Following the National Curriculum in England, our English programme of study has four key elements:

• Writing
• Reading
• Spoken language
• Spelling, vocabulary, grammar and punctuation (SPaG)

When we transitioned over to e-learning, during lockdown, we wanted to make sure to provide as many opportunities as possible to facilitate teaching and learning for each one of these areas.

We therefore fully embraced the best e-learning platforms we could find, to replicate children’s experiences in the classroom while they were working from home.  In fact, in some areas, we went beyond simply replicating children’s classroom experiences, and we were able to enhance children’s learning experience through the use of digital technologies.

Let’s take a look at some examples of how we have been doing this:

1. Quizlet to help children with their spellings.  Quizlet is a web application that enables users to easily make digital flashcards and has been particularly effective for memorising spellings as well as consolidating understanding of word definitions.

2. Screencasting software such as Loom to deliver read-aloud sessions for children.  Screencasting is where you narrate a video recording of your computer screen – a very handy skill to learn when teaching online!  The advantage of an app like Loom is that it also records a video of the teacher talking, and this appears on the side of the screencast, making the teacher’s explanation much more intuitive to follow. 

3. EdPuzzle has proven brilliant for supporting children’s reading and developing their comprehension skills.  Our teachers have been making interactive read-aloud videos for students, which are embedded with comprehension quizzes.

4. Flipgrid is an exciting platform video discussion platform that enables children to post short video responses to questions, thereby helping students to practise their speaking and listening skills   

5. Google Docs & Slides has provided many writing opportunities for our students.  The school’s Google suite of tools, in particular, has proven particularly useful for teachers to provide feedback on written assignments via the use of private comments.

6. Google Classroom has remained our core platform for handing out and collecting in assignments.  It also allows us to easily track students’ work submissions.

Digital Resources for use at Home:

Kindles 

While we use Kindles in the school, they can be brilliant devices to encourage and help students with their reading at home.  Firstly, unlike smartphones or tablet devices, they do not have a luminous screen, which means they cause less eye strain.  In fact, they employ a special type of display, commonly referred to as an “e-paper” display.  As devices specifically designed and built for reading, they also come without the many distractions associated with other digital technologies.

Secondly, the new Kindles help young readers tackle challenging vocabulary.  The built-in dictionary software, which turns itself on when the student long presses a word, quickly looks up the definition of the word.  This is generally something that teachers are doing automatically; when teachers are reading with or to students, attention is paid to new vocabulary – both a word’s meaning and its correct punctuation.  When students are reading alone therefore, the Kindle’s in-built dictionary and vocabulary builder can be a really useful set of tools.

Thirdly, every word looked up is automatically added to a ‘Vocabulary Builder’, which creates flashcards that students can use to learn the definitions and usage of words.

Finally, it is much easier to find a range of appropriate books from the Kindle store than hunting around bookshops!

Classroom Flipped

Classroom Flipped provides learners with easy access to the best resources on the Web, to help support their learning.  I originally designed this website to link all relevant, child-friendly resources to our International Primary Curriculum.

Bug Club 

Bug Club is a platform that contains hundreds of fiction and non-fiction books.  Each book is carefully levelled so that children can access books, which are appropriate for their reading level, before moving onto more challenging books as their reading skills improve.  It also comes with ‘Progress & Assess’ quizzes, which tests children on what they have read, while helping them to improve their reading fluency and comprehension skills.    

Concluding thoughts…

Our e-learning environment has facilitated an environment in which students are becoming more active creators instead of solely passive content recipients.  After all, students learn best in an environment that they “own”, which adjusts rapidly to meet their learning needs and interests.  As a team, we are continually learning how to effectively embed these learning technologies into our teaching practice.  Indeed, as we gradually return to normality, we are looking forward to taking what we have learnt during these peculiar times, to further enhance our teaching practice and develop students’ learning.

At our school we use BrainPOP with our teachers and students.  The site has a library of hundreds of videos, which are all searchable by topic.  The videos are generally no more than five-minutes long, and using the two main animated characters, Tim & Moby, BrainPOP simplifies topics for children, making them engaging, fun and easy to follow.

At the conclusion of the video, students have the option to complete a variety of follow-up activities:

As BrainPOP integrates with Google Apps Suite for Education, all of these activities have built-in functionality that allow students to submit responses to their teacher. This submission may come in the form of a quiz response, student-created concept map or completed vocabulary worksheet, for example. Students can then track their submissions, grades, and feedback by navigating to their My BrainPop page.  Teachers have additional access to the BrainPop Educators page, which is included as a link with each video and offers user-submitted and BrainPop-created lesson plans, printables, and instructional resources.

BrainPop also enables teachers to create and assign their own quizzes for a given topic. They can write their own multiple choice or open-ended quiz questions, or they can opt to pull items from BrainPop’s library of over several thousand questions.

Some of the content can be relatively high level for primary children, as the site is designed for students from 8 to 14 years.  This why there is a sister site, BrainPop Junior (included within the subscription package), which has been designed for children from 5 to 8 years.  In addition, there is BrainPop ELL for new English language learners.

I designed Classroom Flipped to provide access to BrainPOP topics that match our IPC curriculum:

As a tool for Flipped Learning, BrainPOP has many benefits.  Students can research plenty of child-friendly resources using this platform.  It can save teachers lots of time searching for appropriate videos and enables them to spend more time as facilitators of learning.  The platform is also compatible with mobile devices such as iPads and smartphones, which makes it another great application to use as part of a BYOD initiative.

STEAM is both an acronym and an educational approach.  As an acronym, STEAM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Maths.  As an educational approach, STEAM is about facilitating learning experiences across these five subject areas, which promote collaboration, enquiry-based learning and fun!

Since the late 1990s there has been an increasing global focus on the need to better prepare students for the 21st century workforce by equipping them with the skills and knowledge in STEAM subjects.  After all, the most in-demand jobs globally fall into one or more of these five subject areas.

According to the Rhode Island School of Design, which adds the arts to the original STEM framework, “The goal (of STEAM) is to foster the true innovation that comes with combining the mind of a scientist or technologist with that of an artist or designer.”  All technology begins and ends with some form of art.  In fact, the arts and sciences are a natural match when students have sufficient time for project development, reflection and revision.  For example, arts are used in website and user interface design, advertising and the design of literally any product imaginable.

Many schools around the world, my own included, have made inroads in teaching STEAM through various initiatives, including (but not limited to):

• using Computing & ICT to permeate across the whole school curriculum, thereby linking these five disciplines
• after-school makerspace clubs or programs
• holistic, thematic curricula such as the IPC or PYP, where projects using STEAM practices are embedded
• BYOD initiatives (bring your own device)
• staff training to encourage hands-on exploration within each of these disciplines
• robotics programs

The STEAM approach is intended to be holistic, bringing these five disciplines together.  The key to STEAM’s success though, is to ensure that an enquiry-based learning model is followed:

“Studies comparing learning outcomes for students taught via project-based learning versus traditional instruction show that when implemented well, problem-based learning (PBL) increases long-term retention of content, helps students perform as well or as better than traditional learners in high-stakes tests, improves problem-solving and collaboration skills, and improves students’ attitudes towards learning.” (Vega, 2012)

Introducing littleBits…

For this reason, I’ve been happy to get my hands on the littleBits STEAM set below:

littleBits are small, simple, intuitive blocks that make working with electronics a matter of snapping small magnets together with no experience required. The littleBits STEAM Student set is the easiest and fastest way to create imaginative electronic devices and solutions to everyday challenges.  Thanks to this colour coding system, no prior knowledge of electronics or circuitry is required, making the kit open to learners of all ages.

I had a go at creating an art machine using the STEAM Student Set, and I was pleased with the results:

Activities like this are a great example of what STEAM learning is all about.  It’s clear that children need to be engaged in learning, and learn in ways that can hold their attention, much the same way that social media, and internet sites like Youtube do.  Making learning fun and meaningful is the necessary challenge all educators must take on.

In order to further facilitate teaching and learning of STEAM, we are currently building a website, Classroom Flipped, to bring together an online suite of web apps, videos and sites, which have been mapped to our school curriculum. The name, Classroom Flipped, comes from the educational approach known as flipped learning, whereby students interact with educational content outside the classroom to better support their learning inside the classroom.  The website includes a section specifically for STEAM, with links to the best resources on the Web, including relevant high quality, age-appropriate educational videos, games, articles and interactive quizzes.

STEAM is not just about using digital technologies though; STEAM activities can be as simple as just using a piece of paper.  For example, below is one of the activities we gave our staff was to do when introducing what STEAM is all about:

STEAM Challenge

• Build the highest possible tower you can that holds a book at least 16 cm above the ground for a minimum of  3 seconds (the book must rest on top of the tower)
• The tower must  be free-standing, which means no taping or holding to the floor.

Time: 20 minutes (including testing)

Materials: 10 sheets of newspaper and
50 cm of tape,

Group Size: Maximum of 4 people

Success Criteria – The tallest tower wins as long as….

• Tower is free-standing
• Tower is able to hold the weight of a book for a minimum of 3 seconds
• Book must be resting a minimum of 16cm above the ground
• Tower is constructed solely of newspaper and masking tape

Concluding thoughts…

By engaging students around the subjects of Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Maths (STEAM) through practical projects, we can spark an interest and lifelong love of the arts and sciences in children from an early age.  The littleBits STEAM set is a great place to start, but activities can just be as simple as using paper!  The important point is that it is only by teaching relevant, in-demand skills, that we will better prepare our students to become innovators in an changing world.