Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
IRONWOOD — Even though the the Ironwood Area School District won’t be offering a traditional summer school, several teachers will be volunteering to continue offering math and reading lessons for students to try and ensure that the students don’t backslide and lose knowledge over the summer.
The program will allow students in grades one through 10 in the 2014-15 school year — those starting second through 11th grade next year — to take lessons through the school’s accelerated math and language programs.
The program, staffed by both elementary and middle/high school teachers, will be held in the school’s library from 1 to 3 p.m. on Tuesday and 9 to 11 a.m. on Thursday. No preregistration is needed, according to a flyer for the program, and students can simply show up to participate.
The program is an effort by the district to ensure that the gains that have been made over the year aren’t lost over summer vacation, middle/high school Principal Michelle Kanipes explained, saying that there is research showing that test scores can drop up to 20 percent over the summer.
“You’ve got teachers coming in and doing it for nothing, because they believe. And I guess for me ... that’s the important piece, (it) is people believe in your vision, that they are willing to go along and say, ‘Yeah, I’ll come in.’”
Kanipes explained that the program is using the accelerated math and reading software that the district already includes in its curriculum for second through 12th grades, so students will be able to easily transition from the school year to summer program and back to the school year in fall.
Kevin Lyons, one of the teachers who has taken the lead in developing the summer classes, praised the software for its ability to determine the actual capabilities of students and alter the difficulty of the assignments to match the ability, rather than simply where the student should be.
“We’re going to have kids at three levels, they are either going to be working below grade level, they are going to be working at grade level, or they are going to be working beyond grade level. And (the software) can custom make those assignments to fit wherever they are at,” said Lyons. “So if they are below grade level, it’s helping them get caught up. If they are at grade level, it’s reinforcing what they are hearing in the classroom. And if you are above grade level, now you are being challenged with material you may never have seen before.”
The middle and high school grade levels incorporated the software into the curriculum — where Kanipes and Lyons explained that it reinforced the traditional classroom lectures rather than replaced them — beginning with the 2013-14 school year, after seeing success with it in the district’s elementary grades where it had been increasingly used since the 2008-09 school year.
The district’s success with the software, especially in the upper grades, led Renaissance Learning to feature Ironwood as the cover story of the May issue of its Extraordinary Educators magazine that it sends out across the country.
“(A company representative) said ‘we’ve really not had anybody seventh through 12th grade (using the software), it’s normally an elementary (tool),” said Kanipes. “We saw the success in our elementary and we wanted to follow through, we didn’t want it to just stop. A kid gets into seventh grade, it doesn’t mean they are cured.”
In addition to the customizable lessons for students, Lyons and Kanipes highlighted the real-time data that teachers can gather through the program that allows them to address problems with students as they arrive.
In order to further encourage success for those who participate in the summer program, Kanipes said the district has also been in talks with the Ironwood Carnegie Library to work with the library’s reading program to provide a wider selection of reading material over the summer.
Realizing that not all students will be thrilled at the prospect of spending a summer working on math homework, those students who participate in the program will be eligible to win a variety of prizes over the summer, according to Kanipes.