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.

The teaching of boys  and young men deserves special consideration; for at least the last two decades, there has been increasing concern that boys are falling behind in formal education.  Instinctive differences between boys and girls are well documented in various educational, psychological and sociological studies.  Among the many differences, it is widely recognised that, generally speaking, boys are more challenging to discipline than girls – and boys are less interested in formal education.  Simply put, boys tend to be more restless, disruptive and prone to distraction than girls.

Year after year, for example, statistics show that the majority of school exclusions tend to be boys.[1]  As well as behaviour problems being more prevalent with boys than girls, it has been demonstrated repeatedly that girls outperform boys in school (e.g. Mieke Van Houtte, 2004).  International data shows that in 70 percent of the world’s countries, girls outperform boys in every curriculum subject – even including countries where women’s liberties are severely restricted.[2]  This would explain why female university students and graduates worldwide now far outnumber their male counterparts – a trend that shows no sign of changing.[3]

For the most part, these facts and statistics about this “boy crisis” are well-known.  What is not so widely acknowledged though, is how modern life can be more problematic for boys than girls – particularly within the formal education system.   The problem, according to Sue Palmer (2009) in her book, 21^st Century Boys, is that nowadays we live in an ‘electronic village’ – a marketing and screen-based culture, which inhibits healthy eating, good sleep routines and free play – from an early age.  While these trends affect all children, they tend to more negatively impact boys.  Many youngsters, especially boys, seem to be pursuing what Sue Palmer calls a ‘loss of the mind’ – the erosion of conscious identity through technological fixes, for example.

The issues for boys in particular, are very real. This is important for teachers to realise, in order to have greater levels of empathy and understanding for the boys they teach.  Boys have a greater likelihood of suffering not just from purely academic and behavioural problems, but also ‘developmental disorders’.  For instance, the ratio of boys to girls experiencing the following developmental disorders shows a marked disparity:

– ADHD & dyspraxia             4:1

– Reading problems                3:1

– Asperger syndrome              9:1

Evolutionary biology might help to explain some of the differences that we see in the classroom in terms of behaviour.  Naturally, over time, males have proven to be significantly more competitive than females, more violent and more likely to take risks.  In the classroom of course, these tendencies manifest themselves as more rambunctious and restless behaviour on the part of the boys.  In terms of emotional problems, Sami Tamimi (2005) notes that:

‘The big difference is that boys externalise their problems and it comes out as bad behaviour – girls tend to internalise it, as sadness.  Boys’ issues are therefore issues for others, not just themselves.’   

This externalisation of poor behaviour matters not just in the classroom, but for society in general.  As Sue Palmer (2009, pp. 4) states ‘if boys aren’t reasonably civilised, confident and able to exercise self-control by the time they reach their teens, they can become a problem for society: four out of five criminal offences are committed by males.’  It has been calculated by policymakers in the United States for example, that if just 5 percent more boys completed secondary school and matriculated to college, the nation would save $8 billion a year in welfare and criminal justice costs (Reichert & Hawley, 2010, xi).

There are several strategies teachers can initiate, to at least mitigate the particular issues facing boys in the classroom.  First and foremost, when issues do arise, it is important that teachers coach parents on appropriate measures to take at home.

At a minimum, parents ought to provide the following:

• Nutritious food
• A safe home
• Plenty of sleep and exercise
• Attention and love
• Discipline that teaches (and is not permissive or punitive)

This might sound like common sense but sadly, it cannot be assumed that all parents are doing these things.  Most parents for instance, in my experience, do not put limits on their children’s use of screen-based devices.  Many children, I know, have a computer and/or television in the bedroom – with no restrictions on their use.  It is also normal for a great many children to gorge on fast food and sugary beverages.  Teachers must therefore use workshops and parent-teacher conferences, to advise parents to limit their children’s use of screen-based entertainment and to make sure healthy food is regularly provided for them.

For teachers’ lesson delivery, there are at least four approaches, which I have found boys respond particularly well to:

Activities that involve physical movement – During my several years of teaching first graders (6 to 7 year olds), I would periodically get them jumping up and down for 2-minutes at least twice a day.  I would play music during this activity and make it a competition to see who could jump the highest!  The idea of course, was simply to get the children (specifically, the boys) to expend as much energy as possible.  Immediately after such an activity, the children would approach their classroom activities much calmer.

Competitions – Boys naturally tend to be more competitive than girls – and nothing gets them more excited and engaged than a good competition.  Quizzes, games and projects can all be easily embedded into the teaching process.  Online resources such as Quizlet and Kahoot are good choices to use at the beginning of the lesson or as part of the plenary.

Hands-on learning refers to learning by doing.  Activities that get students making can help them to think critically about what it is they are learning while teaching them the design process and how to solve problems.  STEAM activities and Makerspaces offer good places to start with hands-on learning.

Flexibility – as with all learners, irrespective of gender, it is important to remain flexible.  It tends to be boys in particular, who do not appear to be natural learners in the formal educational setting.  These boys may show little interest in completing worksheets, working kindly with others or reading the class text.  Differentiation, however, is an important aspect of teaching.  By teaching successfully, you will adopt flexibility in your teaching approach, to differentiate according to the needs of all the students in your classroom.  Having taught boys with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) for example, I know first-hand what frustrating challenges these issues can present for the teacher.  In such situations, I have found it necessary to establish special learning stations, in which certain students can work freely on tasks and challenges that interest them.  Although these students may not always work on the same learning objectives as others in the classroom, this is precisely what it means to be flexible and differentiate.

[1] Statistics from the UK Department for Education show that boys tend to be excluded three times more, on average, than girls: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-exclusions

[2] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/01/150126125015.htm

[3] Across OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation & Development) countries show greater female to male ratios in higher education: http://www.oecd.org/about/membersandpartners/

Flipped learning is a pedagogical model in which the teacher delivery during in-class time is flipped with the homework elements of a course.  As a type of blended learning technique, students can watch relevant videos at home, which have been prepared by the teacher, while using their in-class time to focus on exercises, projects or discussions.

My own transition to a flipped learning classroom has been a gradual, organic process.  Although I still believe there is a place for the traditional (“sage-on-the- stage”) teaching approach, I’ve come to recognise the many advantages of a flipped learning model.   Sharing relevant tutorial videos with students and colleagues, both from my own YouTube channel and links elsewhere on the Web, enables me to spend more time as a facilitator of learning.  This simply means that learners spend less time passively listening at the beginning of the lesson and more time engaged in activities to develop their skills.  By doing away with the traditional classroom, which is very teacher centred, it also means that I have extra time to provide valuable one-on-one assistance to students who need it the most.

According to Eric Sheninger (2016), author of Uncommon Learning, there are two main components associated with the flipped learning approach:

1.  Students watch lectures and consume other forms of content outside of school at their own pace whilst communicating with peers and teachers using online learning tools.  In my opinion, this point about students working at their own pace cannot be understated.  The ability for students to pause, rewind and fast-forward a tutorial video means that they are in a much better situation to assimilate new learning.

2.  Students apply what they have learnt during in class time with assistance from the teacher.  As there is more time freed up during the lesson itself, there are more opportunities for small-group work and one-to-one contact with lower-performing students.

In order to make the lesson time itself more engaging while integrating formative assessment, there are many web-based tools that can complement the students’ main in class activities:

– Poll Everywhere

– Plickers

– Kahoot

– TodaysMeet

In addition, there are also some fantastic tools out there for students themselves to become authors, teachers and collaborators, working together to teach content to each other.  Some of the best of these tools include:

– Adobe Voice 

– VideoScribe

– Explain Everything

– Quizlet 

– Google Slides 

As well as giving my students opportunities to use these tools, I have used each one of these applications myself as a medium in which to share information with students for them to learn at their own pace.  As Sheninher himself states though, ‘pedagogy always trumps technology’.  For digital learning to be implemented effectively, we should focus on pedagogy first and technology second.  When integrating technology, we need to remember that it is less about the tool and more about what students can do with the tools handed to them.

That being said, with all these web-based tools and other digital applications available, it makes sense that a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) or 1:1 technology initiative can radically enhance the flipped learning model.  By providing students with access to their own device, it can bring out the best of what flipped learning has to offer.  According to Sheninger (2016, pp. 117),

The flipped classroom is an excellent first step in making students’ in-class experiences more active, more student centred, and more meaningful. Combining the best aspects of the flipped classroom with the power of 1:1 technology would allow for an even more radical reshaping of the classroom. School should become a place where students can learn at their own individual paces, become active creators instead of solely passive content recipients, and learn in an environment that they “own”, which adjusts rapidly to meet their learning needs and interests.      

Quizlet is a web application that enables users to easily make digital flashcards.  Although it was originally conceived to help with memorisation, the application helps students learn any subject and can be used as part of the teacher’s toolkit for formative assessment.  For teachers, the tool is particularly effective during the introductory stage of a lesson to recap on key terms, or during the plenary, to check and consolidate students’ understanding.  The weblink to the flashcard set can also be shared with students without them needing to have an account with Quizlet themselves.

Once the flashcards have been made (with terms on one side and definitions on the other), Quizlet provides users with several study modes:

Flash Cards 

Gravity

Learn 

Spell

Match 

Concluding thoughts…

Students who use the application as a study aid are the main users of Quizlet.  However, the usefulness of this tool for teachers should not be underestimated.  The ease with which teachers can create digital flashcards, share these with students and use the tool to assess students’ understanding makes this an application well worth using in the classroom.