When it comes to educating a classroom
of students, according to their developmental and cognitive levels, the typical
classroom teacher must figure out a way to meet the expanse of students’
learning needs. Some teachers will teach
to the middle with the hope that somehow, in some way, the outliers eventually
get what they need. Other teachers may organize instructional groupings, trying
to match like minds and abilities while attempting to touch base with each
group for an adequate time allotment per day, or perhaps every other day. No
matter what, there is always the possibility and, realistically, the probability
that on a daily basis one or two students, and maybe more, didn’t learn what
they needed to learn for that subject period, for that day and / or for that
week. Blended Learning is changing all that, at our school, by demonstrating its
positively powerful ability to assist teachers in meeting their students’
diverse learning levels of development and knowledge.
In the past our teachers had utilized
digital content programs such as Scholastic Reading Inventory, to identify
students’ reading & comprehension levels, and ST Math for student driven
programming. However, the data generated was (at the time) limited in scope and
used only periodically for a quick overview of students’ levels of achievement.
We were far from having blended learning classrooms. The need, however, began
to increase exponentially when the diversity of our student population
presented numerous teaching challenges.
Resource teachers were employed to
accommodate the outliers, for whom remediation and acceleration of skills and
knowledge were needed. A combination of “pullout” needy students and “push in” resource
teaching assistants was devised into the teachers’ schedules. Within a short
time, the general learning population was decreasing, while the student
outliers were increasing. It was clear to see, our model of instruction was in
need of change. We needed a way to differentiate instruction, without employing
more resource personnel.
Blended learning was appearing in the
academic headlines, daily. We were ready for a shift in our approach to meeting
student needs. Little did we know a shiduch
was in the making!
Differentiated instruction tailored to
each student’s learning level…it seemed too good to be true. Identifying the
digital content program that would not only fit our budget, but would help grow
our students’ minds to their maximum potentials became a challenge. There were so many digital content providers
to choose from and no documented reviews comparing the long term student
performance results, from one digital content provider to the next. The best my
teachers and I could do was gain access to a variety of popular programs for trial
runs, and assume the role of the students.
The following questions needed to be
answered:
- Did the program strike a balance between entertainment and quality academic content?
- Did the program advance and remediate at an appropriate pace?
- Was the program common core aligned?
- Did the program allow for teacher manipulation of skills and lessons?
- How user friendly was the data results and how comprehensive were the reports?
Once we had made the decision to
purchase i-Ready, ( so confusing to keep the ‘i’ lowercase in publications), we
got to work on understanding the program and trying to align it within the
context of our classroom curricula.
The i-Ready diagnostic test results
proved to be mostly authentic across the lower school grades. I say “mostly” because in grades Kindergarten
and First the students were a bit fidgety and conversational within the short
spurts of time allotted, each day, for their diagnostic tests. In comparison to the CTP-4 (Comprehension
Testing Program that TVT uses for standardized testing) and classroom teacher
observations, the i-Ready diagnostic test results, for grades 2-5, demonstrated
similar results, augmenting a level of teacher trust and confidence in the i-Ready
diagnostic test results.
The challenge then, and now, continues
to be how to absorb, decipher and utilize the vast amount of student data,
generated within the i-Ready program, effectively and efficiently in order to maximize
the quality of teacher-directed lessons
towards the ultimate goal: solidifying each student’s foundation of common core
knowledge, while providing students, whose common core knowledge foundations
are solid, with a comprehensive curriculum that not only individualizes pace of
instruction, but depth and breadth of content, as well.
Blended learning has set us on the
path of authentic, individual and quality education for each of our students. The
teachers feel the contentment of student engagement, productivity and joy in
learning. So far, blended learning has, without a doubt, provided students with
the ultimate in differentiated instruction.
