Sunday, October 2, 2011

Study Island

Two posts in one weekend? I must be going crazy with free time! Actually I have zero free time this weekend, but I'm trying to keep up with my own head.

Right now we are struggling with a program called Study Island at school. I don't know how the other grades are dealing with it as they are used to having it in the upper grades at my school but I know that second grade is having a hard time. My students used the program often during my student teaching so I am used to the program. However, the students I had during my internship were reading and writing on a much higher level than the students I have now so they could handle the types of questions the program asks.

If you are unfamiliar with Study Island, it is an online program that allows teachers to set certain reading and/or math topics for students to complete. It is supposed to help with EOGs. The questions are in a multiple choice format.

I was just going through my students' scores from last week and some of the scores were not where I wanted them to be. I have a few ESL students who I don't think can really handle the wording of the questions at this point and then some that are reading below grade level so it is hard for them to comprehend as well. My solution for next week is to differentiate (yay) the assignments. I was originally going to set Place Value for math and Complete and Correct Sentences for reading, but I have changed things a little bit. The place value topic that Study Island offers is really hard--there are hundreds blocks in it and it asks to replace ones with tens within problems and my students haven't done well during our practice. I was going to set a place value 1st grade topic but one is not offered so we are going to be doing 1st grade Story Problems this week. This is set for the whole class to take. With reading, I am giving most of the class the 2nd grade Complete and Correct Sentences topic and some of my struggling students the Complete Sentences topic from 1st grade (common core). I am hoping that this will allow those few students to do better at the same time as learning the same content!