Elementary School Technology Integration

This year, we have made several exciting technology advancements in Northpoint Christian's elementary school. We have added an additional laptop cart for 1st-6th grade, added 13 iPads in our library, and purchased a new iPad cart. If you're a parent, I'm sure you've heard about some of the activities that the students have been doing in class. 

                                                                                  

If you don't already know, I'm our teachers' biggest fan, and they are doing some fantastic things in class. First grade teachers used QR codes this week to allow students to watch read alouds on the iPads. Mrs. Saunders is doing a cross-curricular unit on Jan Brett using the iPads and QR codes in the library. Some of the other teachers have been using QR codes to help students independently research animals, self-check math, and self-check vowels that they have been learning. In these activities, the students are working independently, but the teacher is available to give instruction and guide the students. That being said, the technology isn't the focus of the activity, the learning is! 

Another way some of our teachers are using the iPads is by setting up iPad centers. First grade has recently been using the iPads as independent centers by giving students a choice of certain apps they can play to reinforce skills they are learning in class. PK, JK, and SK each have 3 ipads per classroom that are used during center time. Some of the apps used reinforce handwriting skills, sight word recognition, phonics skills, and numeracy skills. Mrs. Saunders has also been using iPad centers in the library classes for some of the lower grades. The students have really enjoyed reading e-books, reading on the Reading Rainbow app, and practicing other literacy skills in the library. 5th graders have also been working on a special Keynote project during library time. 3rd grade has used the iPads for group QR code math activities.

As for the laptops, in our fourth grade teachers have not only been using the laptop carts for IXL math practice, but they have also been using them for interactive science lessons! Mrs. Emerson's class recently learned about precipitation by researching different U.S. cities. Also, the third graders made PowerPoint presentations about vertebrate and invertebrates. The students did a fabulous job! Teachers are consistently checking out the laptops for research projects and for other projects such as presentation creation. 

We are working hard at Northpoint Christian to create a technology rich curriculum that focuses on learning and creates independent, life-long learners. If you have any questions about how we are using technology in the elementary school, please feel free to contact me at ehopkins@ncstrojans.com. 

Emily Hopkins

Technology Integrator

Elementary School 

High School Technology

In August, High School teachers began implementing more technology into the classroom through the use of an iPad cart and a laptop cart. This is very exciting news because it allows teachers to foster a twenty-first century learning environment that will continue our efforts of preparing students for a collegiate environment. Implementing the carts into the classroom allows students to be fully engaged, through technology, in their subject area. For example, Mrs. Pitner has used the laptop cart and Google Drive in Bachelorette Living to allow students to collaboratively create a class presentation entitled “Everything for Baby”. Each student researched specific items relating to babies and the class created a presentation. Mrs. Watson allowed her 7^th grade Social Studies class to virtually walk among the pyramids in Egypt through an app called Google Earth on the iPad cart. Math classes are able to use graphing calculators and interactive websites in class. Teachers are using Socrative on the laptop cart and iPad cart across several subjects. Socrative is a website and an app that allows the teacher and the student to connect wirelessly. The teachers can send questions and the students respond. The teacher can then show the anonymous answers onto the board for discussion. This type of activity produces 100% student involvement in the classroom yet allows the teacher to download a detailed report at the end of the activity to monitor the discussion. 

We are very excited about what technology is doing to help foster a new culture of engaged, creative students and we look forward to implementing more technology in the future!

Kaylah Holland
High School Technology Integrator