As I was reading Darling-Hammond's "The Flat World and Education: How America's Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future" for my Dynamics of the Equitable Classroom class, I was energized by finding my main interest as an educator right now represented in this learning!I have always had a heart for working with struggling students. My current position as Academic Specialist for Donaldson Way Elementary School in American Canyon allows me to do this work at both an administrative level, as well as in the classroom with students. I coordinate all of our intervention, K-5. I also will be teaching ELA intervention for grades 4 and 5 this year. Over the past few years as the AS, I have noticed that our earliest learners who arrive less prepared have a nearly impossible time finding their way out of the learning gap, especially on the DIBELS assessment, which measures the acquisition of early literacy skills. After several trimesters of tracking their growth, implementing interventions, and analyzing the data, I also discovered that this group of learners at my school seems to be nearly the same group as our SES Title 1 students on Free Lunch. I know that what we have been doing isn't enough. Although the intervention we have planned does see some gains, it's not drastic enough. What is the missing part? It often seems to come down to the fact that some growth isn't enough growth. Due to the "moving target" of the DIBELS performance levels, students can make significant growth, but still not move out of the "intensive" group.
How can we make substantial gains for this group to help them out of the danger zone? How far behind did these students enter in Kindergarten? Is there a home connection that could make a difference? Has anyone else been able to achieve the accelerated growth that I am looking for? I am hoping to find all the answers to these questions, and hopefully more as I jump into the world of educational research. Wish me luck as I begin a journey to help our wonderful students!
2 Comments
Caitlin Mitchell
9/1/2018 12:20:28 pm
OH MY GOSH!!!! Your interests/ potential topic sounds SO similar to mine! As I was reading what you wrote I just kept thinking," Yep, I wonder that too....yep, I have the same problem!" Yay! I'm excited to hear that you are wondering the same things as I am! I am actually having a really hard time choosing a topic because both of the things that I am thinking about focusing on are very important. My first consideration is play and how important play is to a child's brain and how we are taking more and more play time away from kids at recess and allowing them to spend more time behind a screen. My other is wellness and how so many kids have so much stress at home and how that really affects their ability to learn so by teaching them wellness strategies this might help them focus more on learning and less on at home stressors. We could totally be like the power rangers and unite our powers for common good. You do one and I'll do the other....sorry nerd moment....
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Jona Sandau
9/9/2018 06:30:07 pm
Caitlin! My one and only commenter--you are the BEST! So utterly cool that you are also thinking about wellness. That's one of our district goals, too--yay! Wellness and metacognition about that is such a super cool thing to think about. How can we help kids to become aware of their state of wellness and to learn to make choices to improve it? Wow. I love it. Wellness at home is also a big giant interest of mine. We have a parent liaison and I am constantly thinking about how she can help families so that students can do better at school. I used to do social work, so that kind of stuff is always on my mind. There is so much that could be done if we had the resources, right? Thank you so much for your wonderful thoughts!
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Jona SandauI'm a student in the Innovative Learning Master's Program at Touro University. I'm really excited to make a difference for my students! Archives
March 2019
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