District/School Administration PK-16 Program Support Educational Technology
Technology Toolkit

The Patchwork Quilt
Westfield Public Schools

Evidence of Effectiveness

Instructional objective: Students will be able to formulate their ideas into clear, cohesive paragraphs. Students will be able to measure squares and rectangles and then calculate their perimeters and areas.

Evaluation:

• English Language Arts - Teachers used MCAS results from previous years, as well as pre- and post-writing prompts to assess the students' writing skills. This analysis helped determine where weaknesses existed so that teachers could address them directly while working with the students through the school year. The MCAS scoring rubric was used for both the pre-writing prompt and post-writing prompt. All of the fourth grade teachers were trained on the use of this scoring rubric by staff members who had experience scoring official MCAS writing compositions.
• Mathematics - Teachers will use the latest MCAS results and those from previous years to help assess student improvement in math.
• Technology - Using the Mankato Scale (a student self-assessment tool), students took pre- and post-assessments to assess their technology skills.

Student improvement: Through this project, students' measurement concepts became real, and their writing skills were strengthened. There was an improvement in both school attendance and writing levels for the bilingual students. The students really loved working with Photoshop Elements, with many of them commenting that they felt like they were "professionals" doing r"eal work." The students came away with a better understanding of how technology can be used within the classroom and in the real world.

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