Action Plan Week 4

Implementing Study Island in Core Areas
After the great success of Study Island in our Science area the district technology team has decided that we would implement Study Island in all our core subjects to better meet the needs of our students on TAKS assessments. To integrate this into the curriculum of Math, Social Studies, and English each school will send representatives district Professional Learning Communities this coming semester to work on incorporating Study Island into the curriculum for the school year 2010-2011. These teachers who are working on curriculum are going to be our lead teachers in implementing Study Island district wide. The lead teachers will introduce Study Island to their fellow department members in April or May of 2010 to go over how Study Island works and how they will be using it in their classroom the following year. This will allow them to become more comfortable with the program. In August, in Departmental breakout sessions, the core areas will break off to the computer labs to familiarize themselves with Study Island again and to also welcome the new teachers and explain the usage of Study Island. The core subjects will also be part of professional learning communities on campus and will be responsible for meeting once a month after school to discuss areas of concern and to offer assistance to struggling teachers.

Qwizdom Professional Development
Qwizdom has been used by our Math and Science teachers for the last few years, but not all teachers in these departments have been trained or take advantage of this resource. The English and Social Studies departments do not currently implement Qwizdom, but I think they need help understanding how it can be utilized in their classroom. During our January 4th in-service a Qwizdom presentation will be given to the teachers in these four core areas. The activity will include a breakdown of the Qwizdom system, a mock game using a Qwizdom activity, and an opportunity to develop their own activity for their subject. To successfully implement this resource, teachers need to be trained on how to upload their classes into the system, how to use the remotes, and how to view reports of the student’s progress during the Qwizdom activity. Each core area will be required to develop a Qwizdom activity which can be used in their classrooms. We will also brain storm as a group how and when this resource can be successful integrated into the classroom.

Apangea Professional Development
Apangea is our District’s newest technological resource. It was purchased by our district for use in computer labs across the high school campuses. This web-based tool is going to be used to target our 11th grade Math Models and IPC students and our 9th grade initiative students. This resource provides personalized one on one tutoring and great incentives for learning. A certified teacher is available live to tutor the students after a short lesson has been given. Apangea also provides a Smart Rewards Program which rewards students with gift cards for consistent effort and achievement. This program is to be implemented in the Spring Semester and in the 2010-2011 school year. All teachers who have these targeted students in their classroom will need to be trained on Apangea. A professional development session will be held to allow these teachers to explore Apangea and discover its usefulness for their students. They will be required to schedule computer lab time throughout the second semester to utilize this resource. At the end of the second semester a meeting will be held with is group of teachers to discuss and analyze the results and use of this program. We will look at our 2010 TAKS results and discuss whether we feel this resource impacted our scores with our target group of students.