Helping Hands: Working Together for the Best of Our Students

Our students take an assessment called NWEA-MAP three times per year. With our goal group, it was important for us to see if they had made growth from the fall screening until the mid-year point. The sticky part of the process is the some kids always finish quickly while others may need a few class periods to complete the test. After some discussion, my co-teacher and I decided to have the kids who were done come to the library and do their regular checkout and reading rather than stay in the computer lab with their peers. At this point in the year, I plan to have these students every week and have gotten to know them, so it made sense to keep our normal schedule as much as possible and to separate the kids who were done in another location. It was fun to have half of each class to myself.

Two of our students poring over a Guiness Book of World Records

After checking out their books and doing some reading, we decided that they could have some free time on the computers or iPads at the end of the period for doing such a great job on their tests (more on that soon!). When I handed each student at iPad, I had no idea what they might decide to do. One of the things I noticed when we used the iPads for our initial survey in the fall is that they are not very familiar with iPads. Many students did not know how to navigate to the Internet or have much of an idea what they might do with the device if allowed to use it for any school appropriate purpose. Several of the boys immediately asked if I would play Kahoot with them. They have used Kahoot on the iPads for review games in their social studies classes, so that is what many imagine an iPad is for. I had not prepared a game, but told them that we would play Kahoot next week as part of their library visit activities, or, as I actually said, "It's ON!" I'm looking forward to the opportunity to incorporate Kahoot into their library visits as I have witnessed the power of teachers using it for an engagement tool and it was one of our AASL Best Apps in 2015. What sponge activities utilizing technology have worked in your library or classroom?