'We Make Use of...' Charanga

For over a year now, we have used the Charanga website to aid our delivery of the music curriculum across the school. The scheme is used by adults who are 'not musical', those who have a decent subject knowledge and those who play instruments and are very knowledgable and confident in this subject area. All find it a useful resource (in different ways).

First of all, it's more than just a scheme. There's loads more too!

The scheme is useful and split into six units of work per year group (one per half term). Of course, in school you could juggle some of these around, but there is progression built in. The units come with lessons planned and resourced, but the teacher still needs to teach with them and possibly even adapt the lesson and resources for their class. Each unit is based upon a song or composition and builds up an understanding of it and the way it has been produced. The image above shows units for the autumn term for Year Four and Five. There's sheet music, backing tracks, interactive videos...

 

In addition, there is:

Music World is a Charanga programme especially for children to use themselves. It’s a safe online space where children can learn more about music and practise their instrument if they are learning to pla.

Song Centre is 100s of songs to enjoy with your pupils + singing courses for younger children.

 

Freestyle Resource Centre is a bank of songs to be used as you wish. 

There's planning to support SEND pupils too and an assessment tool.If you're interested in it, sign up for a free trial and give it a go...

Charanga is provided to our school through our LA. We have not been asked to write this post or received anything for it. This is, as always, the view and opinion of two full-time class teachers about something we use in the classroom. We hope it is useful for others to read. 

'We Make Use of...' 123 Learning Books

Our next post in our 'We Make Use of...' series...
"123 Learning books boost confidence and attainment in maths.  That's a fairly bold claim, but our repeat sales are testament to this.  They each work on the principle that some people need and benefit from extra support and practice." That's taken from the company's website, and we'd agree. 

In Years 3 - 6 we've used Plus 1, Power of 2 and Perform with Times Tables with some excellent results. The books are set out in a very similar fashion to Toe by Toe (for those of you that are familiar with it). A pupil, with an adult, answers mathematical questions a couple of pages at a time and when they've shown that they can recall a fact and group of facts a number of times, they move on through the book. The books get progressively more challenging and therefore build confidence while working on attainment.

It's important to provide this intervention for the right pupils. Also, for some, the books stay in school and are completed with TAs and teachers only; others complete some in school and some at home. For some children, maths is difficult because they're missing basic fact knowledge or strategies: this can help with that. 

If ordering, contact them in advance. Discounts are given for larger orders...

We've written this blog post to outline our use of these publications. We have not been asked to write this or received anything for the purpose or expectation of this blog post being written. This is, as always, the view and opinion of two full-time class teachers about something we use in the classroom.

'We Make Use of...' Night Zookeeper

Again, something we've know about for sometime, but took a while to get around to using. Over the past five years, we've shared the work of Night Zookeeper many times and often spoken to and shared ideas with 'Night Zookeeper Paul'. Since September 2015, we've been using the Night Zookeeper website with our classes.

Free Elements

First of all, it is possible to use the Night Zookeeper website for free. Something Night Zookeeper state is that they are a 'Social Enterprise' and will always offer 'free elements' of their site. This allows all children, in all schools, from all walks of life to access and benefit from what they offer. For us, this sums up the company and the employees (many of whom are co-founders and company directors). They're just a nice bunch! Take a look at 'Free Resources', every class gets a Class Blog (ours: http://tinyurl.com/pqmc7lo & http://tinyurl.com/ouo84vx) and Star Writing. 

Image credit: twitter.com/nightzookeeper

Subscribing

We just said it can be used for free. Why subscribe? We thoroughly recommend a subscription. Through this, a teacher can set their own 'Teacher Missions'. This is where the class complete a task that their teacher chosen the objectives for, work bank and more. In addition, Children can complete their own missions, change their avatar, create animals and more. As a teacher, the writing can be assessed against the criteria set. In the time we've used the site (seven months), there have been many, many useful upgrades and there are more in the pipe line. What we've written here is only a taster of the site. When signing up, full access is initially given for free, so sign up and try it to see how you get on with it.

What We've Done

We've used it to complete the 100 Word Challenge on a weekly basis. In addition, we've also completed the Star Writing Challenge. We've read other children's work on commented upon what they've written. We've received comments ourselves. A small number of safeguarding issues have cropped up (sharing information), but when they have (in this safe environment), it's been a good opportunity to learn for the children involved. We took part in World Creative Writing Month 16, finishing 19th and writing over 94,000 words in about 20 days. The children enjoyed using the site, have written lots and been enthused by it. It has been a positive addition to our classrooms. Most of our writing has been in addition to our English curriculum and some has been part of our English work. Many children have chosen to use it at home and during break times in school.

'We Make Use of...' AR

Picture credit: www.renlearn.co.uk

The main impacts of Accelerated Reader have been engaging children in reading (or reading more), reading at the correct level and tracking what children read and how frequently.

Looking back, my previous tracking and knowledge of children's independent reading was not good enough. I'm now far more aware of what's going on with the independent reading of the thirty children in my class.

Initially, the children take a vocabulary test. This test provides the children a level at which to select books from. Each time the children read a book they complete a quiz on that book. As a result of the quiz, children earn points towards their target. Each child's target is based upon reading for a certain length of time each day (20 minutes in our case) and their reading ability. This, through comprehension questions, indicates (to some extent) their understanding of that book. The use of levels, target setting and certificates has inspired many children to read more than they had previously.

Certificates are presented in class, year group assemblies or whole school assembly depending on the certificate. In addition to the ones within AR, we also created some of our own.

As with many online platforms, it continues to develop and add new features. There is a wealth of data within the site to look at the school, year groups, classes and individual children's abilities, gaps, progress and so on.

Note: We have written this post as a result of using this website in our classrooms. We have not been asked or paid to write. We are often approached to write posts, but have and will continue to only write about what we have done in our classrooms. We're two full-time class teachers choosing to blog about our experiences.

'We Make Use of...' 100WC

We've been aware of the 100 Word Challenge since 2011. In the past, we've used the prompt occasionally in class and commented upon children's writing shared via the 100 Word site. And, in 2012, Julia, the creator of the challenge, even attended a TeachMeet that we organised. 

This year, through the Night Zookeeper website, we've started to use the 100 Word Challenge on a weekly basis. We've made time each week to complete the challenge and to comment upon other children's work. We've seen it be hugely beneficial to the children and had an impact on many of their writing abilities. Generally, in our English lessons, the children need to demonstrate their ability to follow a certain text type in a certain way (there are success criteria and learning objectives to meet). The 100 Word Challenge is different: write a response to the prompt in your own way, how you like... 

Some children have written entries as good as their normal every-day writing; others have been really enthused by it and created writing better than they do at other times. Once the children have completed their 100 Word entry, they visit other class' entries and read the children's work. After they've read it, they leave comments for that child. Thus, widening their experience of writing and being critical of their peers. 

Image credit: https://100wc.net

All-in-all, it's been a wonderful addition to our classroom practice. As we use Night Zookeeper, we've also made use of the Star Writing each week. Although the 100WC can be carried out through the Night Zookeeper website, any blog site can be used and Julia has recently started offering blogs hosted on 100wc.net (Contact her for details).

Should you wish to pop by and read our writing or leave us a comment or two, our Night Zookeeper writing can be found http://tinyurl.com/pqmc7lo & http://tinyurl.com/ouo84vx.

'We Make Use of...' Mathletics

Image credit: www.3plearning.com

We've been using Mathletics for about six years now. Initially, it provided a quick and easy way to direct children towards online activities.

However, it's much more powerful than that and is being improved all the time. There are no doubt parts of the site we are yet to find or utilise fully. The 'Live Maths', which is no doubt the area that children are drawn to initially, is ideal to get children to practise mental arithmetic as it involves competing against anonymous peers - sometimes in class, but often outside of the classroom. Children are engaged by this and enjoy competing against other children from around the world. A lesser known aspect of this, is the ability to change the level at which children are working to make the mental questions harder.

For home learning, we're able to set tasks that link to what has been taught in class and that children must complete before they can take part in any other part of Mathletics. Afterwards, the score the child achieved is logged and can be viewed by the teacher. Some teaching can then take place and the children can even retake the activity to see if their understanding of it has improved. There is a wide range of topic areas and children have the ability to self-differentiate by choosing or harder tasks from within the topic area.

We are increasingly making use of this website to provide personalised learning tasks in the home. As we adapt to assessment without levels and integrate the mastery curriculum, many schools are assessing children based on statements of mathematical skill. Mathletics provides an excellent tool for developing curricula based on these statements through the setting up of personalised programmes. Teachers can create a programme made up of the different statements and drag relevant activities into it making a personalised programme, which children can work on independently at home. The great thing is that  many, if not all, of the activities come with tutorial videos to help parents and children. We had two set programmes used in Year Six at a working towards Level 4 and working towards Level 5 and, by assessing which areas children needed most practise, we were able to target home learning at areas that the children needed most. The setting up of the programmes take time, but if several people are working on them this is not only simple, it is also a tool which can be used across the school and for some time to come.

Times Tables Toons are a range of music videos which encourage children to chant their multiplication facts. They are a little cheesy, but certainly catchy enough even if they are discrete from associated division facts. 

There are various different certificates that can be achieved by children working with Mathletics. We hand these out in class (Bronze), in year group assemblies (Silver) and whole school assemblies (Gold). This recognises the achievements of those receiving the award and encourages others to also work towards the certificates.

Note: We have written this post as a result of using this website in our classrooms. We have not been asked or paid to write. We are often approached to write posts, but have and will continue to only write about what we have done in our classrooms. We're two full-time class teachers choosing to blog about our experiences.

'We Make Use of...' Alan Peat

Our next post in our 'We Make Use of...' series...

A number of colleagues have been lucky enough to attend training run by Alan Peat. Below are the books* I currently have at my disposal in my classroom. These books, the information brought back from the training and our adoption of a whole-school approach to English coverage has transformed my teaching of English and in turn the children's attainment an application (across the curriculum) of rules of written English.

In addition to those books, at the time of writing, I have the following apps* installed (indicated by 'Downloaded') on my iPad device:

Whole school - The first message that came back from the training was for us to use a whole school approach: share vocabulary, tools, displays, diagrams and so on. These were mostly from Alan's training, but in staff meetings, we also generated vocabulary and resources we wanted to us.

Punctuation - Alan's book was purchased for each class. As a result, every teacher had at their disposal a book that gave informative and useful information about each punctuations type and how children could be taught how to use them.

Sentence Types - As with the punctuation book, 'Writing Exciting Sentences: Age 7 Plus' was also purchased for each class. Again, teachers now had a method of helping children to improve the variety of sentence structures used in their writing. We looked at which sentences could be introduced in each year group and the accompanying app helped us know with which text types to use the sentences.

Language - Throughout the training, books and apps (as mentioned before), the main factor in helping children to improve their writing ability has been through shared and consistent vocabulary that children can hear again and again and become increasingly familiar with.

Apps / books at home - We've shared the apps and books with parents to allow them to reinforce this learning outside of the classroom. 

These are just our experiences and it's been very positive. There's much more Alan offers on his site and through his training. See alanpeat.com for more details.

*Some of these books / apps were purchased by the school we work at, others by us personally and some provided free of charge by Alan Peat Ltd. None of those were for the purpose or expectation of this blog post being written. This is, as always, the view and opinion of two full-time class teachers about something we use in the classroom. 

'We Make Use of...' Spellodrome

This is the first post of a series that we're goign to tag with 'We Make Use of...'

We've been making use of Spellodrome for about five years. Initially a little sceptical of how Mathletics (covering all of maths) could  have a similar site focusing on only spelling would work, we began to use it.

Image credit: www.3plearning.com

In the site, there are word lists set up that can be used. These link to curriculum expectations. There is also the ability to set up custom word lists. To learn the spellings there are a large variety of enjoyable games for the children to complete. These games include: putting parts of words back together, a similar game to hangman, writing word in sentences, word searches and more. The games enable the children to learn the words, their meaning and the sounds that make them up in a variety of contexts.

Both teachers, pupils and parents are able to track pupils' progress

Within Spellodrome, there are certificates that an be earned by children for their independent work. We hand these out in class and in assemblies within school. The children are engaged and motivated by them and, seeing them being handed out, also motivates others to use Spellodrome too.

We have used this to accompany weekly set spelling lists, as part of spelling lessons, to support prevention and intervention groups, for independent work and more.

That's just a small insight into what we've found Spellodrome useful for. If you want to know more, please get in contact with us or 3P Learning.

Note: We have written this post as a result of using this website in our classrooms. We have not been asked or paid to write. We are often approached to write posts, but have and will continue to only write about what we have done in our classrooms. We're two full-time class teachers choosing to blog about our experiences.

Manga High maths games

We were first saw Manga High at BETT a few years ago. Looking down over the balcony I could see an enormous manga style figure and wanted to know more. After the requisite sales pitch, we were impressed with what looked like fun games that could be accessed and, at the time, some of them were free.

Returning to school, we duly incorporated some of those games into our maths work.  A particular favourite was estimating by chucking penguins out across an ice flow. The children enjoyed this both because it was visually stimulating and challenging.

Image credit: www.mangahigh.com 

The challenge is one of the great things about Manga High. It seems to be primarily designed for secondary and therefore is usable as a genuine challenge for more able children. We have used these activities as a basis for homework for our more able mathematicians in Year Five and there are even more options available for maths groups in Year Six.

Recently, and rather amazingly, Manga High is now free to use when you register as a school and get some customisable options to work on. Whilst we have not made major use of it in class yet and certainly not explored the options that are available when you register, it is a great resource for teachers to direct parents towards for mathematically challenging home learning tasks. Our children enjoy it because of the style of the website and because of the challenge it offers and invariably move on to some of the other tasks that are available to play.