Teaching without textbooks and handouts? Why not?

In this interview with Working Toward Excellence, fourth grade teacher Dianna Bush shares some details of her “paperless classroom” experiment at West Blocton Elementary School in Bibb County, Alabama.

WTE: What was the impetus behind your decision to have a paperless day with your students?

Bush: We hear and read that some businesses are already evolving toward paper-free environments, and I wanted my students to experience that as one way to call their attention to how the world is changing. Here in Alabama, we had the paperless hospital that was going in. If they go to work in the hospital, whether they’re the janitor and they have to use a computer to clock in or order supplies, or whether they’re a lab tech, or a nurse dispensing medicine with digital equipment -- whatever they’re doing, they’re going to be entering a society that is becoming paperless. We’re preparing our kids to pay our social security, and I want them fully employed as adults, earning a good paycheck!

WTE: So how did you plan for the day?

Bush: As you write out your plan book every week, you’ve got all your objectives you’re covering this month in all your subjects. So I just started looking at what I was going to be doing about two and a half weeks out. We were in the planets in science, and we were doing multiplication in math, and we were doing poetry. So I started searching the Web at night for places I could go that could be used to teach the content. I planned a whole day’s curriculum and except for PE and lunch, we stayed in the computer lab all day. We had no books. I created a (computer-based) graphic organizer to keep us on track.

WTE: Tell us some of the resources you tapped into and the things your students did.

Bush: There are just so many places on the Web that you can use. I covered every content area that day. I stayed on my regular schedule. I got everything ready ahead of time. I put all the links into a Word document and loaded it on my thumb drive, then uploaded to the computers in the lab. So all the students had to do was cut and paste into their web browsers.

We used the alabama.gov site for our Alabama state history lesson. President Ford had just died, so I went to americanpresidents.org (CSPAN), and everybody researched a president. We went to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab website and looked at all kinds of stuff about the solar system. We saw images and photographs that day that were just exquisite and amazing. You know, a book can only publish so much. We’ve got excellent science books, but the pages can only hold a few pictures, whereas our kids can go to the NASA websites and click through a slide show and see all these images of Jupiter and Saturn and all the moons. Nothing on paper can match that!

For the poetry, there was the Shel Silverstein website, which is really interactive and full of audio and animation. They loved it. I had kids just eating it up. We also went to multiplication.com and math.com and used some of the interactive activities there. You can go in and work on specific skills at specific grade levels. I also discovered that you can go to the homeschooling area at Saxon Math and it will actually keep track of students’ work on different skills.

WTE: What assignments did you have the students do?

Bush: I had the kids do write-ups, using the computers, on three state parks in Alabama at the alabama.gov site, and they also had to list 10 Alabama universities since so many kids think there are only two! The students turned in that work, and their work on the presidents. I ended up with four grades.

WTE: How did other fourth graders react when word got around about this novel school day?

Bush: The other fourth grade classes were clamoring for it, so I ended up swapping out with the other teachers and doing it for them, because we’re all basically in the same place in the curriculum. Next year, the teachers want to do it themselves.

WTE: So how did students and others assess the day?

Bush: The kids think I’m a bit nutty on this one, but one day they’ll remember! The business world is getting more and more electronic. A decade from now, when our fourth graders are out of school, I don’t know what job they will have, but we have got to expose them to as much as possible.

I had a parent come visit us during our paperless day. She’s one who does not have a computer or Internet access at home. She has two daughters here. And she said, “I know we’re going to have to get a computer before they get to high school.” And I said, yes, just start thinking about it.

WTE: And your own assessment?

Bush: It may not be Classroom 2.0 or cutting edge, and I won’t be bookless next year. But I will continue to have bookless days and eventually we’ll get there – probably not too far in the future.