FEATURE: SUCCESSFUL INNOVATIVE TEACHING PRACTICE
to aspire to invites authentic learning, with class content and resources designed to meet the preferences and needs of the children, leading to more opportunities for them to positively connect via digital learning content, with their peers, education, teachers and world around them. It sounds like a huge ask but for us it has been a step-by-step approach originating from our choice to empower our teachers to find their own best practices and innovative approaches to teaching and learning. Hopefully our journey and ‘requirements’ may give you some thoughts and ideas if you are embarking on the same journey. For us, it all started with reviewing the available provision across the schools. During this exercise, I soon identified there were disparate systems being used and unbeknownst to them, several teachers and Digital Leads in five or six of our schools were independently using Showbie, a hybrid learning platform to assign, collect, and review student work. This platform was certainly being used effectively in each school, but its full potential wasn’t being realised, due to the lack of connectivity across all the schools.
From here, Jenny Hinton, Digital Lead and Year 6 teacher, created a strategy and fully integrated the platform into her school, making use of full functionality. This was with the aim of showcasing to the other schools across the Trust what could truly be achieved, including an increase in collaboration, accommodating various learning times and needs and supporting teachers’ workloads. Beginning with a pilot scheme of just one year group, Jenny has since played a vital leading role in the integration of digital learning strategies across almost all schools in the Trust.
Reducing Workload
Our first objective when exploring digital learning solutions was to reduce teacher workload, including time spent on administrative tasks, freeing up more time to spend on teaching and student wellbeing.
Showbie has enabled us to streamline workloads by moving away from paper, to capture all work, learning resources and assessments in one digital location. This has dramatically reduced time spent on marking thanks to the ability to automatically grade and deliver feedback in a way which best suits the needs of the students – voice note feedback has been particularly popular due to the ease and familiarity it brings to the interactions between students and teachers.
Planning time has also been reduced as they are able to easily share digital learning resources and lesson outlines, not to mention the ease of accessing student work remotely via a suitable device.
It’s not difficult to visualise how this way of working is also significantly reducing teachers’ workload, helping staff to achieve a better work/ life balance. One teacher celebrated the fact that she was finally able to cycle to work because all marking and lesson plans could be accessed on a single iPad, rather than in workbooks. All these factors have enabled teacher time and effort to be refocused on supporting the wellbeing and learning of the pupils. And of course, the ability to capture and record all student learning in one place reduces the amount of time spent preparing for Ofsted inspections!
September 2022
www.education-today.co.uk 35 Training
Another important consideration when implementing such systems across multiple schools in a Trust is its ease of use.
The ever-evolving access to new platforms can be good but is often frustrating for staff. Teaching and administrative staff can easily become irritated and burnt out from learning new software or updated systems, feeling like it will take up more of their time using the system, than it will save.
Ease of use is key to any system’s success. After a successful trial with one year group, the substantial digital learning infrastructure, with Showbie at the centre, was rolled out across all schools in the Trust.
But this needed to come with an appropriate level of training to ensure the efficient utilisation of the platform, but also to guarantee it didn’t create additional stress or pressure for teachers. Ensuring that the platform was intuitive and easy to use for students and teachers was one of our priorities. We found that many staff adjusted to the platform with ease, one even likening it to using a smart phone. Despite this vital feature of any major system roll out, continuing professional development (CPD) was also important to schedule. Whether it’s based on teachers sharing tips and advice with each other or regular online classes hosted by the system provider, CPD has been key to its continual successful optimisation.
Empowering Students
Another one of our objectives was to empower the children to take control of their learning and foster their own independence; a vital life skill. During lessons, pupils are able to revisit slides if they fail to understand something so they can keep up with the learning at the same pace as the rest of the class.
By recording teaching, tasks, learning progress and student work everyone had access to all they needed within one central platform. One teacher, Haleema Mayat at Pear Tree Junior School used the example of a whiteboard to explain how the platform enables their class to consistently have access to instruction and learning: “Learning no longer disappears once the ‘whiteboard’ is cleaned. Teachers and pupils now have their lessons and notes readily accessible on a single device. This allows children to take their time going through and revisiting tasks and topics, helping to reinforce the learning and improve
their engagement.”
By having access to all class content and the ability to digitally ask teachers questions at any time of the day, students have the autonomy to drive their own learning forward. And of-course teachers are able to provide truly individualised learning by digitally targeting each child based on their needs whether this is academic or social.
Student Feedback
We all know that students learn best when feedback is both unique and personal. We all remember receiving an assignment back from our teacher, covered in unconstructive and demeaning red marks and scribbled comments. We now have a range of tools to give rich, differentiated feedback to students of all learning abilities, so everyone gets the help they need to succeed. Teachers can leave constructive voice notes or comments pinned to specific areas of each student’s work. This has been especially useful in removing barriers to learning for pupils with learning difficulties or even younger children in KS1 who may struggle to fully comprehend written instructions.
Revolutionising Teaching and Learning The experience has been a master class in cross- school collaboration, where all our schools have been able to utilise their own autonomy to explore options that work best for them while also supporting each other by sharing their tips, tricks and experiences on the platform. Since lockdown and remote learning, we have also been able to make significant improvements with parental engagement as it meant they were able to access pertinent information at any time convenient to them. This is something we’ve continued since the return to school, recognising the importance of maintaining these strong relationships and access to information. Balancing the needs of everyone within the learning community, from staff to pupils to parents, we have been able to transform the Trust; empowering teachers to make decisions that work for their school. We now have a child-centred space that enables us to implement effective pedagogical choices that have a tangible impact on learning. It is only once you have a robust and innovative digital programme that you can revolutionise teaching and learning across a Trust.
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