School+Visits

Elementary School Visits

March 11, 2010 - Port Republic School

On Thursday, March 11, 2010, we visited the Port Republic Grade School located in Port Republic, NJ. This is a very small K-8 New Jersey shore school. It is located at 137 Pomona Avenue and their website is http://www.port-republic.k12.nj.us

The school is a very small and quaint school tucked away on a winding country road. The school is bright and cheery on the inside! The hallways are painted yellow and the walls are covered with students artwork and projects. We observed a 2nd grade elementary class using the smartboard technology. We were able to see how the teacher uses it as an educational tool. She showed the us how the students use the white board for reading and spelling. She used a website called spellingcity.com and storytime online. For the storytime lesson, the students were read too by a cartoon character and the words read appeared below. As each word was read, the word would move showing the students how each word looks and sounds. They were able to change the story and making it their own by answering prompts. The children also used the smartboard for spelling and finding correctly spelled words. The children were called on to come up to the smartboard and touch the words on the screen that were correctly spelled. The smartboard is interactive and children can actually advance the program by touching the screen. Later, we observed a 5th grade technology class. The children were inputting data from a website into social studies project spreadsheet that they would later use as a study guide for a social studies test. The teacher had a master screen or whiteboard the chaulkboard to use a sample. The teacher would help the children as needed. She told us about some great typing programs called freetypinggame.com and typingtest.com. She said that the white boards come with lesson plans in their package or she uses site that she googles.

March 23, 2010 - Northfield Community School

On Tuesday, March 23, 2010 we visited the Northfield Community School located in Northfield, New Jersey. This is both an elementary and middle school that are adjoining. It is located in a busy area on New Street. Their website is http://www.northfield,groupfusion.net/module.

The school is very large and has lots of great technology. We observed a 7th grade class in a Library Media class. Every 7th grader takes this class for one marking period as part of their curriculum. Children were given a 7th Grade Library Media Center Project. They had about 10 projects to choose; some were individual projects and some were group projects. The goal of the project is, how can we encourage more students of all ages to read? When we were there, most children were well underway on their projects. They were using lots of technology and websites including tuxpaint.com, freetranslation.com, translate.google.com, pandora.com, etc. Other children were videotaping a project that they would later download onto a computer to edit and make a video. We learned about other great programs including bibme.org for bibliographies, and in the iwork package, there are 3 programs bundled that include a publishing program (ipages), a numbers program and a presentation program. For the mac, imovies is a good video program. We watched a couple of videos that kids had made from the previous marking period.

After observing the 7th grade class, we had the priviledge to observe a 1st grade class in their technology class. The teacher had great control of the class. The children entered the classroom and stood in a "quiet" box outlined by tape on the floor. When the children entered the box, the teacher briefly went over the day's lesson. They sanitized their hands and then sat on the floor in front of the large screen. On this screen the teacher went over their lesson and goals for the day. He gave very simple, clear and precise instructions. Afterward, each child found the computer that had his/her name on it and sat down to work. Prior to the students arriving, the teacher through a main computer, had set up each children's individual computer to be programed with the same information. He walked the children through the directions, using the main screen, showing them how they were to complete their project. They were doing a class project for Green Day. Each child had come up with 1 idea of how they were "green" and on a slide they had their photo with a speech bubble with their "green" sentence on it. Their goal was to record their voice, saying each sentence. The teacher would then compile all the slides and make a continuous slideshow for the green day presentation. We got to see the challenges of working with young children and technology. We noticed that it takes a lot of prep work to make them successful. The teacher was so skilled, they all each were able to record their voices successfully and then work on a typing program afterward. It was interesting also to see how computer gliches can effect the class and how to best address these issues. It really was a real pleasure to observe these children and their teacher!