Kindergarten - Grade 8

At St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic School, technology is used to engage the members of our school community in lifelong learning and exploration. Technology is integrated into teaching, learning, and assessment across all disciplines and grade levels. The key components of our technology program include the importance of digital citizenship, internet and device safety, using technology as a tool for content creation, understanding how technology and its components function, and career opportunities that incorporate technology.

The Pre-Kindergarten and Kindergarten classrooms share a set of touch tablet devices that allow our youngest learners to explore web based applications that reinforce and strengthen basic learning skills. Mini-labs of chrome books are used in the primary and intermediate classrooms to provide enrichment and practice, conduct research, and create content. Fifth Grade students share a classroom set of devices, while a 1:1 program is used in our middle school to provide each student access to an individual device, under the teacher’s guidance and direction, in every core subject classroom.

Interactive touch displays are used in all classrooms as a way to enhance lessons and learning activities, and engage all learners. Every teacher has access to a whole class set of devices that can be used for content creation, collaboration, and lesson enrichment.  As a Google School for Education, each student and faculty member also has an individual school account that allows for file creation and storage, device use, access to teacher created classroom pages, library resources and databases, and access to all materials from off campus on any device. Parents have full access to their students’ accounts to view classroom pages and announcements, student created files, and feedback on student work, as well as access to current grades through our web-based parent portal. 

Students in Grades K-8 attend weekly computer skills lessons taught by our full time Technology Integrator, which are based on the Computer Science Curriculum of the Diocese of Bridgeport and current National Educational Technology Standards. For all grade levels, Computer Science curricular areas include basic use and function, graphics and media, internet safety, file creation and formatting, basic computer coding and programming concepts, presentation tools, research skills, and digital citizenship. Current and evolving technologies help to promote communication and collaboration within and beyond the local school community.

Technology also allows our faculty and students to interact and create, and taps into their inherent love of learning. Web based resources, software, applications, and digital content subscriptions allow us to bring religion, English language arts, mathematics, social studies, science, music, art, library media, and physical education concepts to life in an interactive, grade appropriate way. Additionally, technology serves to support the diverse learning needs and learning styles of our students, in order to increase student learning. Technology enables our students to be continuous, resourceful, and engaged learners who are able to successfully navigate emerging technologies in an increasingly global and connected society.