Technology Integration in a “Newcomers” Classroom
By Nada Darwish & Mesut Duran
What if you had a classroom of “newcomers” who had little to no experience in using any type of technology and didn’t speak English?
School and Student Population
Located in Dearborn, Michigan, Salina Elementary serves approximately 500 K-3 students. The majority of students are of Yemeni descent. The school has a Newcomer Center in the morning and Language Arts intervention in the afternoon. At Salina, students who have been in the United States for less than six months are traditionally identified as “newcomers.” The students come to the Newcomer Center from their classrooms of mixed grade levels in the morning for two hours to learn the English language while their home room teachers are also focusing on literacy. Another goal of the center is to ease the cultural and educational transition that these students go through so they can become functional members of their homeroom classrooms as soon as possible.
Technology Environment
The Newcomer Center has a typical classroom setting with tables, chairs, books, etc. However, the center might be considered a “dream classroom” when it comes to the availability of technology resources for students and the teacher. It is equipped with a teacher computer, printer, copier, scanner, classroom TV, projection device, four computers for student use, Internet connection, electronic whiteboard, document camera, and an audio enhancement system. The software available includes Kidspiration, Inspiration, iPhoto, Microsoft Office, Excel, and PowerPoint.
Learning Environment
In a given semester, around 15 of the same students come to the Center Monday through Friday for two hours a day. English Language skills of the students in the Center vary tremendously. Some students learn the alphabet, others learn to blend sounds to make simple words, and some others who read at low levels need reading fluency instruction at their own pace.
The Center applies bilingual strategies in which the teacher is able to speak the students’ native language, Arabic. “Code-switching” between English and Arabic is common throughout the daily classroom activities to enhance communication and understanding between the teacher and students. Most of the students could be identified as shy but seeing a teacher in the classroom who
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speaks their native language fluently and comes from a similar cultural background helps to diffuse the sense of foreignness in the classroom.
Such a learning environment requires differentiated instruction to meet the needs of every student in the Center. The teacher is aware of the possibilities that the technology affords to implement such an instructional strategy. Students, however, also need exposure to the technology tools because they are all new to such a technology-rich environment.
Using Technology to Support Differentiated Instruction As Smith and Throne (2007) describe, the central point of differentiated instruction is a framework that provides multiple ways to meet the needs of individual learners. Differentiated instruction pays attention to cultural and instructional differences among students. Teachers who apply differentiated instruction strategies adjust the teaching and the learning process to address diversity among students while meeting the learning objectives. In a differentiated instruction classroom, both teachers and students share the responsibilities for student learning and achievement. Smith and Throne further argue that technology tools can enhance the instructional process and offer personalized learning environments. Thus, both differentiated instruction and technology integration in the classroom are important components of 21st-century learning. Aligned with this notion, the following sample unit provides an example of how available technology tools in the Newcomers Center were being utilized to differentiate the instruction for students.
The unit was focused on reading with phonics aligned with Michigan English Language Proficiency Standards (MELPS) and the Michigan Educational Technology Standards (METS). The unit had five technology-integrated lessons, targeting the teaching of short vowel sounds through word families where students learned the short “a, e, i, o, and u”. The specific hardware tools used in the lessons included teacher computer, projection device, Promethean Board, four computers for student use, Internet connection, and headphones. The software selection included Kidspiration and two specific online services;
starfall.com and
hubbardscupboard.org.
In the first lesson, the students learned short “i” with the word family –it, and practiced some more with “–ip” and “–ig.” Using the Starfall website (
www.starfall.com), the teacher [Nada] projected
Winter 2011-12 | MACULJOURNAL
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