As our project comes to a close, we would like to reflect on, and summarize, our results and findings. At the beginning of our project, we created an assessment tool to evaluate our student's oral language skills. We captured audio recordings of our student's communication skills using the apps Draw and Tell and Explain Everything, to provide a baseline that we could refer back to later. Other apps were introduced to further engage and motivate our students to share their learning, thus further enhancing and developing their communication and thinking skills.
As we progressed through our project, we constantly referred back to our baseline recordings, in order to determine our student's growth and next steps. At the end of the project, we re-evaluated student work samples using our initial assessment tool. We found that most students showed significant growth and improvement in many of the identified skills. Students who initially scored a level one or two, now scored a two or three on our assessment rubric. Our direct instruction enabled our students to effectively share their thinking in a clear, organized way. What's more, our students' engagement improved tremendously, and for most of our students, their confidence also increased. For those students who's growth was not as significant, we realized as the year went on that there were other mitigating factors and learning issues that were roadblocks to their success. For example, some of these students were English language learners, while others had speech/communication disorders. Some had other diagnoses, such as Autism, while still others may not have been developmentally "ready." As we continue on our learning journey, we cannot help but wonder:
For now, we would like to thank all of the people who supported us along our journey. To the Ontario Teacher's Federation for the opportunity to engage in this project. To our colleagues for encouraging us and being interested in our project. To ETFO and the WRDSB for giving us an opportunity to share our project with other colleagues. Finally, thank you to our students, for always being open and excited to learn. For a complete description of our project, please refer to the OTF website, under Teacher Learning Co-Op.
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We are a group of Kindergarten educators in Ontario, Canada. Archives
May 2017
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