology, I am quiet a "wiz" in excel and tables making. I thought about those Chore Charts I used to have as a kid, that showed all the chores and there was a magnet with my name on it that could be place on the chore that I had to do that day/week. It would help be a visual reminder of my responsibilities and then I had the satisfaction of moving my magnet when I finished my task. This created a way for me to see my task, and also created intrinsic motivation to finish my task. I know my 7th and 8th grade students may not be as  thrilled with this concept as I was when I was younger, but I thought having them use the technology may be a way to mask this as a helpful organization tool and not just a toy.

Here is a screen shot of half of my MWF Directed Studies Chart

I created the following chart with the SmartBoardNotebook software. Each Directed Studies class (Monday, Wednesday and Friday and Tuesday, Thursday, Friday) have their own table for the students. This allows students to not just take responsibility for their current work, but they also are held accountable for their work after they leave the classroom. The disks at the top are infinitely cloned so students can just tap-and-drag the colored disk into the appropriate class slot. Students follow that H- History, M-Math, S-Science, R-Reading, and W-Writing. The red disks means that a content teacher has e-mailed Mrs. R or myself if a student is missing any work (i.e. late work). By being bright red it means the student needs to finish that assignment first while in class. The blue means that homework is assigned in that class and that work will be started (and hopefully completed) during the Directed Studies period. The green disks mean that students have completed their homework for that class, or no work was given. Last the yellow disk means that once the students leave the Directed studies period, all blue disks are changed to yellow, meaning they have not completed the assignment and it should be finished at home. If a student finishes a red or blue assignment, they have the satisfaction of changing the disk to green. This gives students incentives for working hard on their homework and also allows them to interact with the technology. 

For the past three and a half weeks, we have seen an increase in moral when it comes to students homework. They feel successful when they change a blue disk to a green disk and they feel motivated to work harder if they see that they have the most amount of blue disks on the board. Also it has been a great organization tool for teachers since we know what assignments students need to complete without having to memorize their whole schedule (we used to do this, but old minds forget a lot easier). Overall we have been through about 5 versions of what this chart looks like, but each new version the students keep getting more and more into it. If I come up with a 6th version I'll update you on the edition.

Just thought you'd like to know!