Note: The information in this profile represents SY2013-14 unless otherwise indicated.
School Overview
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School Description
Curtner Elementary School is a public school located in Milpitas, California, and is a part of the Milpitas School District. Milpitas School District piloted blended learning for the 2012-13 school year at two elementary schools and found the models to be so successful that it began implementing blended learning in additional schools across the district, including Curtner. The elementary school is in its first year of using blended learning and has seen positive student academic growth on early benchmark results.
Blended Learning Program
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Program Model
Program model: Station Rotation, Flex
Model description
For math, English language arts, and science, teachers typically use one of two Station Rotation implementations. Some use a standard three-station in-class rotation, where one station is designated for blended learning, another station is designated for direct instruction, and a third station is designated for student collaborative work. Others use a two-station in-class rotation, where the entire class works independently online while the teacher pulls out specific students in small groups for more targeted instruction. Unlike math and English language arts classes, science classes do not use blended learning on a daily basis.
For credit recovery, the school has a media center that is open before and after school where low-performing students can catch up on i-Ready courses. The media center uses a Flex model where students work independently on their online coursework while a paraprofessional walks amongst them answering questions and providing support on an as-needed basis.
Program Description
How much time do students spend on campus in this blended-learning program? How much of this time do students spend learning online or with educational software?
Students are on campus every day of the school week and the amount of time students spend learning online varies. Students typically spend between 60-120 minutes per week learning online.
Briefly describe the offline components of this blended-learning program.
Offline components vary by grade level and by subject. Some teachers provide whole-class, teacher-led instruction at the beginning of the class before dividing students into rotational groups. In math and English language arts classes, the offline stations typically include collaborative work, small-group teacher-led instruction, independent reading, or other independent work. In science classes, the offline stations can include everything from hands-on experiments to pencil-and-paper assignments.
How are the online and offline components of the program connected to provide an integrated learning experience for students? How do data from different learning modalities inform each other?
Administrators and teachers use online learning to track student progress and identify where students are struggling so as to inform the offline portion of the rotation. Data from i-Ready, Khan Academy, and Newsela is available in real-time and teachers and administrators are expected to constantly monitor student data to not only ensure that students are keeping pace with the coursework, but also to determine the learning needs of individual students for grouping purposes.
How does this blended-learning program fit into the rest of the students’ school day?
Teachers usually reserve the first hour or two of the day for math and English language arts blended-learning rotations because that is when students typically are the most alert. For math and English language arts, each station lasts between 15-20 minutes, For science, fourth, fifth, and sixth graders attend 55-minute classes two or three days per week depending on which schedule they have been assigned and the amount of time spent learning on time varies day-to-day.
What are the teachers’ roles and responsibilities in both the online and offline components of this blended-learning program?
Teachers are responsible for leading whole-group or small-group instruction; collecting and analyzing student data; and using online-learning data to group students for stations based on individual learning needs.
What other adults are involved in this blended-learning program (e.g., paraprofessionals, learning coaches, counselors) and what are their roles and responsibilities?
For credit recovery, a paraprofessional staffs the media center before and after school to support students on an as-needed basis as they progress through i-Ready content. For English language arts, instructional aides work with low-performing students during in-class rotations to offer additional support in reading.
Briefly describe the set-up of physical space for this blended-learning program.
The school provides students with laptops. Blended learning occurs in traditional classrooms, but the layout of the classrooms is different depending on the teachers’ preferred arrangements. In most classrooms, students are set up at tables in the middle of the room while the teacher designates space off to the side for small-group breakout sessions or collaborative work.
How are students grouped within this blended-learning program?
Students are grouped based on their reading levels or learning needs. i-Ready produces data on individual students that teachers use to pinpoint individual student learning needs. Teachers use that knowledge of individual student learning needs to create learning profiles for each student, which teachers use to group students for rotations.
Do students have some element of control over the pacing of their learning? Are students tied to a semester-based course schedule or can they complete courses at any time? Briefly describe any requirements or benchmarks in place to ensure student progress.
Students have some control over the pacing of their learning but the district goal is for each student to make a year and a half of progress through the curriculum in a school year. At Curtner, teachers analyze student data on a monthly basis and use i-Ready’s reporting system to monitor student trajectory and track how quickly students are progressing toward that year-end goal of making a year and a half of progress. If students are in danger of falling behind their expected level of progress, then the school has supports in place to ensure those students receive additional instruction or support so that they can stay on track.
Describe the academic results of the program, using quantitative data where possible.
The school is in its first year of using blended learning, so it doesn’t have definitive academic results as of yet. The Milpitas School District recently received results from its fall benchmark exams; although the information has not been made public yet, district leaders have indicated that there was positive student growth across all schools.
What have been the biggest obstacles in implementing this blended-learning program? What has needed adjustment along the way?
The biggest obstacle the school has faced was finding content providers that not only offered students high-quality curriculum but also featured a robust reporting system. The school believes i-Ready fits both of those criteria, but it also feels that i-Ready has its own shortcomings, particularly when it comes to subgroup differentiation and data reporting.
Have you or are you planning to scale your program model to more/other schools?
The school plans to scale its program to transitional kindergarten next year, at which point the entire school will be participating in blended learning. The district’s adoption of blended learning is still in its infancy; fourteen schools, including some middle and high schools, in the district are experimenting with blended learning and all but two are in the first year of that experiment. The district’s goal is to create a 21st-century learning environment for every student in the district.
Contact Information
Name: Jackie Vo Felbinger
Title: Principal
Email: [email protected]
Website: curtner.musd.org