Palm Springs Middle Schools: Changing the Face of Math Classrooms
As you walk into a math classroom at Raymond Cree Middle School, you may notice something unusual: student desks are not facing the whiteboard. Instead, students are arranged in groups that focus around a projection screen.
Through funding with EETT Competitive Grants, Palms Springs Unified School District’s middle schools have implemented the SUMMIT program: Step Up To Math Mastery Integrating Technology. Teachers and students use laptop computers, LCD projectors, audience response systems, and interactive wireless tablets to create a truly digital learning environment. The SchoolPadTM wireless tablet allows teachers and students to write directly on the tablet to illustrate and share conceptual understanding on the projection screen and access digital resources from anywhere in the classroom.
Student Engagement
As an outsider walks into a middle school classroom, one might expect that this potential disruption would gain the attention of many 12 year olds. However, while walking into a SUMMIT classroom, students are more interested in what is happening on the projection screen. Students are anticipating the next question that the teacher will pose, so that they all get to answer using the Qwizdom response systems. Students also look forward to present their own information to the class using the wireless tablet.
Instant Feedback and Checking for Understanding
Algebraic and geometric concepts can be difficult for middle school students to grasp. When a teacher is faced with a classroom of over 40 students, it is difficult for a teacher to know who is meeting the standards and who is not, before a test is given. While trying to follow a pacing guide, there is little time to reteach after the test is given. With the use of Qwizdom response systems, the teacher can quickly and easily identify the percentage of students who answer a problem correctly, thus allowing them to reteach concepts, or move on to new ones. The teacher can also consult the data at a later time to target small groups of students based on need.
Students also receive the benefit of instant feedback from using the Qwizdom. Often, students will follow the incorrect steps to a problem, and without feedback, will repeat the incorrect process until it has become ingrained. When students get private, immediate feedback that their answers are not correct, they are able to self-correct their problems.
Connecting Math to the Real World
Teachers are also using the benefit of the projection system to show students real world applications to their learning. Using video clips from unitedstreaming.com and BrainPOP®, teachers are able to show short, meaningful video clips that relate problems and equations to the real world. Students have shown a great desire to apply math concepts to realia that surround them. This synthesis of their learning will be used in the future for student projects.
For more information, please visit the PSUSD EETT SUMMIT web page.
