Three weeks ago, I was still struggling with the focus of my project. I knew that I wanted to research in the area of technology and more specifically how technology impacts the achievement of English Language Learners (ELL). This topic is very important to me because of my current teaching position. In the district where I teach, our EL students are not achieving when it comes to standardized testing. A year ago our district's ELL program was dismantled and our students are now really struggling...I feel like every avenue of creating achievement has not been explored. Technology is also a weak area for our school district. It is a hope of mine that through my project I might inspire other teachers in my own school district to use technology and to help those struggling students that need new means to achieve.
I met with my project supervisor Dr. Benavides. As I sat there in his office he fired many questions at me, some I had quick answers for but many I had to stop and think. It was difficult to narrow down the specifics of my project and to control those variables that would disrupt my results. With Dr. Benavides' guidance I decided to focus my project on EL student's achievement in Social Studies and how that might be impacted through the use of audio-visual technology. I will be creating a series of "movies" that will take the place of lessons and presenting them to both EL and English-only students. This will not be easy!!! I am still working on the first lesson...so I will have more information to come.
About Me
- Sarah2278
- I am an elementary school teacher from the Central Valley and am currently working on my master's degree at California State University-Fresno.
5 comments:
That's a large undertaking and I hope that you find that creating the movies can be done in a reasonable time frame. I also created units/lessons as part of my AR project and it does indeed take a lot of time.
I've used Powerpoint quite frequently over the last three years to deliver Social Studies lessons. Each frame included a media file of some sort, and a condensed summary of the text. Also, I'd provide each student with a graphic organizer that coincided with the presentation. Students where asked to fill in the missing portions of the organizer as the lesson progressed.
Your mini-movies project can definitely enhance your students experience during social studies. Will the students star in the movies by bringing to life a historical figure or event? That would be a cool option too, I think.
Sarah, will you allow your students to role play in the movies or will the movies be gathered from clips already out there?
I can't wait to see what you uncover! I have used PowerPoint presentations and the Smartboard for years at the high school level and feel that the integration of technology has really helped my students. I'm interested in seeing what it does for elementary students.
I can't agree more about the technology, Powerpoint, Smartboard, video ideas! Using the Smartboard and the Social Studies CDs (Houghton-Mifflin) together has boosted student interest in learning new vocab words related to ancient civilizations. In term sof movie making, will your students or you be doing the filming and/or editing? It is very time consuming...
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