Group+6

**Background Information **  Study Island is a web based educational program that is simple to use and easy to train and install on any existing computers. It is a well-known product for its variety of educational resources that can benefit students of any age and grade level. By purchasing this program, it will address this school’s continual issues that surround the California Content Standards Mastery and California High School Exit Examination (CAHSEE) year after year. “Study Island is a web-based standards mastery program that combines highly specific and dynamic content with real-time reporting to create a customized assessment, diagnostic, and instructional program based on each state’s standards” (Magnolia Consulting). Studies show that working with Study Island showed a 28% increase in students test scores when using this program frequently and effectively (Study Island). The customized assessments cover state standards while using technology to advance education and engage students. The main goals of the CAHSEE are to improve students’ ability to achieve, and to demonstrate that they are able to successfully pass an examination consisting of reading, writing, and mathematics before they graduate high school. The growing need for CAHSEE preparation is substantial in tenth grade because students are not passing this exam, and are unable to graduate high school as a result. It is beneficial to our school to purchase Study Island for the tenth grade remedial English class to further enhance and reinforce students’ skills to better prepare them for the CAHSEE exit examination.  Study Island is easy to navigate through, as well as virtually interactive for students to practice any subjects needed. It is an installed software program that is distributed to each student individually with a purchased code per child. Our school already has the main technology needed to run the Study Island software, yet training for the instructors will be necessary. With the funds, we intend on purchasing software codes for all struggling students in these tenth grade classes, which will allow them access on a daily basis through our school’s computer lab. Educators equally benefit from this program, due to the ability to customize topics, check students’ progress, input grades, post comments and generate preparation assignments. With all the teaching being conducted virtually through Study Island, teachers are able to spend time addressing questions, or evaluating results. This educational program provides many other benefits that assist students through feedback or questions and detailed explanations. Study Island uses multiple different teaching methods that can engage students and build their confidence level. With plenty of interactive games, practice quizzes, printable worksheets or study guides Study Island follows all California Content Standards and CAHSEE Blueprints. “The user-friendly interface allows students to move through the program step-by-step. Each section has a pre-test and a post-test, as well as topics that cover each of the CAHSEE Blueprints and California Content Standards” (Study Island). By extensively training students how to use the program, they will be able to track their own progress, complete assignments, ask questions and win prizes/awards. Students benefit exclusively by learning specific CAHSEE topics, while having fun interacting with technology.  Additionally, Study Island provides immediate feedback for users so they can learn from their mistakes as they go without a teacher’s explanation. Study Island software offers mock tests, lesson plans, sample questions, and explanations to reinforce the concepts and skills that are necessary to be successful on the CAHSEE. It creates similar test questions that the CAHSEE will cover unlike many benchmark products that focus on state exams; every test assigned through Study Island is specifically anchored from the California Content Standards. This is extremely beneficial to their success because they will be familiar with terms and format as well as practicing test taking skills before the official examination. Students will be more confident when going into the CAHSEE exam with knowledge of exam expectations and similar test questions that they were exposed to on Study Island. **Project Description **  There are many activities available to support the goals and objectives of this project. As a school, the main goal is to give the students the resources to pass the California High School Exit Exam in order to graduate high school. At this high school, there is a low percentage of students who pass the CAHSEE on the first try, so there is a great need for Study Island. The main activity that will be implemented to help the students is the program itself. The program will teach the students major concepts of the CAHSEE as well as strategies to follow during the test. The tenth grade remedial English teacher is in charge of the implementation. She will have five classes of remedial English, each class with thirty students for a total of 150 tenth graders. Each one of her students will receive a license for Study Island. Throughout the school year, she will continuously use Study Island with the students to better their math and reading comprehension proficiency.  The Study Island program is not the only activity that will be implemented. Study Island will be a supplement to the actual learning. Many would be complacent with the students solely using Study Island. However, a better, more beneficial plan is to use Study Island to help reinforce topics taught by the teacher or to use Study Island to introduce certain topics to the students. The teacher in charge of using this program at the school will administer diagnostic tests both in paper form and through Study Island. Study Island contains a pre-test and post-test for each section of the Online CAHSEE Preparation Program (Study Island). She will review the topics that the students had a difficult time with. She can then create a lesson plan pertaining to those topics. Study Island will be a great asset to the teaching process.  The teacher and students will have access to the technology at all times. Study Island is a web-based system, so wherever the students have access to computers, they will have access to Study Island. The English teacher in charge of implementation will also have access to the on-campus computer lab. She will be implementing Study Island mostly through work in the computer lab. During class time, she will take her students to the computer lab and every student will work on their own computer.  The technology can be used in different ways. The teacher has leeway in how she uses Study Island during class time. One way to implement Study Island is to teach a lesson that coincides with one of the sections of the program and have the students work extensively on this lesson. Afterwards, allow the students to go through the section in Study Island that coincides with the lesson. This will reinforce the learning from the lesson that the teacher taught. Another way to use the technology is to flip it around. In other words, the teacher can introduce a topic with Study Island, and then teach the students a lesson about that same topic after Study Island introduced them to the topic. A third way to implement Study Island is to assign sections for homework, or to allow the students to go through many sections before a deadline so they can go at their own pace. Overall, there are multiple ways to use Study Island to prepare students for the CAHSEE.  There is a timeline for this project. Study Island will be implemented in the beginning of the school year. The California High School Exit Exam takes place during the second semester of the sophomore year. This means that there is a time limit from the beginning of the school year to the start of the CAHSEE to build proficiency in both language arts and mathematics through Study Island. Although Study Island is geared more as a self-paced program, teachers can guide students through the program (Study Island). The English teacher will voice her expectations and review students’ files to make sure they keep at a constant pace through the program. The timeline will be met and Study Island will be completed by the students before the test.  There are other resources that will be used to support this project. The math teachers at the school are willing to review topics that need to be reviewed. The English teacher and the math teachers will work together to formulate lessons that need to be taught. Also, there is a wonderful after-school program at the high school that is open to all students. There are volunteers as well as paid staff to help students with any homework they have. Overall, there are many personnel that are at the students’ disposal. **Management ** As to managing the facilitation of Study Island to the students, a slight amount of responsibilities will need to be taken to ensure a smooth transition to this new product. As for the person who is to head the project, we will have the tenth grade remedial English teacher supervise the program, for, as has been mentioned, her role would be to carry out the program with the students, facilitating it in the classroom and training the kids to learn with it. The reason for it being the remedial English teacher is because he or she would most likely be teaching the students who would struggle on the CAHSEE and the greatest advantage to using Study Island would be found among the students in the remedial English class. In terms of other roles needed to implement Study Island, we will utilize our own computer teacher to install the software onto the computers. Furthermore, although only one of the teachers will be instigating Study Island in her classroom, we will train other teachers, including all of those in the English department, remedial to advanced, as well as the Math department teachers. The reason for this is so that we will have back-up teachers who can work Study Island if something were to happen with the current remedial English teacher. Also, having other teachers be trained with the program, specifically the Math teachers, will allow them all to be on the same page with each other and know what is going on with the students. As far as skills that the teacher will need for the project, the teacher is required to have thorough knowledge of Study Island itself, including standards and what will be required of the students to know, adequate computer skills, as well as thorough knowledge of the CAHSEE and the standards it requires for the students to pass it. The teacher will need to ensure that students are learning appropriately with Study Island so that they can apply the skills that they learn to the test. As far as training for the staff, we will allocate $400 for on-site training for a two hour, hands-on session from an expert field trainer. Out of the $400 will come the on-site training as well as providing a facility for the trainer to stay at during his or her stay. This training will be provided by a professional Study Island Training Consultant. In order for this to be possible, the trainers at Study Island ask that we provide one computer per participant, a projection device, as well as a computer with Internet access for the trainer, all of which we have access to provide for those that will be involved in training. Additionally, the users must already be registered before the training date. Training will begin with the New User Basic Features Training, which involves learning about student and teacher-driven use of Study Island, provides an introduction to Class Manager and School Stats, and uses the teacher and student views (Study Island Training Brochure). **Evaluation **  The way we will know if this software has made a difference in the school is by waiting until we reach the end of the year and look at the students’ test scores. We will compare and contrast these test scores with scores from previous years to see if there was a high percentage, a low percentage, or no change of either passing or failing of the test. Since students are given three chances to pass the CAHSEE test, we will take that into consideration and thus focus our attention more on the fact of whether more students pass the CAHSEE the first time or not. This way we do not make teachers and students feel anxious about absolutely having to pass the CAHSEE the first time because they are using the software. Once we have this information, we will know for sure if the continuation of this software for the future should still be implemented or not. The types of measurement tools that we will use will consist of making bar graphs that will mark the trend of students passing or failing the tests.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Grant Proposal: Study Island **

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Bibliography <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Study Island. “California Standards Mastery, CAHSEE Preparation, and Common Core <span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';"> Standards Mastery.” <span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">http://www.studyisland.com/demoAsk.cfm?myState=CA. <span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Study Island. “Study Island Research: Magnolia Consulting.” <span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';"> http://www.studyisland.com/demoAsk.cfm?action=FS&myState=CA#research. <span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Study Island. “Training Brochure/Train-The-Trainer Brochure.” <span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">http://www.studyisland.com/demoAsk.cfm?action=T&myState=CA