Journal Response: Clickers to the Rescue 

Moratelli, K., & DeJarnette, N. K. (2014). Clickers to the rescue. Reading Teacher, 67(8), 586-593. doi:10.1002/trtr.1261

In this journal, Clickers to the Rescue, a fifth grade teacher tried to use technology to help improve her students' low literacy achievement scores. Each week, as part of the group's literacy instruction, they read a series of stories and were tested on their comprehension of the stories along with vocabulary and grammar skills. Almost all students, regardless of their academic abilities, were failing these weekly tests. In order to improve student engagement and the quality of the lessons, Classroom Response Systems or "clickers" were used as part of the instruction and review process for four weeks.

Clickers are hand-held devices that can be used to answer multiple-choice, true/false, or yes/no questions. Each student's response is then compiled and displayed anonymously in a graph providing students with immediate feedback on areas of good comprehension and which concepts they need to focus on. The data is also available to the teacher which allows them to see where more attention needs to be spent during instruction and allows them to track each individual's comprehension and progress over time.

For this case study, rather than relying on whole group discussion as the only means of review for their weekly assessments, clickers were used to answer questions during class discussions. Each student was expected to answer every question, which in turn improved class participation and engagement. Students who typically were off-task or reluctant to participate were able to participate in a risk-free, anonymous way while still receiving feedback about their understanding of concepts. At the end of the case study, the majority of the students had improved their scores on their weekly literacy tests.

I have been intrigued by clickers since our class discussions about the positive uses of cell phones in the classroom. I really like the idea of having the ability to quickly and accurately collect data from every student. My first grade students, however,  don't own cell phones. We have a set of clickers at my school and I've always been reluctant to use them with first graders. After reading this journal and learning about all of the educational benefits of Classroom Response Systems, I think I may give them a try.

Elementary classroom lessons and discussions can sometimes be dominated by the more confident, high achieving students making it extremely difficult to gauge the rest of the students' understanding. The clickers would be a good way to provide a risk-free way for all of my students to respond and get feedback during class discussions. I also think the clickers would be new and exciting for the first graders and would help improve engagement in lessons. Our SMART board is already used for the majority of our lessons which would make integrating the use of clickers very easy as well.