St. Bonaventure’s College has done a wonderful job making technology available to all students and teachers. We have a fully operational, up to date computer lab which is accessible to all students. Many classrooms have Team Boards or Smart Boards. All other classrooms have a projector and each teacher has a laptop to help them prepare and present their lessons.There are a number of iPads available in the primary classrooms and a class set available for use as well. Each teacher has a laptop to help them prepare and present their lessons. All the technology is compatible which makes for consistency and ease of use.
Technology is a huge part of the way in which my students learn. It makes learning more interesting and fun for my students and they are able to learn according to their abilities and needs. We use our Team Board daily as part of our morning routine. We are able to use interactive websites to promote development of skills. We use an interactive hundreds chart to help children develop a strong number sense. They can easily see patterns in numbers by highlighting the numbers before and after a number and ten more and ten fewer than a number. We use it to share songs and videos to reinforce concepts in class. Our French program is oral-based so we use our Team Board to share a variety of songs and interactive activities.
Many of our curriculum resources have an online component. In fact, the new Science curriculum resources are all available online and are therefore, easily accessible for use in the classroom. There are posters to display and interactive activities for each lesson that easily engage the children as active learners. We use the electronic version of our Math Big Book and can display and work directly on the board to reinforce the required curriculum outcomes.
Our iPads have a number of wonderful apps to enhance student learning, particularly in Math and Language Arts. We use the iPads as one of our learning centres on a very regular basis. These apps allow the children to work at their level, helping to individualize learning for my students. One really exciting activity we did last year was coding. It was amazing to see the children using the iPads to participate in the Hour of Code initiative. It helped out students learn to collaborate with others while developing important problem-solving skills and persistence.
We regularly make use of the bank of computers in our Resource Room to enhance, extend, and enrich our curriculum. One of the favourite activities for the students is an interactive ten frame, where students reinforce Math concepts. We also use these computers to reinforce our Language Arts program with a wide variety of student-friendly, curriculum-related websites.
I am so thankful for the wonderful technology the school has provided for teachers and students. It makes teaching and learning an engaging, interactive activity that helps us not only achieve the required outcomes, but also helps to engage our student in hands on, minds on learning.
Ms. Kathy Coffin
Grade 1 Teacher
