Jefferson Elementary School in Sanger, CA developed the following instructional vision in 2015: ALL students will engage in rigorous, focused instruction in an environment of high expectations, with universal access through collaboration, communication, creativity, and critical thinking. Jefferson developed Reading Development over a decade ago to provide instruction in specific reading strategies for struggling students. The program provides support to guarantee universal access to the rigorous, grade level content students encountered daily in the general education classroom.
Within the past two years, Jefferson has employed technology as a tool to maximize the effects of the Reading Development program. While comprehensive data has been collected for a number of years for each student, its collaborative approach has recently been streamlined by uploading data onto google sheets, where all stakeholders can view, analyze, and interpret data on a continual basis to drive instruction. This living document is updated with data from progress monitoring, to drive instructional planning for all stakeholders including reading development teachers, general education teachers, speech teachers, resource specialist teachers, and administration. Professional Learning Community minutes are shared in google for all educators to view, allowing reading development teachers, site administration, school psychologist, and resource specialist teacher to view general education progress for reading development students. The “comment” feature of google docs allows educators to participate in ongoing virtual conversations regarding student data and subsequent action plans.
Technology has allowed Jefferson to better reach out to the community.
Parents of reading development students benefit from interactive web-based lessons directly on the Jefferson website. To further the benefits of virtual communication and involve students themselves, google classroom is used in general education classes and with Reading Development groups.
Students read, write, and comment on each others’ work on the google classroom format and receive formative feedback from multiple educators to drive their reading development. Both site administrators and educators use the virtual format to encourage students using reading strategies and to scaffold students needing additional support. These virtual collaborative frameworks not only encourage a team based approach, they allow for monitoring of stakeholder engagement. Formative assessment practices have digitized using technology to ensure that teachers have the ability to provide instant feedback based on student performance and error analysis.
Interactive iPad programs and the ability to project multiple students’ work on the SMARTBoard simultaneously encourage critical thinking by students and collaboration as they work with each other to conduct error analysis. Technology has increased the effectiveness of Reading Development at Jefferson as it eased the process of data sharing and collaboration amongst educators. But more importantly, it has given struggling readers relevant skills in a new format – digital literacy. As these students use technology tools on a near daily basis, they return to their classrooms with increased confidence. This positive socio-emotional impact has led to greater academic achievement and has propelled Reading Development students to natural leadership positions in the general education classroom in regards to technological proficiency.