State: California | Number of Students: 119 |
School Type: Parochial School | Free and Reduced Lunch: 94.0% |
Grade Level: 6-8 | English Language Learners: N/A |
School Context
This is a small middle school in California that serves 126 students most of whom are native Spanish speakers. The school is a college-prep school and most of their student body will be first generation college attendees. They serve a low socioeconomic population.
State of Technology
Students at their school are a few years below grade level in reading. They are trying to prepare students to be accepted to and attend college, and they are changing their school schedule to accommodate for more reading intervention.
Currently the English Language Arts department and English Language Development (ELD) department scaffold reading into the core curriculum for students that are struggling. They do not use software at this time to support intervention and development. The school does use ALEKS for math intervention and is looking for something similar to support reading.
Tech Needs & Requirements
Their school schedule is changing to accommodate more reading intervention. They will have five days of regular English classes for all students. The students will also attend an ELD class for language study. They will also have a 25-minute independent period where students can work on struggling areas like reading and math. This solution will support the teaching and learning in their ELD class or within the 25- minute study class. They are looking for a solution that students can work on about 30-minutes a day.Ideally this tool will provide content that is leveled to students reading lexile, a balance between informational and fiction topics that would be interesting for the student. Some student choice would be a nice to have. The tool should also provide formative assessment activities that cover comprehension, inference, vocabulary, and even possibly grammar. Vocabulary is crucial. The tool should have diagnostic test to help level set the students. Questions in the diagnostic and the formative assessments need to be aligned with the Common Core Standards. The questions should vary from multiple choice, open answer, TEI if possible. Teachers are comfortable with grading the open-ended answers on their own. Data is a critical component to this solution. The tool should: provide progress monitoring for student skills based on Common Core and Lexile level; provide teachers with information to help provide students with intervention before their quarterly assessment cycle; have shareable data as they would like to be able to quickly access reports to show students in conferences and parents when necessary; and the tool should be easy to use for all users.
Students should have some choice over content if possible, but otherwise the teacher and tool will have control over pace and sequence. If there is data available for the students to see, then that will be a nice to have.
Teachers will be required to access the data and disaggregate it so they would like up-to-the-minute views of how students are progressing. The tool should not require a high level of technical skills to do this. An easy interface is a must. Teachers will not need to alter the content or customize.
The tool must: provide content that is relevant to students' interests and appropriate for age level; have a diagnostic or level setting option built into the tool; have a formative assessments built in to track skill improvement; provide reporting on progress; provide data that is downloadable to CSV; and be aligned to Common Core standards. The school provides 1:1 Chromebooks. The tool must have progress monitoring. The more data the better! Ideally, the tool should integrate with SchoolSpeak, but this is not a non-negotiable. Rostering with a CSV will be better than having to type in each student.