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Rolando Elementary School

"What KnowledgeBox has done is taken all the legwork out of my researching and trying to find the perfect software program to support the standards. KnowledgeBox is so impressive!"
     — Tina Sardina, Principal

Profile

Rolando Elementary School is located in urban La Mesa, California northeast of San Diego. Four hundred and seventy-nine students in kindergarten through grade five attend the school, 93 percent of whom qualify for a free and reduced lunch program. Rolando is one of 22 schools in the La Mesa-Spring Valley School District.

Challenge

Based on interviews with Rolando Elementary staff, challenges in the classroom include:

• Providing differentiated curriculum and instruction for all    students
• Assisting struggling readers with poor self-esteem
• Supporting second language learners
• Providing a standards-based program
• Harnessing the power of technology for learning
• Providing more challenging content for gifted students

Solution

In an attempt to face the student challenges head on, Rolando Elementary implemented the KnowledgeBox® digital learning system from Pearson Digital Learning.

KnowledgeBox is a content delivery platform that leverages digital media to teach reading/language arts, math, science, and social studies for pre-K through 6th grade students. The system uses age-appropriate voiceover, clever themes, and peer-friendly guides to deliver dynamic video, interactive games, text resources, and engaging multimedia lessons. Students can use KnowledgeBox to conduct independent research, collaborate on class projects, and create multimedia presentations. KnowledgeBox works within a school’s existing network, minimizing or eliminating the need for additional hardware investments and ensuring compliance with the school’s Internet access guidelines.

Staff at Rolando are excited about the opportunities KnowledgeBox brings to the classroom. Tina Sardina, Principal at Rolando says, "It’s really hard to find the quality movie clips that I’m seeing in KnowledgeBox. The individual activities that I’ve seen children do prior to KnowledgeBox have been superficial at best—a lot of games."

Gail Lyman, fifth grade teacher likes KnowledgeBox because everything is at your fingertips. When the children are working, she doesn’t have to worry about them going off into unapproved areas of content; she can prepare lessons in advance for the students, and hold them accountable for those lessons. She doesn’t have to worry about them staying engaged, either; the children race to get onto the computers. Lyman says, "The kids are so used to watching TV and playing video games and since you teach from the TV they absolutely love it. To be able to see a real life volcano or exactly how it works on KnowledgeBox is very exciting for them." She also says it has excellent science and social studies content.

Incorporating Technology in the Classroom

Sardina says, "We inherited technology through Prop M money. We have the laptops, we have the big giant 52-inch televisions so we are being pressured by the community who passed this bond and paid the tax dollars for these wonderful upgrades. We were faced with ‘now what are we going to do? We have the technology—how can we really use it instructionally?’ We were lost. And I personally was lost because I could not find the resources for them. KnowledgeBox has what we need for K-5, and it has taken all the legwork out of me calling and researching and trying to find the perfect software programs to teach the standards."

Accessing Standards in KnowledgeBox

Gail Lyman says standards in KnowledgeBox are wonderful and very accessible. "The standards are already in the lesson plans, so it makes it easy, and I need things to be easy for me because there is not enough time in the day to finish everything that I need to finish. With this feature I know I’m teaching to the standards and that’s exactly what the district wants us to be doing. Standards are very important."

Steven Cerasaro, fifth grade teacher, agrees that the state standards button in KnowledgeBox has been very useful. "At this point in teaching, you can’t teach unless it is on the state standards. It’s just not worth it and there is too much to cover. Being able to pull out different activities and lessons that cover specific standards has been a great help."

Ginger Radenheimer, second grade teacher, also enjoys the standards function. "I was immediately able to get on KnowledgeBox and plan different lessons for the individual needs of kids as well as whatever standard I was teaching in math that week. I was also able to provide some enrichment for the kids that needed it."

KnowledgeBox is helping with the rest of Ginger Radenheimer’s instruction by serving as a supplementary tool. "With my big screen now, I’m currently doing a lesson on perimeter. So I looked in the KnowledgeBox and found the lesson on perimeter, previewed it, and assigned it. We’ll go through the lesson together on the big screen and if we don’t finish it, the kids can do it individually."

Principal Sardina says, "I am so very pleased that KnowledgeBox is aligned to the standards. One of the challenges we face here at Rolando is implementing the standards and how to do this using technology. KnowledgeBox has really been a nice change here for us."

Increasing Motivation and Improving Self-esteem

Rae Ann Gastrich, Reading Specialist for grades 1, 2 and 3, finds KnowledgeBox to be a wonderful motivator, especially with her young group of students that are still trying to learn letters and sounds. "I use KnowledgeBox to introduce the letter of the day, and they are just thrilled. They can’t wait to see what’s going to be on the computer whether it’s going to be the Lions or Dwayne’s World. It hooks them and gets them interested for the lesson that day." Gastrich goes on to say, "I think it has been great simply as a motivator for one thing. The kids look forward to it and they like the catchy little phrases that go along with some of the songs like Fuzzy Wuzzy."

Gastrich says, "I work with a lot of kids that have difficulty staying on task. They have poor self-esteem to begin with because they struggle and they know it, so a big part of my job is to build up that esteem. Some are second language learners and KnowledgeBox gives them a visual and the auditory, so it just works well."

So what happens at Rolando when the teacher turns off the computer and just focuses on the classroom work? Gastrich says, "KnowledgeBox gives students the preview of the lesson. And from there I have their interest; I have them hooked and they’re excited for the day. They are ready to go."

Results

KnowledgeBox: Impacting Students’ Academics and Attitudes

Gail Lyman says, "If my students come across a word on the television that they don’t understand, they want to go to the computer and research it. I find that they are more in the research mode, and of course that is going to help them academically. It will add more words to their word bank. It is very exciting for them and makes learning fun. Isn’t that what we all want to do? Make learning fun for them? Even multiplication can be made fun. A subject that is maybe cut and dry, KnowledgeBox makes it fun."

Steven Cerasaro says, "It has been very helpful for extensions for my higher students and remedial work for my lower students. It’s just a great tool to hit all the levels of the different students on an individual basis. It’s also been very helpful for introducing different lessons."

Tina Sardina thinks students need the skills they learn in KnowledgeBox to be successful later in life. "I think it also is the first medium or the first resource where all children can have equal access. For example, if you’re a Spanish speaker often times you are limited because the textbooks are in English.

"I have three ELL children that just arrived from Mexico. We have limited support for these children. We have a parent that volunteers and handles a newcomer program, and an instructional aid that helps 30 minutes everyday depending on her schedule. Since instructor help is at a minimum, these children are merged into an English-speaking curriculum on day one, and they are going through their silent period. Everything is overwhelming for them. The teachers are juggling all the demands of the children with a variety of levels. What do we do for these children? The teachers can put the students on KnowledgeBox and expose them to language that way. They can customize it so it’s more at a K/1 level. The students are not embarrassed because it gives everyone an equal standing. It’s a godsend and I don’t want it to go away," says Sardina.

After implementing KnowledgeBox at Rolando Elementary, incorporating multimedia in the classroom has since doubled. The chart below shows that in just a few months, the four original KnowledgeBox classrooms at Rolando exploded to 21 classrooms as excitement over the program spread throughout the campus.

"There must have been teachers in the making of KnowledgeBox because it’s all right there at your fingertips," says Sardina.

  
Contact us for additional information on how Pearson Digital Learning can help you achieve results with KnowledgeBox.