Vision Statement

Vision Statement

    With the use of educational technology as an intervention along with tools for personalized learning, my vision is to bring the students and their skills towards literacy and technology to a proficiency level or higher while keeping them engaged and empowered in their own learning.  There is a strong desire to be able to prove this using state and district assessments through a vigorous approach in meeting standards.

    Providing a blended learning environment during my literacy block is essential in meeting this vision.  All students need a variety of methods to understand and improve on reading. Encompassing different strategies that include technology will enable me to facilitate small group instruction, personalized choice for what they are reading (Inquiry Circles), individual reading conferences, RAZ kids (a web-based reading program that is leveled for each individual learner), fluency building through recordings (either audio or video), a listening center with 50 stories on an ipod with paper books to follow along, use Sumdog.com (another web-based individualized leveled programs that helps kids with reading using fun games that keep them engaged) and Scootpad.com (web-based program that is used like a daily oral language).  There are absolute benefits to using technology in the classroom to help with struggling and at-risk students in the area of reading comprehension.  Stearns, S. C. (2012) Children need to be able to locate, evaluate, synthesize and then communicate on the internet to show comprehension. This can be showcased in various ways through our classroom blog, individual blogs and other technology tools.

Goal setting, reflection and charting their own reading progress is essential in this vision of proficient readers and writers. Teachers who help students develop skills that foster positive encouragement for skills and development ultimately increase their student's self-efficacy in their classrooms.

"New literacies" will soon by coming to light as a proficient reader isn't necessarily a proficient online reader. Leu, D.J., Coiro, J., Castek, J., Hartman, D.K., Henry, L.A., &amp: Reinking, D. (2008) We will need to be implementing these new literacies for our reading comprehension for our students. These new literacies are still in an emerging state and they will become more important as all our state testing of children goes online as well as more information that children are accessing and reading is online. All testing will eventually be done online. Schaffhauser, D. (2011) There are benefits and challenges that will be faced in educating our students.

I want to be the "Wonder Woman" of teachers. Success comes when education, planning, practice and implementation collide with good luck. I want to have that good luck as I gain more consistency with my use of technology and more individualized when it comes to meeting my student's needs. Technology, along with other learning methods, are crucial to the improvement of reading comprehension and fluency. Technology improves performance when the application directly supports the curriculum standards being assessed. Technology can improve test scores. These tech tools encourage and engage students in higher level thinking skills. Research and evaluation shows that technology can enable the development of critical thinking skills when students use these tools for presentation and communication to present, publish, and share results of curriculum projects based on standards. Cradler, J., McNabb, M., Freeman, M., & Burchett, R. (2002) Through the examination of my instructional practices and data, it is necessary to adjust my teaching and operational systems (my vision) in order to continuously improve and this is imperative that technology learning and implementation improve as well.

References

Blackstone, Brennan. Use of technology to address needs of diverse learners.

"Technology and Diverse Learners."

Cradler, J., McNabb, M., Freeman, M., & Burchett, R. (2002). How does technology

influence student learning?. Learning and Leading with Technology,29(8), 46-   49.  
Coiro, Julie. Exploring literacy on the internet: Reading comprehension on the 
internet: Expanding our understanding of reading comprehension to 
encompass new literacies.The Reading Teacher 56.5(2003): 458-464.

Leu, D. J., Coiro, J., Castek, J., Hartman, D. K., Henry, L. A., & Reinking, D.  
(2008). Research on instruction and assessment in the new literacies of online 
reading comprehension. Comprehension instruction: Research-based best 
practices, 2, 321-346. 
Schaffhauser, D. (2011). High-stakes online testing. (cover story). T H E Journal, 
38(6), 28-39.

Schunk, D. H., & Mullen, C. A. (2012). Self-efficacy as an engaged learner. In  
Handbook of research on student engagement (pp. 219-235). Springer US.
Stearns, S. C. (2012). Integration of Technology Into the Classroom: Effects on 
reading comprehension.