ShowMe in action: Visiting PS 55!

Last week, Julia and I had the pleasure of visiting two ShowMe super users at their School in Staten Island. Eddie Vaccaro and Jessica Russo are both Special Education teachers, in the 3rd and 5th grade respectively, and ShowMe has been a great tool in their classroom toolkits to help differentiate lessons for students.

When we arrive, Jessica was working on Social Studies with her students. As part one of the unit, a small group of students used laptops and watched a ShowMe that she had created about the Inuits. As they watched, Jessica was there to answer questions, interact with students and guide them. Since they are 5th graders, she stressed to us that helping them gain independence in their learning is very important, and that ShowMe has been a great tool to drive this skill! Several of the students took notes while watched which would also be helpful to them during the next day’s conversation about what they had learned.

Next up we visited Eddie Vaccaro in his 3rd grade classroom where students also broke up into small groups to watch iPads together. They had a set of questions and problems to solve that Eddie and his Co-Teacher had created and as they watched his ShowMe, they periodically paused (as instructed in the video!) to work on these problems. It was so cool to walk around and hear the students conferring with each other about how to solve a question. Although the learning was guided by Eddie’s ShowMe, the emphasis was on team work and helping each other! Eddie has also been sharing these ShowMes with parents of his students, who enjoy watching them so they can support their children, but also as a refresher for themselves!

Thanks for letting us visit PS 55!