Primary classrooms are often thought of as a place to dumb the old technology. I often hear how primary students cannot do everything with technology, so it is not a priority for these teachers to use technology in their teaching. Well...I am glad I have primary teachers who use technology effectively everyday!
I had the opportunity to work in a first grade classroom that was using CPS clickers for the first time. Their teacher wanted to get instant feedback from her students, so clickers were the perfect option. The great thing about the CPS clickers is that the teacher had minimum prep. We were using the "verbal mode" so no questions had to be prepared ahead of time. With 5 minutes of prep to setup classes, the teacher could use the clickers with any preexisting material. In this case, she was using Brain Pop Jr. At the end of the Brain Pop video, the students always take the 5 question quiz. Instead of one person coming up to the board to answer the question, every student was able to answer and participate. The engagement for the students was fantastic. Every student was excited and so wanted to get the answer right!
The lesson went well and the students really enjoyed it. The teacher gained some usable data from the activity. Using the CPS software, she was able to see how her students performed on this formative assessment. From there, she was able to make some instructional decisions and could do some reteaching for those who struggled.
Overall, I think it was a great learning activity for the teacher and the students. I hope this teacher will use this positive experience and utilize the clickers again. It is also my hope that others on the team will do the same. All it takes is one spark to start a fire!
This is technology that actually works!
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