Reflection #3

I did an observation yesterday morning at Norman Rockwell Elementary in Redmond with a first grade class. I was so impressed at the use of technology used by this first grade teacher! She had a SMARTboard, a document reader, Activotes, a projector, and a computer. They are soon to be getting a voice magnification system too. Apparently since Lake Washington School District has such a large technology budget, any teacher who takes the initiative to become proficient with these tools could earn a salary bonus.

Students used a SMARTboard program to complete the morning calendar routine. First, one student arranged the items (since it's February, the items were Presidents and Hearts) to follow a pattern on the calendar (for example, the pattern was 1 president, 2 hearts, 1 president, 2 hearts). Then he arranged the day of the week, the month, the date, and the year to form the date, and the class read it aloud with him. On the next page students used their "clickers" (Activotes) to vote on the status of the weather. Once everybody voted, students were shown a graph so they could see which category received the most votes. The student asked them, "Which one has the most votes? Which one has the least votes?" Then he marked the weather for the day.

Next, he pointed to each word on a sight word chart while all the students read aloud with him. Finally, he grouped together the number of schooldays by using Base-10 manipulatives on the SMARTboard. The class read the number of ones, tens, hundreds, etc.

I was so impressed by how many learning opportunities were crammed into this 10 minute morning routine!