Implementation Report

1. Outcomes of the implementation: The website (www.starfall.com) proved to be very effective in enhancing students’ phonics and reading skills as an addition to their reading groups. During each reading group period, students were directed to the website to practice selected skills and tasks that they needed more experience with. Furthermore, their learning motivation was highly increased by using this website as they were attracted and interested in its layout. Also, there were very intrigued by the BookBuilder project and were excited to write every day. This is a big step since many students were reluctant to write previously. Throughout the lesson, there was no problem with the technology.

2. Accommodations: Since this was an inclusion class, several students had various needs that were a priority to meet. For these students, the teacher and teacher assistant worked one on one with them. For the website, the students were shown step by step what to do. They then completed an activity with the help of their peers for further support. Moreover, for the BookBuilder project, students with writing problems were allowed to type their sentences in the initial stages of creating the book instead of handwriting them. They were also given sentence starters to aid them in writing their sentence.

3. Classroom Management: This was a class that I sub in very frequently. For this reason I was very familiar with the classroom management and did not have to make any adjustments as I planned accordingly based on my familiarity with them.

4. Questions asked by students: The most frequently asked questions that students asked were: “Why are we going on the computer for reading groups?” and “How are we going to make a book online, don’t we need paper?” All the teachers involved were quite amused by these questions. The students had never gone on the computer in reading groups before, so this was a new experience for them. Once they completed the activity on the website they seemed to understand the concept of it all a bit more. The second question was one we received many times throughout the process. They just couldn’t seem to understand how we could create a book without using paper and pencil. Once they were taken through the process that absolutely loved it and have since asked to make another one.

5.  Problems students encountered during the process: One of the problems that students encountered during the implementation was collaborating on the book. Each group was given a story started and then each student was asked to write two sentences based on the story starter. In the beginning, students had a hard time agreeing on the order the sentences should go in and other layout issues. In order to solve this problem I assigned them each numbers in which their sentences would come in the book. This seemed to solve the problem.

6. Decisions: I was surprised by how smoothly this implementation actually went. There were no real issues or need to make a crucial decision on the spot. The only decisions that really had to be made was time management as some groups required more time than others. In this case, I set up the groups in order to accommodate for each of their time management needs and helped those along who needed more guidance.

7. Feedback from students: In the beginning the students were unsure of what was going to happen since it was new to them. However, after the implementation they were all very excited. Most of the students wanted to know when they would be able to create another book on BookBuilder. There were, however, a couple students who needed more help on www.starfall.com than others. These students found it a bit more difficult, but with appropriate assistance they were able to do it and seemed to enjoy it once they were helped.

8. Timeframe: As stated before, this was a class that I sub in very frequently. Thus, I could plan appropriately for timing. There was enough time to complete the lesson as I had planned for.