Second and third graders attending summer school at El Roble
Elementary are pointing, clicking and dragging their way to
learning this summer.
Gilroy – Second and third graders attending summer school at El Roble Elementary are pointing, clicking and dragging their way to learning this summer.
Twenty students wearing headsets, hands poised on their mouses, stared at computer screens learning English through new literacy software called Rosetta Stone.
“It’s a really neat program. The kids are loving it,” said literacy paraprofessional Lorraine Fox. “Everything was paper (in the past), now it’s all computerized. The kids love the computers. It’s interesting and different for them,” she explained.
With funding from Family Literacy, El Roble was able to purchase new computer accessories including keyboards, headsets and modems for their literacy program.
“It’s money at work,” Fox said looking over the children, some who murmured along with the sentences appearing on their screens.
This year marks the first time the summer schools have used the Rosetta Stone program, a CD–ROM and online learning software published by Fairfield Language Technologies, on a wide scale.
Students spend about 30 minutes each day using various programs from the Rosetta Stone, and are tested daily. They do not move ahead on the Rosetta Stone system before mastering individual sections, Fox said.
Photographs depict various scenes such as two children running, a man sitting underneath a table, or a boy next to an airplane. Students must then unscramble the sentences describing the scene and rewrite the sentence so that it makes sense.
Another assignment might include four pictures of four different individuals, and then prompt students to answer a question such as, which woman has the longest hair? To respond, students then click on the appropriate photograph.
Rosetta Stone teaches a variety of languages in addition to English.
“I tried it the first time in Latin to see how the kids would learn,” said teacher Meghan Osborne. “It’s a great program.”
