4/11/2023 0 Comments Rocketship san joseThe learning lab also was a financially shrewd model for cash-strapped California schools, which have seen their basic funding cut by nearly a quarter over the past five years. They particularly help fill in gaps in learning in areas where repetitive exercises reinforce basic skills and allow other students to advance at a faster pace. With various degrees of accuracy, the half-dozen math and reading programs tailor lessons to students’ strengths and weaknesses and track individual students’ progress. The 100 minutes that students have spent in the learning lab daily have been an essential element of Rocketship’s strategy. Rocketship CEO Preston Smith and Charlie Bufalino, national development strategiest for Rocketship, said the pilot is not a rejection of the learning lab concept but a recognition of its limitations. Building on, not rejecting, a computer lab Rocketship uses three software programs that assign lessons based on students’ progress.īut elementary school students, with shorter attention spans and less focus, pose distinct challenges in an open classroom, which is why Rocketship is cautious about trying the model in earlier grades. įifth-year teacher Casey Rowe checks in with students who are doing math exercises online. It tore down walls in a wing of its campus and has brought ninth and tenth graders together in a two-hour block, combining algebra, geometry and, for fast-advancing students, Algebra II and beyond. This year, Summit Public Schools is pioneering this model in math a quick crow’s flight away from Rocketship Mosaic at its two high schools in San Jose. Shifting from a static rotational schedule of a computer lab to an open classroom marks the next horizon in blended learning, the integration of computer-based and teacher-based instruction. At a whiteboard at the opposite end from Lavi, first-year math teacher Devynn Patterson was working with nine or 10 students on simple equations, such as x-8=4. He was now checking the progress of students working on math or English problems, at their own pace, on inexpensive laptops. Casey Rowe, a fifth-year teacher in his second year at Rocketship, had switched off after guiding the full group through an exercise preparing for the impending state standardized testing. At a whiteboard in one end, with about 40 students sitting on a rug before her, sixth-year English teacher Judy Lavi led a writing exercise, analyzing a passage for Greek and Latin roots, grammar and sentence fluency. On an afternoon earlier this month at Rocketship Mosaic, a two-year-old, two-story school on a postage stamp lot a block off the main drag of San Jose’s Little Saigon, the 4 th and 5 th graders in their new flexible classroom were doing independent and group work. Rocketship Mosaic English teacher Judy Lavi discusses a reading passage with several dozen students in the front of the former learning lab. Over the course of the day, between 100 and 120 students move from individual computer-based instruction to small-group lessons to a large-group setting, moving on cue with amoeba-like fluidity from one activity to another – at least when it’s working smoothly. Instead of rotating students into a “learning lab” – a large computer room – for about quarter of the day as it does now, several of Rocketship’s seven San Jose schools are experimenting with turning their learning lab into one large, all-day classroom incorporating both technology and three teachers and non-credentialed teaching assistants. Now, as other districts and charter schools are starting to emulate the Rocketship model, which relies on computer-guided instruction as a key component, the K-5 charter school organization is considering leaving it behind, like a first-stage booster, and moving toward a different a 21 st century classroom. Palo Alto-based Rocketship Education has attracted national attention in the past few years for its innovative use of technology and impressive test scores for its largely low-income, Hispanic students.
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