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Speaking a language students understand
Overview
Pittsburg Primary, a school with over 400 pre-kindergarten through 1st grade students, is located in a small town in Northeast Texas. With several bilingual classrooms and four English as a Second Language (ESL) classrooms, the population at Pittsburg Primary is representative of the community’s diversity. First grade ESL teacher, Angela Brotherton, is challenged daily to provide comprehensive learning opportunities that overcome language barriers in her classroom while enabling her students to fulfill their academic and personal potential.
The challenge
Angela’s ESL class is comprised of 15 Spanish-speaking students. She faces the same challenges as other teachers, such as maintaining student engagement, creating rich lesson content and efficiently managing classroom time. However, Angela has to tackle the additional challenge of communicating in a way that her students and their parents can comprehend. Although Angela’s students are intelligent and academically motivated, they performed poorly on learning assessments because of their limited understanding of the English language.
With many from Spanish-speaking homes, there was a disconnect among parents as to what their children were learning in school and how they could support their academic progress. Angela’s students struggled specifically with social and academic vocabulary. During lessons, they often sat quietly because they did not know when or how to ask the meaning of words. Angela spent most of her teaching time explaining the definitions of vocabulary words and showing pictures to illustrate concepts. But she knew deep down that her students needed visual, auditory and kinesthetic learning experiences to make memorable connections to the English language. Feeling helpless and frustrated, Angela started to consider whether it was time for a career change, despite her passion for ESL teaching.
The solution
Vicki Rockett, Principal of Pittsburg Primary, first learned about PolyVision ēno interactive whiteboards when she attended the Texas Computer Education Association (TCEA) Annual Convention and Exhibition in February of 2009. Vicki recalls, “We attended with full intentions to purchase a competitor’s board, but passed by the PolyVision booth and watched a demonstration.” She continues, “We were blown away by eno’s unique features and knew we had to have a solution of that magnitude.”
When Vicki returned to school and further researched competitor products, she realized that the boards provided such limited workspace that she would have to buy an additional dry-erase whiteboard. Because technology resides inside competitor boards, she was concerned about the long-term costs of repairs and replacements; with ēno, all of the technology is in the stylus. Vicki also knew that she could count on the board for a lifetime, thanks to PolyVision’s Forever Warranty™.
With a newfound perspective, Vicki decided that the long-term benefits of purchasing ēno boards would far surpass any short-term differences in cost. Vicki, Dale Rockett, Director of Technology, and Beth Anne Dunavant, Assistant Superintendent, worked together to combine their state technology allotment funds and a Rural Schools grant to purchase ēno.In the spring of 2009, ēno interactive whiteboards were installed in all 22 kindergarten and 1st grade classrooms at Pittsburg Primary.
The benefits
Angela’s classroom is equipped with an ēno interactive whiteboard and ēno mini slate, mobile companion to ēno.When asked about eno’s impact on her classroom, she exclaims, “Just as I was wondering if I had chosen the right career, ēno transformed my classroom into a completely different learning environment. ēno motivated my students and me in ways I never realized were possible.” Angela continues, “As soon as ēno was installed, I noticed a change in my students’ behavior. During lessons, every child was excited and engaged at a higher level than ever before. When my students interacted with the board, it became obvious how carefully they were watching me because they would fix their mistakes or move the stylus in a way that I did not formally show them. They paid attention to every single move I made because they all wanted a turn at the board.”
Angela always had a special connection with her students; but she felt she would never attain 100 percent engagement, lacking resources needed to do so. She wished she could utilize websites and interactive tools to create an experience her class would remember through videos, pictures or sounds. Unfortunately, her only options were to monitor students at their individual computers or gather the entire class around one monitor. With ēno, Angela brings lessons to life for the entire class—not only to see—but also to interact with. For example, when teaching students a new vocabulary word, Angela defined the word using pictures and videos that stimulated discussion. Students then played an interactive online game that featured the word. After the game, Angela checked for understanding by passing around the ēno mini slate and asking students to circle the picture that was related to the word. In less than ten minutes, they mastered a new vocabulary word!
Prior to implementing ēno in her classroom, one of Angela’s biggest challenges was efficiently managing small groups of mixed ability students. She uses a system that pairs students with similar skill sets. Every 15 minutes, she rotates them to individual and teacher-student learning stations around the room. While individual attention and assessment are a critical part of the learning process for ESL students, Angela lost a lot of valuable, focused teaching time due to interruptions and student behavioral issues during transitions. Now, ēno acts as a timer that displays the countdown to the next rotation. Students are prompted to move to a new station with a song. If a student is off-task, she plays a song that cues them to sit, stand or stretch. “This works like magic for small-group learning environments,” said Angela. “I am free to work independently with students until the last second. As they transition, I can prepare for the next group. Now, students are so engaged in learning that discipline problems are rare.”
All of Angela’s feelings of frustration and hopelessness in the classroom have been replaced with a renewed zeal for teaching. She explains, “With ēno, my classroom has become exactly what I have been trying to build for the past five years—a seamless, efficient and fun learning environment!” Angela illustrates her point by recounting one of the more innovative ways she uses eno: “Each ESL teacher is required to post daily objectives. The objectives benefit students because they can see the words, math facts or historical figures they will learn about that day. With ēno, I create electronic objectives by linking all of the vocabulary pages, websites, songs, presentations and videos I will use in my lessons into one document.” Angela continues, “Everything I will need throughout the day is organized. I can move with ease from one task to the next with a simple click of the stylus. I am absolutely amazed at how much content I can effectively teach in just one day. This strategy has been so successful in my classroom that all of the 1st grade teachers at my school are using the electronic objectives I create as a template to deliver their own lessons.”
Since many of Angela’s students come from low-income households, the only opportunity they have to interact with technology is at school. She believes that the high-tech skills and increased confidence gained using 21st century technology tools like ēno will benefit them throughout their lives. During parent-teacher conferences, Angela shows videos and pictures of her students using ēno.The pride the parents express as they learn what their children have accomplished needs no translation. Angela concludes, “My 1st graders have been learning with ēno since kindergarten and they cannot grasp that kids at other schools are learning without an interactive whiteboard. Although I’ve only been using ēno for a year, I tell them that it is hard for me to imagine a time when I taught without it. I remind my students we should all be thankful that we don’t have to go back to the days of school without eno!”
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