Education Minnesota Foundation Grant: Franklin Talking Children's Dictionary

Last month, I received a congratulatory letter telling me that my Continuous Progress team had been awarded a grant to purchase 28 Franklin Spellers for our CP students.  I chose to write this grant on behalf of my team back in December based on all the observations I had been making in my classroom:  students staring at a blank page, students asking their friends how to spell a word, and students asking me how to spell a word.  Also, the survey that I conducted at the beginning of the year indicated that some students would have more desire to write if they had a tool to help them with their spelling.  I wanted to have a tool where students could independently find out if they had spelled a word correctly, and if they didn't, it would help them find the correct spelling.  It is also a unique tool because of the sound function, which has made it very appealing to use in special education classrooms, but rarely has it been used on a large scale in the regular classroom.

28 Franklin Spellers means we could have one entire class use them at a time when working on a project, or they could be split among 5 classrooms (meaning most rooms would have 5 or 6 for their students to use when editing a rough draft).  I am so excited about the prospect of using these in the classroom, especially because it also has a thesaurus function to help students revise their writing.

Yesterday, the 39 grant recipients were recognized at the annual Education Minnesota Representative Convention, and then we received 2 hours of training.  The training was focused on identifying outcomes, indicators that showed if a method worked and methods used to evaluate those indicators.  I really felt like I got a great understanding of what my action research will look like as I continue it next year, and this is all a result of the action research I am doing as a result of our class.  Only next year, it will have an impact on 130 students rather than the 24 in my own classroom. 

I have a working plan, which I will attach at a later time.  For now, I will identify the 4 desired outcomes I came up with:

Outcome 1:  Students will change their attitudes about writing because they are confident spellers.
Outcome 2:  Students will independently spell words correctly with the use of a Franklin Speller.
Outcome 3:  Students will improve spelling skills.
Outcome 4:  Students will be excited about using the electronic spell checker to improve word choice in their writing.

The project will take place over the 2011-2012 school year, and the resources will be purchased this summer.  I am so excited to be continuing the work I've started this year in my classroom, and it will be great to have the entire team on board.