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Jessamine County Schools Target Differentiated Reference Site Leaders: Pilot Schools: Wilmore, Ky., located 30 miles west of Lexington in a small rural community, is the home of the Jessamine Early Learning Village (JELV), an award-winning early childhood center. JELV serves all three- to five-year-old students, or over 700 preschool and kindergarten children, who graduate into five local elementary schools. Jessamine Early Learning Village is fully integrated for children with special needs. It has successfully implemented IntelliTools technology – primarily IntelliKeys, IntelliTools Classroom Suite, and Overlay Maker – in special education and assistive technology arenas. PHILOSOPHY Kelly Sampson, principal at JELV, believes in starting very young students in fully integrated accessible classrooms. Kelly passionately believes that a good start on the educational journey is critical for every student, no matter what their physical or learning disability. She notes that intervention begun at JELV means that many of its graduates do not need special services when they transition to first grade. Principal Sampson works closely with the five local “feeder” elementary schools in the district, including Warner Elementary School, headed by principal Char Williams. The support and early intervention that students receive at JELV save the Jessamine school district thousands of dollars every year and provide parents an exceptional opportunity for children with special needs. THE TEAM The dedicated and specialized team at JELV is composed of talented early childhood educators and assistive technology professionals, including AT specialists, visual impairment (VI) specialists, speech and language pathologists, occupational therapists, physical therapists, and others. Parents often serve as para-educators in the classroom providing valuable one-on-one resources. JELV’s AT team is led by Gerald Abner, an AT and VI Specialist, and Judy Owens, a special education teacher and AT Specialist. Both are well-known workshop presenters at national, state, and regional conferences. Gerald worked with the American Printing House for the Blind (APH) to produce Braille and tactual overlays for IntelliKeys. Gerald and Judy shared a vision to take IntelliTools technology further into other areas of the district across all elementary grades, abilities, curriculum areas, and physical access. Gerald, Judy, and Principal Sampson partnered with Warner Elementary principal Char Williams, and both JELV and Warner acted as pilot sites for the IntelliTools Classroom Suite Reference Site project. PROJECT GOALS AND OBJECTIVES The project outline was to provide differentiated instruction in the classrooms at JELV and Warner Elementary with IntelliTools Classroom Suite. All students in a class were targeted, not just students with special needs, and the classroom activities were to be embedded within the daily curriculum and based on early childhood developmental standards and elementary state standards. The JELV and Warner Elementary teams partnered with the IntelliTools Professional Development team to structure pilot research study with two goals:
The eight-week pilot study involved 30 teachers in preK-3 classrooms at JELV and Warner Elementary, two district AT Specialists, a district network technology coordinator, and both school principals. It targeted specific writing skills:
IntelliTools partnered with the Jessamine County team to structure an eight-week plan that was emailed to teachers weekly, with selected activities and suggestions on how to easily modify them. Teachers were asked to spend an hour a week using IntelliTools Classroom Suite in the classroom and incorporate it into the curriculum. RESULTS Teachers took student writing samples at the beginning, middle, and end of the pilot to ascertain student gains. They reported increased language arts skills especially in the areas of understanding sentence components and being able to write in complete sentences. Kindergarten and first grade teachers found that using IntelliTools Classroom Suite “Explore” activities with the whole class and an interactive whiteboard worked particularly well. Students collaborated and helped each other learn in the whole class interactive experience. Teachers of older students reported that the students enjoyed using the tool and making their own activities to present to the class. They also described how the software gave access to the grade level curriculum. The combination of aligning the technology with the district curriculum goals and implementing with teachers in a systematic and structured manner over eight weeks allowed the teachers to integrate IntelliTools Classroom Suite into their daily classroom activities. Speaking about the eight-week project, Char Williams, Warner Elementary principal, notes, “I am pleased with the way my staff came to grips with the new technology in a short space of time and that they found it of real value in the classroom. They have reported overall student improvements in writing, specifically in the sentence construction areas. Best of all, the teachers have talked so much about it with their fellow teachers that now everyone wants to be able to use it. We are planning a wider implementation next semester, with the phase one teachers acting as mentors to the phase two group.” Adds Kelly Sampson, JELV principal, “It achieved the desired goals
with our staff of increasing their use of the technology, especially with
whole class instruction, and we saw improvements in student writing skills.
The next step will be to introduce IntelliTools Classroom Suite
to the other four elementary schools we serve so that our students can
continue to use it when they leave us.” |