Earle B. Wood Middle School is one of five pilot schools chosen to take part in Montgomery County’s middle school reform, which aims to provide a more interactive and technology-based educational experience to better prepare students for high school.
To integrate technology into the classroom, the middle school was given new resources, including promethean boards that are currently installed in 18 classrooms. The boards include numerous instructional components—for instance, it allows teachers to display the Internet and to instantly assess students as they answer questions from a device on their desk. Said Wood Assistant Principal Jeanie Dawson, “It is important that we are creative with students and engage them…one way we are able to do this is through the use of technology.”
As part of the reform, the school also added three new, innovative classes available to sixth graders this year. The Arts Investigation course integrates music, visual arts, theatre and dance. The Information and Communication Technology 6 course gives students real-world relevance to the technology they are using. The course begins by supplementing Chesapeake Bay instruction from the students’ science class and allows the students to research through a “webquest” and then use programs such as Inspiration, Microsoft Word and Excel to organize and interpret their information. Students are also able to design and build robots and create computer animation and video games.
Said Arts Content Specialist Jerry Bush, who teaches the course, “My question is why are some people fighting technology. It’s here and you have to embrace it and incorporate it into your teaching rather than fighting it.”
Lights, Camera, Literacy is a hands-on course with a new approach to reading, which looks at components of narrative text through the medium of film. Students learn that novels and movies have similar characteristics in the way they are written. As part of the middle school reform, the school was given new video cameras, tripods, and editing systems. “Students are not going to learn if they’re bored. So hopefully by making school more enjoyable for students they are ultimately going to learn more,” said Literacy coach Kelly Vollmer.
In addition to the new technology and innovative courses, the reform also provides more staffing for special education, a parent outreach program, and an improved leadership structure. The leadership roles are divided into content leaders who focus on staff instruction and team leaders who focus on building a learning community within each grade level. The school is also aiming to build a better understanding of the adolescent learner and aspects of adolescent development, including emotions.
Chinese was also added this year as an elective language and the school plans to add Algebra II with analysis within the next two years. All of these changes overall aim to better prepare students for high school and eventually college.
Said Dawson, “To offer classes that are innovative in the arts and within each content area to me is very important because we need to push students to where they should be by providing them with interesting and dynamic courses.”
