A.Evans OAR

Amanda Evans

Open Educational Resources

Wilmington University

December 2, 2018

Audience:

I will be sharing the information about the launch of the implementation of the Open Educational Resources with the teachers at Glen Avenue Elementary School.  There are 20 classroom teachers, 3 special education teachers, 2 ESOL teachers, 4 coaches, and two intervention teachers at the school full time.  All of these teachers will be part of the audience learning about the implementation of OERs in our school.  The teachers in our school work with students in grades 2-5.  

Purpose: 

The purpose of implementing Open Education Resources in our school is to provide the teachers in our school with resources that they can use and adapt to meet the needs of the learners in our school.  The school has shown weaknesses in grades 2-5 with Interim scores as well as weakness in PARCC scores in grades 3-5 in Math. This indicates that there is a need for resources beyond that of our current textbook series for Math and county supplied resources for Reading.  Teachers will have access to numerous resources that they can use freely in their classrooms to help support the curriculum.  

5 Phase Plan

Phase 1: 

Grades 2-5 are all candidates for using OREs due to lacking resources including textbooks.  Math was selected as our ares to begin the implementation process due to several factors including the need for more high quality resources, lacking textbooks, and the data that shows a weakness in Math from Interim and PARCC data.  There are numerous resources available for grades 2-5 in Math, using the Common Core Standards.  As our school begins the implementation process, we will start by finding and adapting alreading existing OERs.  Since each grade has access to a textbook, we will be using the OERs as a supplement during our implementation process.  We will identify each grade levels weakest standards using historical data from Interims and PARCC.  This will allow us to see where our greatest need is for the implementation of the OERs.  Links to the OERs will be placed in folders on the schools shared V-drive.  There will be folders for each stand per grade.   This will ensure that teachers can easily find resources for content for their grade level as will as resources for other grade levels to benefit high achieving students as well as students that are working towards grade level.  

Phase 2:

The team will consist of Administration, grade level representatives from each grade level 2-5, both Math coaches, a special education teacher, and an ESOL teacher.  These teachers all have a different role within the school, which means  each individual person will come to the team with a unique perspective and outlook.   All of these team members have an understanding of the need for resources for the teachers and for the students.  Each team member will have specific responsibilities.  This will ensure that all of these teachers will be able to play a vital role in helping locate, tag, organize, and share resources that are suitable for our students at each of the 4 grade levels.  As we begin the planning states, the team will meet once a month to ensure that adequate resources are being found and tagged for each grade level. This time will also be used to discuss questions, concerns, and needs of the teachers at each grade level.  The beginning of the implementation of using OERs will start by using the OERs for the standards that have historically shown the greatest weakness on Interim and PARCC data.  Those standards will be the first standards implemented  in order to help all close the gap.  For grade two the greatest weakness is with 2.OA.A.1 (Add and subtract to solve one and two-step word problems).  For grade three, the greatest weakness was with 3.OA.D.8 (use the four operations to solve word problems).  The greatest weakness in fourth grade was with 4.OA.A.3 (Multi Step word problems).  The greatest weakness for grade 5 is 5.NF.A.2 (Solve word problems about fractions).  These areas of weakness have been identified as weaknesses for the past 3 years.  This shows that our textbook is not enough of a resource for our students to be successful with these standards.

Phase 3:

The resources shared with teacher will be stored on the schools shared V-drive.  This is accessible to all teachers and it has been the storage for resources for teachers in our district for over the last 10 years.  Since this format is familiar with all teachers it will be the easiest and most effective way to share the resources with all teachers.  Teachers have access to add OERs that they find to the files in order to share with other teachers.  

Phase 4:

The rubric that our district has used in previous years for selecting resources to purchase will be used to evaluate the OERs.  All OERs will be scored based on content, standards addressed, cultural relevance, inquiry based, and level of engagement.  During the implementation process the OERs will be refreshed quarterly to ensure that all tagged resources for our school are relevant and applicable for our teachers and students.   After the initial implementation the refresh of resources will happen yearly.  

Phase 5: 

Each cycle all teachers have one hour PLCs in which teachers participate professional development.  This professional development is a way of helping the teachers at our school better understand how to reach our students and the best practices for teaching Common Core Standards.  This professional development comes from our grant through the Race to the Top program that our district involved in.  The PLC professional development time is the perfect time for teachers to have Professional Development on how to find, tag, and utilize resources that will best meet the needs of the students that they are teaching.  Our school partners with Salisbury University PDS program.  I am the Site Coordinator for of school.  Part of the responsibilities as Site Coordinator is to communicate with SU and discuss the needs we have as a school and how they can assist us.  Part of our plan will be to reach out to Salisbury University to see if they can assist us with the process of utilizing the OERs.  

Sites:

OER Commons https://www.oercommons.org/

• https://www.oercommons.org/courses/multiplication-and-division-tutorial
• https://www.oercommons.org/authoring/47685-3-oa-c-8-modeling-two-step-word-problems 
• https://www.oercommons.org/courses/locating-fractions-greater-than-one-on-the-number-line 

        OpenStax https://cnx.org/ 

• https://cnx.org/contents/-pJpYasv@1.1:eAqtw9k7@1/Counting 

Merlot https://www.merlot.org/merlot/index.htm 

• https://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=620522 
• https://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=496427 
• https://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=81483 

C K-12 https://www.ck12.org/teacher/ 

• https://www.ck12.org/c/arithmetic/higher-order-one-digit-multiplication-word-problems/ 
• https://www.ck12.org/c/arithmetic/higher-order-multiplication-word-problems/ 
• https://www.ck12.org/c/arithmetic/relate-division-to-multiplication/ 

Curriki https://www.curriki.org/ 

• https://www.curriki.org/oer/Multiples-Lesson-Plan-docx 
• https://www.curriki.org/oer/Multiplication-and-Division-272108 
• https://www.curriki.org/oer/Taming-Word-Problems 

Plan for Sharing Resources

Teachers will be exposed to OERs through bi-monthly Faculty Meetings and Professional Learning Communities per cycle.  We will begin showing teachers how to access the files before they are expected to utilize the OERs in their daily lessons.  This will allow teachers time to become familiar with the process of locating the materials needed.  

Launch Plan 

        This plan is for the teachers so it needs to be a living plan that changes based on teachers needs.  Teachers need to know what is happening as the team develops the plan for implementing the OERs in our school.  I believe that involving teachers and allowing them to see and understand the purpose and the impact that these resources will have will greatly increase the teachers acceptance and willingness to use these resources.  

        Teachers will first be introduced to the Open Educational Resources at a faculty meeting.  This introduction will explain to the staff what OERs are and how these resources will help benefit all involved (teacher and students).  Teachers will first be shown the OER Commons Website.  This site allows teachers to search for the resources that are for their grade level and that follow Common Core Standards.  This will show teachers how easy it is to locate these resources.  At the beginning of our implementation process, all of the resources that the team found will be linked in folders on the schools V-drive.  This is a very familiar format for teachers to find resources.  As teachers become more proficient with the technology, one of the Technology Coaches will show teachers at PLC meeting how to locate, tag, and create, resources.  Teachers need to see the importance of technology for us at teachers but also the importance of technology for our students.  Many OERs incorporate technology that we have available to us at school.  Teachers will be shown (through PLC’s) how to use the technology to effectively teach the standards and to simultaneously engage students.  It is important that teachers understand the levels of Technology knowledge using the TPACK framework.  It is important that teachers understand the varying levels of understanding ranging from knowing how to use the technology to being able to use the technology to learn as well as which type of technology is best for teaching different topics.  In order for teachers to be able to teach with the technology, they must first have a solid understanding of the technology.  This is where the technology coaches will be utilized most.  They will work with teachers to expand their understanding of the different types of technology they will be using in their classroom.  Tech coaches will co-teach lessons with teacher to model best practices when using technology as well.  

References:

Koehler, M. Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) Explained ( 2012)

Retrieved from http://tpack.org 

Office of Educational Technology (2017).#Go Open Launch Packet. Retrieved from https://tech.ed.gov/open/districts/launch/.

Open Education Consortium (2018). Pedagogy and OER. Retrieved from http://www.oeconsortium.org/info-center/topic/pedagogy-and-oer

Schoenfeld, A.  Read Education: Learning to Think in a Discipline Retrieved from: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AAXuSysb_b_uXK7Lk7wzA2W4bMlvVB4IiizYAxOZPBw/edit