Schools

BACK TO SCHOOL 2011: Roosevelt School

Students at the Roosevelt will see iPads, SMART Boards and a new engineering curriculum this year.

SMART Board interactive whiteboards are the order of the day for Melrose's elementary schools this upcoming school year, but the is going one step further: iPads.

Through a , which holds a , Principal Kerry Clery purchased a cart with 10 iPads.

Clery said like the SMART Boards, the iPads bring an interactivity to the classroom, but also a more personalized experience that's natural for kids due to the touchscreen interface.

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"If you were to give a 2-year-old a laptop or a desktop computer and sit them in front of it, they wouldn’t be able to do much—navigate the mouse, press a couple of buttons on the keyboard," she said. "If you give a 2-year-old an iPad, it’s intuitive. They can start pressing things and seeing the reaction and before you know it, a 3-year-old can be iPad savvy, which is not as much the case with computers."

Clery said in the future, she'll look to purchase more iPads so teachers can use them in the classroom more frequently and have them become routine. The iPads will be loaded with age-appropriate applications related to writing, reading and math and other subjects.

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SMART Board use expands at the school

SMART Boards aren't new at the Roosevelt, where four classrooms had the interactive whiteboards installed and other teachers had access to a portable SMART Board. Clery said the classroom teachers who've been using the SMART Boards "can't speak highly enough of what they can offer to students, to their teaching."

She added that Mayor Rob Dolan had been in the schools and "was able to see the value" from having SMART Boards, leading to his proposal to install them in all the elementary school classrooms.

"What he saw and what we see is that there was actually a discrepancy between the students who were learning in the classes with the SMART Board versus those who were not," Clery said.

New engineering curriculum aligns to science kits

At the Roosevelt School's fourth and fifth grade levels, students switch among three classrooms, with one teacher teaching science to all three classes and another teaching social studies. The third class has been an experiment in different subjects, Clery said, with last year's class being "comprehension extension," a kind of extra literacy block for students.

With the full implementation of the FOSS science kits this year, however, Clery said the third class will be an engineering class with a curriculum titled "Engineering is Elementary," from the Museum of Science in Boston. The curriculum is aligned to the FOSS kits and shares a similar structure to the kits' lesson plans.

"It's great to have that overlap of one lesson focusing on the science and the other is focusing on the engineering," Clery said. "It's another hands-on experience for the student. It teaches them to think critically, to problem-solve, to collaborate and work together as a team. It will be interesting to hear feedback in the late fall from the teachers, students and the parents to see if this something that they’re finding beneficial."

Clery also expressed excitement about the full implementation of the FOSS kits. Last year, one kit was purchased for each grade level, with teachers trained on that kit.

"So many teachers used that first initial kit and couldn’t believe the outcome, the student engagement and excitement, and how fun it was to teach," she said. It’s going to change the way students experience science ... just the interactiveness. When they experiment and have an 'a-ha' moment, they own that knowledge and they’ll own it forever."


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