Andy is working on his math assessment portfolio.  Currently, it is solely paper and pencil.  In the future, the hope is to have this digital, however, there is something organic about the actual paper portfolio. Tangible.

Paper math portfolios.  Students create their own study guides for these assessments, then use tools, such as laptops, textbooks, and even peers to seek out additional practice on target assessment skills.

I can't even tell you how exciting the paper above is.  When it comes to writing, this child has been avoiding, struggling, and has such a sense of continual inner defeat.  The beauty of what you see above is that he DID it!  He typed his thoughts and experiences.  He is new to our school this year and has not had access to technology tools prior to this.  It is like pulling teeth trying to get him to physically write sentences...about two is all we can get.  The fine motor skills seem to be still developing.  However, now that he has become so comfortable with typing, he is WRITING!  Yes, WRITING!!!  This is thrilling.  Now, if you read the story above, you'd see that the writing is clunky, repetitive, with little organization.  But that's okay.  We can work with this!  First things first, he's writing ;)

Much of the learning we do is within a social context.  So, students have taken it upon themselves to  record collaborative ideas.  If you walk into our room with a small group working, you'll likely see one of them recording group thinking.  This, again, has organically evolved in our environment.

This is a simple image of a student's laptop widgets.  Students use their widgets quite a bit.  The purpose of this image is to show the personalized message, 'school rocks'.  Therese Jilek has always talked about students having the ability to make their laptop their 'own'.  This child's simple sentiment is actually more of a neon flashing light, fireworks, bells ringing and confetti popping into the air for those that know her and have seen her transformation this school year.

Students create and keep goals each week. They have specific times to work on those goals and  also chunks of time to reflect. 

This is a sideways image of Aly kissing a worm character from the claymation event she and Autumn have been working on since the beginning of the year!  

A sideways image of Alex, completing fourth grade math (he's a third grader) and moving on to fifth grade.  Aleks is a near essential option to have in a multiage classroom in order to meet needs on all levels of the spectrum. 

Students post their goals to Edmodo, a social networking site for kids that our class uses.