The studies in ME and TX showed statistically insignificant gains with iPads.
districts do shoddy faculty training, so the technology is underused.
the effects of screen time on attention span, stuff you already know about that.
basically, all success with them comes from the clever teacher who came up with cool ways to use them, not the presence of new technology itself.
it is one more ways for schools to talk about 7 year olds being ready for the workplace, lol.
i'm glad someone actually studied this. the only thing i have is an ancedote where my nephew couldn't figure it out and couldn't take notes in algebra so they had to go back to pad and paper.
I work at a title one school. To answer the question about single parents, they don't get supplies. The school doesn't give us the money to buy student supplies, so it comes out of my pocket. Now, we don't have expensive supply lists because we know in our area a majority of our parents can't afford them. So it is less for me to buy for individual students. Plus at this point is only get the individual student stuff not class supplies (tissues, hand sanitizer, ect)
I'm out about $300 so far and that is with getting really good deals. I refuse to allow children to sit in my classroom and have less then their "richer" peers. It's not the child's fault that their family can't afford supplies.
So we should take away your pension and generally assume you are incompetent! <)
I do teach in NC and most of my students come in not speaking English. Which means we don't score well on states testing.......
Amazon, baby! I bought supplies to fill 2 backpacks for the local food pantry, using our school supply list. I chose 6th grade, but I assumed that older kids are sometimes ignored, and their school supplies can be pricier. I had to buy scientific calculators and earbuds. Sorry, I did't get Beats ear buds, I got Panasonic. I did get crayola colored pencils, though!
I mean... it was still a lot of money, but Amazon really cuts down on the shopping stress.
I love school supply shopping. Our pta does a thing where they will buy all the stuff on the list for a couple of bucks extra. I don't do it bc I want to take ds shopping myself. I reserve the right to change my crazy ways in the future
As a kid, I was so excited when supplies appeared in stores. I'm a dork who loves the idea of organization. And shopping in general. Ah, the smell of a brand new homework planner!
I do teach in NC and most of my students come in not speaking English. Which means we don't score well on states testing.......
Might be a dumb question, but who are your immigrants / where are they from?
In my current district Mexico. At my old school, we had students from all over the world, but many of them came from wealthy families who provided english tutors so we had much better test scores.
Post by somersault72 on Aug 3, 2015 9:19:20 GMT -5
Our school does the supply boxes, but I love school supply shopping so I haven't went that route yet. I can usually get good deals on Ticonderogas on Amazon.
I am with you @domerjen. School supply shopping is one of my secret loves. I was so excited to have a list of supplies for preschool this year, only had 5 items on it but I enjoyed it, lol.
As a kid I loooooooooooved picking out the supplies on the list and choosing what color notebook/binders I would get as well as puppy and kitty folders, lol.
So did I, but I also loved the start of school. As a parent, I hate shopping for supplies because letting the kids pick out the colors they want is surprisingly...complicated. GODDAMIT, the choice between red and orange is NOT THAT DIFFICULT. COME ON.
I think in the early middle school years, I had 1 or 2 years where the teacher specified the colors of folders. So for math you would use the red folder, for English it would be green, etc. Which sucked because you couldn't just grab any package of folders. And because as a kid I wanted to pick out my own, dammit. But in a way, it was probably easier for parents and teachers.
Our school offers the option of an EduKit. We order it at the end of the prior school year and it comes with everything on the supply list. The price varies by grade - our kids cost $35 each. The cost seems completely reasonable and saves time and headache. Do other people have this option?
Teachers - I have a lot of friends who are also teachers. I am seeing a new trend of them creating an Amazon wish list of their supplies and sharing on FB. People have responded pretty well and helping them out.
I wish more teachers in our district would use this or Donors Choose. I would be so very glad to buy extra books or supplies they would like to have available to them.
Does Ticonderoga have a secret contract or something with schools everywhere? These are always specified for us as well, along with Magic Erasers, which are NEVER in stock anywhere.
This year both kids have to have ear plugs for school. I'm particularly intrigued by this.
ETA: I have learned the hard way that shopping a full month before school makes a huge difference in the aggravation level. One of the dumbest things I've ever done in life was go to a Staples store the weekend before school began. It was like a Costco sample station giving out dessert, but in every square inch of the store.
Dollar Tree has knockoff Magic Erasers that work exactly the same.
Our school is really particular about the items they get, so you don't buy any supplies (except a box a tissues and bottle of hand wash, which are optional), it comes out of the fees. I do love our school but this part of it makes me so sad. I LOVE school supplies. So... if anyone in Denver hates school supply shopping, send me your list!
Editing to add that last time I went to Target, I made the kids walk through each aisle of the school supply section with me so I could ooh and ahh over it all.
Shopping for school supplies is one of the things that I looked forward to the most. It's up there with Christmas morning for me. There is something about an office supply store and all the organizational supplies. I feel warm and fuzzy just thinking about it.
Is it crazy that I loooove back to school shopping? I adore the smell of office supply stores. Looking at all the doo dads you can buy makes me happy, lol.
The studies in ME and TX showed statistically insignificant gains with iPads.
districts do shoddy faculty training, so the technology is underused.
the effects of screen time on attention span, stuff you already know about that.
basically, all success with them comes from the clever teacher who came up with cool ways to use them, not the presence of new technology itself.
it is one more ways for schools to talk about 7 year olds being ready for the workplace, lol.
i'm glad someone actually studied this. the only thing i have is an ancedote where my nephew couldn't figure it out and couldn't take notes in algebra so they had to go back to pad and paper.
and he failed math this year anyway.
my school is working on rolling them out. They will have them K-2 this year and I think they are already 5-8 (7-8 get them due to the 1:1 ME laptop thing, and since 5/6 are in the same building they bought those for them.) next year gr. 3 and then next year gr. 4.
We did send gr. 1 to a real iPad conference, but everyone else has been trained by a K teacher. I know gr. 1 didn't make good/much use of them last year, that's why they got real training. K averages 40-50 mins per day (20 minute station during lit. block, 5-10 mins handwriting supplement, 15 mins. math supplement).
We are using them at a basic level, to supplement curriculum and keep kids accountable during managed independent learning, it's easy to see if a kid did the work and how well on an iPad, it's harder with a teacher-make folder game. We could improve to where they are used as a creative or scientific tool.
I don't know if the iPad has improved the data, but I know we have been working our asses off in PK/K to have NCLB and get everyone reading at or above GL. The iPad is a tool to achieve that.
We do have a junky reading program coming in, Scholastic's iRead that will add another 20 mins of iPad time. We had a real "training" on that. I went into it wondering what they could possibly teach us (in a full day!) that I hadn't figured out by using the program in the first 10 minutes with a kid and decided it was crap.
The answer was nothing. nothing at all. It's a caned program that determines every aspect of the child's learning with an algorithm, that the teacher has no control over, that spits out a mountain of data for the teacher to analyze, and in the words of the company rep, where I almost came out of my seat at her, "YOU CAN USE THE DATA TO BE A SUPPLEMENT TO THE PROGRAM DURING YOUR GUIDED READING." The GD program is supposed to be the primary reading instruction, and I am the SUPPLEMENT. EXCUSE ME?
Is it crazy that I loooove back to school shopping? I adore the smell of office supply stores. Looking at all the doo dads you can buy makes me happy, lol.
Not alone - I've been looking forward to it for years. Of course, all she needs for pre-school is a backpack, lunchbox, towel for nap, tissues, hand sanitizer, and clorox wipes.
Can I assume there will be an outbreak of MRSA at some point?
Teachers - I have a lot of friends who are also teachers. I am seeing a new trend of them creating an Amazon wish list of their supplies and sharing on FB. People have responded pretty well and helping them out.
That's a great idea. I use Donors Choose a lot. But I might try out amazon.
I use donors choose too, but this sounds great for little odds and ends that don't warrant posting a full on project. Love this idea!
I just scrubbed out my kids' pencil boxes yesterday. We re-use those (this will be DD1's third year with this pencil box) and scissors, as long as they're still functional. So far, so good.
I started doing some supply shopping in the past week or so and the thing that kills my type-A personality is that I can never find the exact quantity of the requested thing. 2 packages of 24-count pre-sharpened Ticonderoga pencils? Fine and dandy, except that in trips to two different stores I can only find them in 18-count. So I buy three packages. Which, again, is fine because they're communal and some extras are great to have, I'm sure. But I assume our teachers ask for specific things and quantities for a reason, and I'd like to be able to actually GET those.
C's kindergarten list requests an 8 pack of crayons. Never mind that the 24 pack is everywhere and on sale for about .50. Had to get a 8 pack set for $3. I don't understand.
C's kindergarten list requests an 8 pack of crayons. Never mind that the 24 pack is everywhere and on sale for about .50. Had to get a 8 pack set for $3. I don't understand.
This is b/c no one needs K kids to have red-orange and yellow-green. It just creates fights lively discussions about how Jimmy isn't coloring the trapezoid red, he's using the wrong color. They need the 8 basic colors, to do basic coloring and math worksheets.
That being said, I'd buy the 24 pack and send in the 8 the teacher wants.
You know what kills me. People complain about school funding in my area and seem to think the $8500/pp we spend is too much and they don't want to raise their taxes for anything... but yet don't seem to realize how much parents are raising out of pocket. Our PTOs/Boosters raised over $7M last year, the school fees are out of control. The $100 calculator they need for math that isn't supplied by the schools, etc. The high school fees are so bad that my friends say they spend $2-3k/yr on class fees for things like mandatory math classes, AP tests, and sports teams. It is the fees for classes that are mandatory to graduate that kill me the most.
You know what kills me. People complain about school funding in my area and seem to think the $8500/pp we spend is too much and they don't want to raise their taxes for anything... but yet don't seem to realize how much parents are raising out of pocket. Our PTOs/Boosters raised over $7M last year, the school fees are out of control. The $100 calculator they need for math that isn't supplied by the schools, etc. The high school fees are so bad that my friends say they spend $2-3k/yr on class fees for things like mandatory math classes, AP tests, and sports teams. It is the fees for classes that are mandatory to graduate that kill me the most.
I love school supply time. But I hate the expense. The middle schooler has a TWO PAGE list. Like jumping to middle school isn't hard enough without that much shit to keep track of?!
I like my oldest's list - just get me like ten notebooks, some paper, and a bunch of pencils, mom. Umm, done!
My daughter teaches 1st grade and overheard a parent bitching about school supplies the other day. Said daughter calls me to complain. She pointed out that this mom probably parents the kid who tries to eat the crayons or glue sticks. W spends money out of her own pocket to make sure that the children have every single thing they need. Then will turn around and do it again several times over the course of the year. On a salary of less than $30,000.
I did remind her that some of the stuff is expensive, especially binders as the kids age up.
Is there anything she still needs? She's local, right? I'm headed to Target tomorrow and would be happy to make a donation.
Is it crazy that I loooove back to school shopping? I adore the smell of office supply stores. Looking at all the doo dads you can buy makes me happy, lol.
Not alone - I've been looking forward to it for years. Of course, all she needs for pre-school is a backpack, lunchbox, towel for nap, tissues, hand sanitizer, and clorox wipes.
Can I assume there will be an outbreak of MRSA at some point?
This is actually the worst part of school starting, after the schedule adjustment. Every kid gets sick within weeks, although generally it's not MRSA, LOL.