August 6, 2014
PEGS Students Create Winning Video
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Remington Traditional School students during production of their DreamBox video.
Photo courtesy DreamBox
Students at Remington Traditional School tell their By Shawn Clubb DreamBox story Gifted students at a school in Maryland Heights recently put their skills to work when they produced a winning video explaining about how a program helps them learn math. But it wasn’t just their math skills or even their video production skills that they showcased. “They were cooperating. They were using their writing skills. They were researching. They were thinking of good questions to ask their peers as to why DreamBox was helping them, and the students were coming up with thoughtful answers, more than ‘because it’s cool,’” said Tracey Robinson, teacher for the Program for Exceptionally Gifted Students (PEGS) at Remington Traditional School. While the PEGS classroom is at Remington, a school within the Pattonville School District, students in the class can be from anywhere in the metro area. The current class has students from school districts including Orchard Farm, Hazelwood, Ferguson-Florissant, Ritenour and Pattonville, Robinson said. The classroom has students from grades two through five, and Robinson said her room “is like a one-room schoolhouse.” She and a part-time colleague teach the students at their academic grade levels, which can sometimes be ahead of other students of the same age. These students, like others in the Pat-
tonville School District, use a math program called DreamBox Learning to help improve their math skills. DreamBox recently held a contest called “Tell Us Your DreamBox Story,” which asked for video submissions from classes that use its program. The contest asked them to tell hose the program positively affected their math instruction. The grand prize was 10 iPads. Robinson’s students had been asking for iPads, so she presented the contest to them and told them it was their way to win them. Because the fifth-graders in the program would not be back in the upcoming school year to use the iPads, Robinson told the fourth-graders they should take charge. “The fourth-graders came up with video style, the newscast idea, and they wrote out the script,” she said. “They told me they wanted to interview me, and they came up with roving reporters so they could ask students.” But the project had one problem. The students left for the summer and while Robinson was putting the clips together, she realized they didn’t have an ending. So she contacted the family of their “lead anchor,” Kalista Roades. They were on vacation, but they filmed a wrapup segment in their hotel room with a white sheet as the backdrop with her mom’s phone. Once the video had been submitted to DreamBox, it came time to get people
to vote for it. That’s where another student, Justine, and her mother, Mary Ann Gacho, came in. When Typhoon Yolando struck the Philippines last year, the PEGS class collected change to send to their family there. They contacted that family, which has other family members all over the world. The result from everyone’s efforts was to gain 5,248 votes for their video by the time voting ended. The next closest video had only 1,971 votes. Of the video the Remington PEGS students produced, DreamBox said, See “WINNING VIDEO” page 2
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