I recently was introduced by a colleague to a couple of books that may be of interest to elementary educators. Both books are published by ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education). The first one, IT's Elementary! Integrating Technology in the Primary Grades covers everything from infrastructure for your tech team to curricular redesign and lesson plans. The chapters include indicators for grade levels at which different types of technology skills might be taught. While the copyright indicates 2007 and technology changes at the speed of light, I believe there are still some great overall approaches that would be helpful to elementary educators as they decide what direction they want to go with technology.
The second book, The Computer Lab Teacher’s Survival Guide: K–6 Units for the Whole Year, Second Edition came out in 2009. This book strikes me as the REACH teachers textbook in terms of the title. However, in looking at the table of starting from about Chapter 4 or 6, what I see are skills that students need to learn as part of computing but rather activities that are intricately connected to the content learned in the "regular" classroom. Perhaps it is time for REACH to not be it's own "pull out" special but be almost entirely connected to the learning that is happening in each grade level classroom.
Take a look, see what you think. How might you change "remodel" your curriculum? How might you work more closely and collaboratively with your specials?
I have now been teaching REACH for six months and I would say that daily I think of how I could integrate REACH into the regular classroom in a better way. The best example I have of this is an insect research project that I did at Stephens with a 2/3 class. The students learned about insects in their regular classroom, came to the REACH lab and researched online bookmarked websites and then typed a research report with pictures about their bugs. They also made their bugs in Art class. Their reports and 3-d bugs are on display on a bulletin board at Stephens. This did take some time for collaboration, but the results were awesome. I hope to do more of this at both schools, but it does take time for collaboration. My limitations are being at two school (one early start-one late start-long days!) and having over 750 students at every grade level. My classes at Stephens are an hour long for 2/3 and 4/5 classes which makes it easier to accomplish more during classes. In spite of these limitations, I do truly believe that collaboration between the regular classroom and the REACH lab is a plus in helping students develop technology skills. I continue to wrap my mind around this and will continue to figure out how I can connect with teachers.
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