BESA CORNER
This month in our ongoing feature highlighting the work of the UK education suppliers’ trade body BESA, we hear from BooksForTopics and This is School.
Making classrooms more human
It’s more important than ever for teachers to bring more “human” voices into our classrooms. Most of us have felt the increased pressure of modern day life, being online 24-7 and AI infiltrating our real world, whilst we face abrupt changes in curriculum and deal with challenging behaviour. What possible role can technology play in creating that space for a truly human dynamic in the classroom? Our humanness is what connects us. Nurturing and supporting students and shaping their individual learning experience is at the heart of teaching, wherever you are in the world - but when you’re one teacher, in one classroom, your voice is likely to be relentlessly in demand.
Supplementing your lessons with stock videos and scripted audio can feel dry and mechanical, with little personality. Finding the best resources can swallow up your valuable lesson preparation time and be a nightmare to clear copyright approvals and IT tech hurdles. Simultaneously, modern foreign language teachers know that for their students to gain confidence and to be able to understand different nationalities and accents, their students really need to hear from as many authentic voices as possible. Candid, authentic language videos, hearing from relatable people of similar ages, sharing insights into their lives, naturally, can add an extra dimension to learning a new language.
Those “ums” and “ahs” in our spoken sentences are incredibly important. They’re part of what makes us human. Where we pause, the inflection and tone we use to express ourselves - they’re all what gives us a sense of sentiment, of meaning and intention in our language and wrapped up with the words we choose, they convey our personality. This is one of the reasons teachers and students use the resources inside This is School to learn differently. Once you’re comfortable hearing real people speak, then scripted lessons used in tests and
exams become so much easier. In Geography and Science, hearing from other voices can cement authority, discuss theories and explore
different points of view - another essential part of being human. Adding discerning voices into a conversation or argument can bring subjects to life, proving far more memorable than reading flat lines from a page. The four walls in a classroom can also fall away so that students are able to connect with and appreciate real human voices and experiences beyond their immediate environment, across the world. This expands their frame of reference. It gives them a taste for hearing viewpoints from different nationalities, with different accents and dialects and helps improves their language proficiency and understanding of their subject whilst ultimately making their learning experience more real, varied and more human.
As a decision-maker in tech, teaching methods and services, you may have defined learning as online, offline and in the classroom - but This is School is something of a blended hybrid. It’s not online learning as we know it. Whilst the resources themselves are online, they contribute to an enhanced learning process, providing teachers with a richer, more immersive experience they can build from within the classroom. Teachers are freed up from admin burdens of grading, finding top quality resources and assigning homework so they can concentrate on spending more time helping their students in the moment. When learning materials are naturally interactive, engaging and taken care of, teachers have more capacity to teach, and (using
infed.org’s definition of teaching) they can attend to learners’ needs, experiences and feelings and intervene so they learn particular things and go beyond the given. Helping make classrooms more human can open up a world of conversation which goes beyond the subject and can inspire a generation in learning. For more information visit:
https://thisisschool.com
Branching out: broadening reading horizons Comment by ALISON LEACH, Director of BooksForTopics
We’ve all encountered readers who have fallen in love with a series and feel reluctant to read anything different. It’s not necessarily a bad thing – in fact, a single series or author’s collection can often be the spark for a lifelong love of reading. Nonetheless, it sometimes becomes difficult for young readers to know where to go next once they’ve exhausted their collection.
Teachers and librarians are usually called upon to help with the process of moving readers onto something new. A quick scan through education communities on X or parenting Facebook groups will quickly bring up a myriad of similar questions: ‘Can you recommend a book for fans of Wimpy Kid?’, or ‘My daughter only reads David Walliams books - what else can I give her?’, or ‘How can I move my child on from Bunny vs Monkey?’.
The Branching Out book lists on the BooksForTopics website are designed to offer similar suggestions to the popular books and series that readers tend to get stuck on. Teachers and parents can also download free, printable display posters from the BooksForTopics website to help readers identify new books to try. Suggesting new books – key factors: 1. Identify the sticking factor. What matters the most when finding recommendations that are similar to a beloved series is identifying the ‘sticking factors’: what exactly it is about the series that has caused the reader to become hooked. Two different readers who love the same series may find different sticking factors. For teachers and parents, taking time to discuss with children what it is that they love about the series in
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www.education-today.co.uk
question can help to hone the recommendations for what to try next. 2. Match the reading level. Sometimes readers fall in love with a series because it is, development-wise, just the right thing at the right time. I’ve lost count of the number of children I’ve taught who fell in love with Rainbow Magic or Horrid Henry because the series was their first foray into independent chapter books. Perhaps they loved the stories, but sometimes it was independent reading itself that they fell in love with. Recommendations of similar series should take into account the likely reading level to be matched, in terms of word count, illustration level, vocabulary style and accessibility. 3. Diversify the options. One of the consequences of becoming stuck on a much-loved series or author is that it narrows the scope of reading. When we select our Branching Out lists, we consider a diverse range of options in terms of characters and family settings in our books for topics. Fans of Diary of a Wimpy Kid, for example, might enjoy a similar style of story that explores Sam Wu’s Chinese heritage or the portrayal of life in a British Muslim family of Pakistani heritage in the Planet Omar series. Equally, fans of Jacqueline Wilson may enjoy a similar style of true-to-life story that sees life through the eyes of a neurodivergent character, such as A Kind of Spark by Elle McNicoll. 4. Find genuinely good books. This one should go without saying, but we only select books that our review panel of teachers, librarians and children’s book experts has loved and thoroughly recommended. Fans of Beast Quest could easily search the internet for a database of books containing monsters or action, but a tried-and-tested recommendation that young readers are likely to really love simply can’t be beaten.
Browse the book lists at
www.booksfortopics.com/booklists/branching- out/
February 2025
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