Engaging Enrichment Program
Community Review for eSpark
My Take
Our school district, purchased a different program and the students did not enjoy it at all, it was mandatory for them to work 30 minutes a day on it. My students would beg and plead for us to just do eSpark instead!
The reports you can get as a teacher are an added wealth to the overall program. It helps pinpoint which students don't have a grasp on specific skills and it alerts you so you can intervene in a timely manner. My students loved the weekly high fives. The list of students was emailed to me and we would have a simple "high five awards" ceremony.
I love everything about this program from the ease of use to the ability to add delete skills and students. I had several Special Needs students in and out of my classroom, they could come into the classroom, grab a Chromebook, and feel like one of the regular students while working on their own level.
How I Use It
We have 45 minutes of intervention/enrichment for our fifth-grade students daily. We do pull out for small groups and this program keeps the rest of the class motivated. The students ran in the classroom unpacked and logged in, I am not kidding. They loved the program as it taught them the material if they didn't understand it through videos or other sources linked within the program. We were also able to add specific skills (e.g., math fractions) that we were teaching or skills they did not understand within their individual programs to help benefit the mastery of the skill. The students did enjoy making videos and they were hugely beneficial although they tended to take up too much time within the school day so we did have to turn that feature off. I am still trying to figure out a way to get this feature to work within my classroom.