Teacher And School
Rachel Jordan
Edward Gideon Elementary School, Philadelphia, PA
Key Challenge
Keeping kindergarten students motivated and engaged in lessons on a daily basis.
SMART Solution
SMART Board 6000 series
SMART Notebook
Result
SMART Notebook lessons kept Mrs. Jordan’s kindergarten students motivated and engaged.
Motivation
Edward Gideon Elementary School is located in the Brewerytown section of the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As a community-based school, Gideon strives to work collaboratively with the community and its stakeholders. The school helps learners become confident in achieving success and provides them with an opportunity for educational excellence.
The first steps in achieving success include helping students become motivated and stay engaged. Mrs. Jordan, an 11-year veteran teacher, saw these steps as an opportunity to create academic stamina in her kindergarten students, who seemed to be having difficulty in maintaining attention during daily instruction. Mrs. Jordan decided to explore SMART Notebook software as a medium through which she could motivate and engage her students.
Why SMART?
During the course of the school year, Mrs. Jordan’s students engaged in several project-based, collaborative learning experiences. One of the learning experiences involved learning the life cycle of a butterfly. To meet this learning goal, Mrs. Jordan first engaged students in a KWL chart delivered through SMART Notebook. Delivering the KWL chart through SMART Notebook allowed students to see, engage, and add to knowledge about the butterfly life cycle. Students were able to collaboratively draw on the KWL chart and explain their thinking about the content.
After ascertaining her students’ prior knowledge and what they were curious about, Mrs. Jordan used SMART Notebook to create investigative, student-led, interactive activities about the butterfly life cycle. Many of these activities involved game-based learning; for example, the Rank Order game-based activity allows students to place images along a sequencing timeline of events--showcasing how a butterfly starts out as a larva and moves along its life cycle to become the beautiful creature they see flying around the playground.
Improved Learning
Experiencing SMART Notebook lessons and interacting with the SMART Board was new to many of Mrs. Jordan’s students. By midyear, however, students’ interest in learning peaked tremendously as they were introduced to more and more ways the SMART Board could be used for interactive, fun learning experiences. Students began to claim accountability for and ownership of their own learning as they continued interacting with SMART’s various hardware and software features.
According to Mrs. Jordan, “Students wanted to be independent in their learning and the SMART Board was definitely a catalyst to their independence.”
“As educators, we are lifelong learners. We should always embrace strategies that may enhance our students' growth in education.”
- Rachel Jordan
Want to learn more about SMART Interactive Displays and SMART Notebook? Get in touch to experience how you could transform your student outcomes.