Realizing Student Capability

As my first year at PATINS wraps up, I reflect on all the beautiful relationships that were built solely via Zoom. Not meeting people in person has taught me that the heart behind the screen is bigger than circumstances and that educators utilizing PATINS has made an impact in the lives of their students. Our guest blogger, Erica Telligman, is one of those educators. She has been teaching for 16 years in second grade, junior high special education and currently first grade at North Knox, one of our AEM teams. She is currently finishing up her administration license this summer and she works with her teaching team to utilize tech tools to enhance her teaching by reaching all students. She has two kids, 13 and 10 years old. They enjoy fishing, riding four-wheelers, and playing in the mud on their farm. Erica’s enthusiasm for having a UDL focused classroom has helped her students engage with materials and build their confidence in their work and with their classmates.

Realizing Student Capability
By: Erica Telligman

As a teacher, have you ever stood in the middle of your classroom feeling like the plates you are spinning could all come crashing down at any minute? I have been in this scenario so many times. There would be 20+ of them with their hands in the air staring at me and only one of me available to answer their questions. They aren't able to access all the components to be independent... or so I thought!

Enter Snap&Read and Co:Writer to the rescue! If you have never heard of the Don Johnston resources, you are missing out. I teach first grade. The thought of my students being able to utilize their technology to seek out information and understand that information when it more than likely is above their comprehension level made me seize up like an old rusty motor every single time I thought about trying to get out and use Chromebooks.

The journey of implementing and using these extensions was slow and steady for me. I knew after last spring being sent home due to COVID, we had to have more resources in place to help our students reach their full potential and our instruction to make the most impact. Phase one of implementation began in small groups. Two groups were taken and shown how to use both Snap&Read and Co:Writer. Apprehension was a major understatement. I couldn't sleep at all the night before this lesson. I just knew there was no way this was going to go well at all. I couldn't have been more wrong. These students were like sponges. It only took us 10 minutes to have all of theirs completely customized to their preferences. I was shocked. I decided to press on to the planned lesson for the next day of accessing information online so that they could use Snap&Read.

We picked the generalized topic of animal facts for kids for the students to type in for their search. I am quite sure I looked like a deer in headlights when my students typed that in, found an article they wanted to read, clicked on it and used Snap&Read to listen to the article. I actually went numb. I was partly excited because they could do it, but mostly I was terrified my students were going to come up with questions I wasn't prepared to answer. My fears were in vain. My students didn't have questions. Instead, they had facts they learned that they wanted to share with me and their classmates. It was so exciting!

Phase two was where I literally felt like my brain might actually explode. I now had two small groups (10 students) who knew how to use Snap&Read. These students were now my resource and allies. They partnered up and showed another student how to use Snap&Read. I stood useless in the middle of my classroom. We had done it!  They were independently working without an ounce of help from me. They were actively engaged and learning all kinds of facts that we would turn into a story later using Co:Writer. That was the day that changed my students' education and my instruction forever. I had now equipped them with the knowledge and access to the world at their fingertips in a classroom.

The discussions and conversations we had in our classroom from this point forward were never the same. My students were able to make deeper and more meaningful connections to concepts. They could find and report facts to extend thoughts and defend answers they had come up with.  Because my students were able to do fact-finding independently, it freed me up to be an active participant in conversations.

I continued pulling my level of support back and gradually released my students to initiate the process of discovering they had questions that they needed answers to, finding the answers to those questions, and stretching their thoughts even further. We even used Co:Writer to write our letters to Santa this year. Due to COVID restrictions I couldn´t have parent volunteers come in to help me write all 20 letters, so I turned on the topic of Christmas and away we went. My students were so proud of their letters to Santa. It took all the frustration away from students not being able to get their thoughts down on paper due to struggles with spelling.

Children are truly not given enough credit for the power they have for their own learning. I know I was probably a teacher who never truly realized the potential my students had for taking control of their own learning or their abilities to seek out and obtain information independently. I know I learned just as much from my students this year as they learned from me. I pray they realized their own potential the same way I realized the capabilities of them.

Photo Credits: Tricia Hall
Photos used with permission.