Visit to Point England School BOT Report

Visit to Point England School on Monday 10^th September, 2012, by Shaun, Eric and Pam

One of the many benefits of visiting Point England School, is what has happened since. We learnt how to set up blogs for the students and I have never seen the students so excited about their writing as they were when they started receiving comments about their pieces of writing. Having an audience for their writing is such motivation, and, because they are not allowed to publish it on their blog until it is perfect, they have the motivation to quickly learn the writing conventions that go with writing because they see the need for it. “If you want other people to read your writing, it has to make sense and it has to be readable.” So they want to make the effort to spell correctly, they want to know where to put the fullstops, they want to know about paragraphing and using interesting words, etc.

Their blogs are able to be seen by their parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc  at any time and, with a computer each, they do not need to wait for their turn to write their ideas. These can be written and posted every day.

Other  Benefits

-    Collaborative learning with the teacher is done using the Share tool in Google Docs. A document is created and shared with everyone in the group. As the children in the group record their ideas, everyone in the group can see the ideas being shared. eg a script was being written for a play. As each child wrote their lines, the rest of the group was reading and deciding what their character would do next. To solve a Maths question, each person in the group was recording how they would solve it and each person in the group could see what strategy they were using – they didn’t have to squeeze around a big piece of paper which is tricky for a group because some of them see it upside down and it has to be turned around, and this way is so much more efficient and effective. When partners are working on a piece of writing together, they can help each other with spelling and other writing conventions, and students love to hear a different voice from their teachers in their learning.

-    Independent learning – children are able to work at their own pace when they are given a set of tasks to complete during the day and in any order.

-     They don’t have to collect worksheets and paste them in – paper trail isn’t necessary.

-     Waiting for instructions is minimal – the children have learning activities to carry on with

-     Teacher is able to spend more time with individual needs while others continue with digital learning activities eg Basic Facts practice, Spelling practice, independent reading activities

-    Students don’t need to write, then rewrite, then rewrite again, if they can copy and paste from their original

-    Independent learning sites eg xtramaths during which the student practises basic facts are marked and results of each student are recorded for the teacher.

-    A lot more monitoring can take place because the students can use sites like xtramaths to practise their basic facts daily and their work is marked and a summary is immediately available for the teacher and parents to see. This is the same with other sites Point England was using – Maths Whizz, which shows daily progress of a range of maths topics, Reading Eggs which shows daily results of their reading progress and Spelling City to practise their spelling. These independent learning activities can be run alongside the class maths and reading programme, as reinforcement and maintenance.

-     Using programmes such as these, produces for each student, an individual programme .

-     Because the teacher has immediate access to the results, the children realise they are accountable for the amount of practice they do each day.

-     Parents also are able to see their child’s results and progress, without having to wait for the beginning of year testing, the middle of the year testing and the end of the year testing.

-    The children are engaged. With digital learning, the children see a lot of their learning in colour, (we can’t photocopy colour for their worksheets or practice pages), so it is more interesting for them.

-     As digital learning becomes more popular ( as we speak to people around the country, they say, oh yes, we are using digital learning too), more and more digital learning programmes are being written and, with competition, the quality of these programmes are improving all the time.

-    If a teacher is sick, there is minimal disruption – the children carry on with their learning  -it is there available them. If a child is sick, he/she can carry on the learning at home. If a child misses a lesson, it can be posted on their drive, or on the class blog, and the child can learn about the lesson in their own time. Videos of children teaching children and teachers teaching children can be uploaded onto their Drives and this can be watched again for children who take more time to learn things. There are also many teaching videos on youtube which can be uploaded onto the children’s Drives.

-     Digital learning is the way of the future, and if a teacher leaves St Paul’s, there will be a wealth of applicants to join this go-ahead staff.

-     Homework can be done on-line, and the children won’t have to use books that are in terrible condition through being taken home and brought back to school daily. They get used to seeing quality presentation.

-     Children learn to spell a word faster when they see it typed, because they see it in perfect formation, rather than in their lettering which is often not perfect when written by hand. Handwriting still needs to be practised though.

-    Parents won’t have to buy so much stationery. Pens, pencils, erasers and exercise books will not be used as much and less photocopy costs; less trees cut down.

-    We were also shown how to create reading comprehension and maths worksheets using Google Sites and Google Forms. We are still getting our heads around this, but it is a very useful tool. Worksheets can be created online, then they can be collated in a spreadsheet.

-     Students at Point England School have mastered drawing on-line. Their artwork is beautiful. In Years 1 and 2, the students begin learning to use tools for drawing.

Thank you to the Board of Trustees for making it possible for us to attend Point England School for the day. What we learnt from the experience was huge, and has impacted already on the children’s learning.