Tips, Tools and Technology for Educators

Summer is just around the corner and the students in Wake County Public Schools, North Carolina are getting ready for a road trip.

The theme for this year's Title I Elementary summer program will be "On the Road Again" and activities will be centered on the idea of taking a trip. For instance, math projects will involve finding the distance between two cities, and reading assignments will highlight stories about different parts of the world.

This four-week summer school will provide academic support for students who demonstrate below proficiency standards from the previous school year. It will serve rising identified students in rising grades 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 and rising K (Early Start) and provide them with both literacy and math instruction. Approximately 1700 students from 29 schools across 11 physical locations will participate in the summer program.

Students will use Smart Tutor's prescriptive instruction twice a day in 30-minute blocks - once for Reading and once for Math. Parent involvement will be key and teachers will provide them with a cumulative performance report at the end of each week. They will also be given access to a special parent portal that will allow them to log in and monitor their children's progress whenever they like. This is the third year in a row that students in the Title I Elementary summer program will be using Smart Tutor.

Read more about their "Remediation Success Story using Web-based Differentiated Instruction" - presented at the North Carolina Technology In Education Society Conference.

What one teacher said after last year's summer school program:

"I think that the program was amazing for the children to utilize. I believe that it has helped these children to grow in both their reading and math skills, and I would love to see it more widely used throughout the schools. I also feel like this program was great for the kids who need help retaining information. Hopefully this program refreshed their brain with the information that they learned this past year and they will be more likely to remember it for the upcoming school year."

• Listen to Becky McGee of Title I talk about Elementary Summer School (2008) - 6 minute mp3 file from Wake County Public Schools
• Read about how you can use web-based instruction in your summer program
• Find out the top 5 questions to ask yourself when selecting software for your summer school