Our students are of primarily Hispanic/Latino and African American backgrounds, and bring with them an excitement and joy for learning and contributing to their communities! We serve 100% economically disadvantaged students and a high population of English language learners (ELLs).

This school year I will be teaching two fantastic groups of diverse fourth graders as a math and an ELL teacher at H.D. Cooke Elementary, an extended-year school in Washington, D.C.

I am beginning my journey to reach a 1:1 student-to-computer/tablet ratio in my classroom this upcoming school year to implement a problem-based learning curriculum, improve students' digital literacy skills, increase their access to key programs, and develop their 21st Century skills.

These five Chromebooks will be an important start to achieving this 1:1 ratio, as I can start the year off right with an independent blended learning station for a group of five students at a time.

However, these Chromebooks will go an even longer way to giving my students access to many of our blended learning apps, such as ST Math, Think Cerca, and Edulastic, as well as access to our class Google Drive. These programs give students the opportunity to see content in personalized ways, and engage in independent, self-directed learning.

Truly integrating blended learning in the classroom is difficult without consistent access to computers. Not only will these Chromebooks be used for blended learning, they will also be used to improve our digital literacy and to properly progress monitor my English learners.

This year my school is piloting a progress monitoring tool to ensure our English learners are developing their language skills while also developing content knowledge. However, the app - Pearson TELL - is only compatible with tablets that run the Google Play store.

Given our population of about 180 ELLs, sharing the school iPad cart (which holds 30 iPads) will be a very difficult task! Having class Chromebooks will free up those iPads for use in other classrooms and allow me to be flexible with when and where I progress monitor my students, to maximize learning time.