Library, Marblehead Village School, 1 hour

Technology literacy was the focus of the 4^th grade class that I observed today.  Mrs. Soghomonian established the goals of today’s lesson immediately.  Working with the 4^th and 5^th grade teachers, she made it clear that being able to open a new Microsoft Word document and format it properly would aid the students in the many papers they would need to write this year and next.  She informed the students that they would shortly be entering the computer lab and wanted to preview with them the steps that the children needed to take to complete the lesson.  Since they had to move on to a new topic next week, this would be the only opportunity they would have to work on this skill.

            Upon entering the computer lab, which was as sought after as a trip to Disney World, the children took their assigned seats.  I was impressed with the large screen displays that the Macs provided.  The height positioning and size of the computer monitors made them highly beneficial for all children but especially ones that may have had visual difficulties.  As with any computer exercise almost half of the class of 22 students, had forgotten their school identification number.  The librarian asked me to assist the students with ID retrieval from her book while she addressed the other random computer questions that cropped up from those that had logged on successfully.  I was surprised at how quickly the students forgot the set up prompts that were given orally and visually in the other room.  It was like once they heard “computer lab” the children just couldn’t focus on the document font and font size, layout of the page, and 8 typed lines that they were given.  This lesson had the children access the “toolbox” which was located at the top of the screen.  She told them that each computer will have this "toolbox" in a different place depending on the version of the software and the type of computer you have.  She hoped that they took away the knowledge that these tools were available, but not always where you had seen them on another computer.

Village School Computer Lab

           

            While it was chaotic and the children needed a great deal of reminders as to the requirements that they were given in the other room, overall it was a great hands-on activity.  After seeing how long it took everyone to get the initial formatting correct, post a centered title of their choice and only type one out of eight lines of content, the librarian decided to push off the next lesson on alternatives to Google searching until the following week.  As with anything else, logging everyone on can be a huge undertaking, combined with the fact that a few computers always seem to need some sort of random update that was not covered in the directions.  I know that the librarian had hoped to be done with this lesson today, but she also realized that this skill is a lifelong crucial one.  Taking the time to practice this takes patience and continued exposure.  Every moment of this class was used for instruction so the students were told to come after school or before school for book choosing.

On a side note, in the very first moments of instruction, a tutor entered the library and told the librarian that she needed to take 2 students that missed their Aimsweb testing.  The librarian allowed the students to leave but informed the tutor that this was the only scheduled opportunity that this skill would be covered and it was needed by their classroom teachers.  At the end of the scheduled class, I asked Mrs. Soghomonian if having children pulled was a common occurrence.  She told me that special education often pulls children out of “specials” that they have 2 times a week such as PE and music along with the one and only library class that the children have.  I asked what the logic of this was and she told me it was to help the children with curriculum support.  I wonder if the children will be able to receive this valuable skill support as well since it is one that is clearly going to be needed now and in the years ahead even more.  At least for these two students, I am glad they will have one more opportunity to learn this skill next week.  I do wonder why this testing was not done first thing in the morning or possibly during a read aloud of a pleasure book that was not curriculum related.