Who Has Need of a New Program?

We have a new program for Language Arts. It is an all encompassing program with Spelling, Reading, Writing, Vocabulary, and Grammar. There is always much to learn with a new program. It seems as though we have had a new program each year since I have been teaching. There are a few things about this program that I am liking and that are closer to what I am personally looking for.

I like the fact that it is using the same basic principles and lessons we have used in the programs we have used over the past few years. We have found success with some of these programs and to see them in the McMillan-Hill Treasures Program we will be using will make it easier and more familiar to the teachers and students. We will be using the same spelling ideas and the same grammar ideas. We will be using the writing traits program that we have trained the students on. They will still hear the same vocabulary with the programs we are using as we have given them with the other programs. The biggest difference is that this is a program with more scope and sequence, more schedule, and more spiraling.

The technology part of it is the most exciting to me. It has some parts that are still developing, but the beginnings are exciting to me. There is an online student book for students to use, to mark, to make notes, to have read to them. They will learn to identify Main Ideas in a story and mark them, in the online book. They can access the book and information from home so they can reread the information and complete assignments at home. Assessments can be done online for easier assessing for the teacher. We use our Utips program for testing in Math and Science. We have practice tests for Language, Math, and Science. We take our end of year tests on the computer, so it is wonderful that we can take most of our tests online.

My team has been working on getting computers in the hands of our students for years. Our ideas were hard to grasp and harder to finance, but we worked and gathered ideas for what we are doing now. We still have many ideas we want to put into practice. We are getting there, one computer program at a time. This program helps us get another step closer to our goal.