How This California Resource Paraprofessional Designs Standard-Specific Goals for Her Students Using Boddle
Katie Warda is a resource paraprofessional who works with Kindergarten through 6th grade students in Special Education. She teaches at a magnet school that specializes in the Visual-Performing Arts and Math/Science. Katie faces the challenge of finding curriculum and resources that are adaptable to the unique and specific needs of her students. As such, she has found Boddle to be helpful in creating assignments that meet each of her student’s specific needs and helps them move towards their individual goals.
Key Outcomes:
- Personalization of Academic Goals: Students can be given assignments that align to their specific goals, allowing them direct their focus on what will help them grow rather than a one-size-fits all math curriculum.
- Intuitive Platform for Interactive Learning: Katie can create assignments for each of her students and seamlessly assign them through her teacher dashboard to her students, and her students can access the assignment on their device bypassing the need to print any resources.
- Gameplay that Fosters Engagement: Because Boddle is an educational platform with engaging gameplay and student personalization, Katie can feel confident in knowing her students are having fun while learning.
Challenge: Finding a curriculum and/or resources that fit each of her student’s individual needs due to the wide range of grade levels and progress towards skill mastery.
Differentiation is paramount to student success when utilizing learning tools for students, but it is often difficult to do well given the time constraints, large class sizes, and limited access to applicable resources. Educators are in need of engaging, accessible, and personalized resources that can be used in a variety of ways - such as in small groups and 1x1 - and with a variety of teaching situations - for example, small group pull-outs and in a virtual environment. Students are in need of remediation, but also enrichment, and many resources lack the elasticity to support these needs.
Solution: Katie utilizes Boddle’s standards-aligned curriculum to assign practice for her students that aligns with their unique goals.
Boddle’s assignment creation tool makes aligning the goals outlined in a student’s IEP quick and easy. In just a few clicks, Katie can assign practice that’s delivered through engaging gameplay. With Boddle’s readily-available reporting system that produces data such as a Learning Gaps report, Katie can quickly see exactly where her students need targeted instruction. She can then select that specific skill(s) and create an assignment catered to the student.
Result: Joyful learning abounds because Katie’s students are having fun playing Boddle, and Katie is happy because her students are accomplishing their goals.
Katie can feel confident that her students are practicing exactly the skills they need to be successful and to achieve their goals. The best kind of learning is full of discovery and engagement, and Boddle helps kids discover the fun in learning and growing.
“A challenge I face is trying to find work for our students. We don't have a specified curriculum to use since we are working on remedial work. Boddle is great because our students' goals are created based off of common-core standards, and I can assign work a student is working on for their goal through Boddle. I don't have to worry about finding work and/or printing anything.”
-Katie Warda
Devices
Boddle currently runs on desktops, laptops, and Chromebooks using Safari, Firefox, or Chrome browsers. The Boddle app for iPad, tablets, and mobile users is also available on the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store.
