Objectives www.tt9.ca

To provide a forum through which students could share their reading and writing in the summer months

To allow students to meet future secondary school classmates in the summer to make the transition to high school easier

To use the summer months to build and maintain essential skills using a technology that engages students in reading in a new way.

Method

1. Information was distributed to grade 8 classrooms in June of 2008 detailing the reading program.  Please see www.tt9.ca for a copy of this brochure.

2. 14 students were enrolled and books (Kevin Major’s Ann and Seamus and Will Hobb’s Far North) were delivered to the student’s home by June 30.  The following students participated: Thomas Sharon, Isabelle Bisnaire, Alanna Mitchell, Valerie Freemantle, Brian Miesowicz, Johnathon Poulakos, Harry Rollo, Denielle, Koomalsingh, James Sharron, Chanelle Ng, Andrew Li, Bradley Lyn, Garry Budiman, Sharon Lau.  No student dropped out of the program.  8 were active participants: 

3. Student passwords and parental passwords were delivered with the novels and students began their study by logging to the website and creating their on-line personality via their avatar.

4. The following tasks were completed by the students between July 6 2008 and September 3 2008:

• Between the two novels the students read 368 pages averaging 10 pages a day through the summer
• A vocabulary bank of 23 words was built
• Students wrote 74 journal entries
• Students activated 44 lesson activities focusing on vocabulary, comprehension skills, forum discussion and journal writing.
• Students posted 95 forum entries, discussing various threads of the novel.
• Students sent numerous notes and informal messages to each other, building relationships that did indeed carry over into grade 9.

5. The monitoring of the student work averaged 30 minutes a day for a total of 30 hours.

Conclusions

The www.tt9.ca summer reading and transition pilot project met the objectives.  Students were given the opportunity to read good stories, discuss the novels with their future classmates and participated in a host of activities designed to transition them to the high school setting.

Students were interested and intrigued by the virtual environment and the opportunities for differentiated learning within such an environment are impressive.

The pilot project drew the attention of several neighboring boards of education and may be adopted by them for the summer of ‘09