Screen Cast

Sometimes when I have met with parents to discuss their child's progress they have said to my that their son or daughter has sometimes expressed a lack of understanding in how to answer the different questions they have to complete in their Religious Studies lessons. This is a completely understandable issue. I have been thinking recently about the concept of flipped learning. By this the learning is done at home in preparation for the lesson and in the lesson instead of doing the teaching you are able to do fun and creative activities in order to demonstrate what has been understood.

I am a little daunted by trying this out, but in my reading one thing which struck me was the importance given to videos as a means through which information could be shared with the class. I have already written about how much I love that here. I thought therefore that it might be sensible to create some videos explaining the different answering structures we use and how they could be deployed. Encouragingly in one of my lessons I said to a class I had made one, and one of the boys in there said he had already watched it. Result. I plan to make some more for each of the different questions so that in homework time I can encourage the classes to watch over the videos as a reminder of what they should be doing.

To do this I used a tool called Screen Cast O-Matic. It's terribly simple; just open it up, pull the recording area to the right amount of your screen and hit record. You can even record a voiceover of you awkwardly explaining something. I am the Queen of Awkward so this of course was right up my alley.

My favourite collaborative tools.

Collaboration is such a big word in education right now. I once went to a seminar which began with, and I kid you not 20 different videos or pictures of famous people in films talking about the importance of collaboration. Suffice to say, it was not a good seminar!

Despite this, collaboration in the classroom is something I really believe in. I think it is fundamentally important for pupils to be able to brainstorm ideas and share them together so they have a real chance to learn from one another. Here is a list of a few of the ways I do this in the classroom.

• Padlet and Linoit

Both of these online tools allow a class of children to share their ideas on a certain subject. You can get them to answer a question together, or share what they have learnt from the lesson as part of the plenary. If we are brainstorming we focus on what has been written and then whittle down to which we think are the best suggestions. I would then share the webpage with them so when they are completing homework later on they can refer back to what was suggested and utilise the best ideas.

• Google Docs

This can be used in a number of different ways. I can create a document which they share their ideas into, or they can complete a piece of work with another person without the hassle of sending versions back and forth. They can make slideshows, word documents or spreadsheets. Last night I found this super helpful video explaining how to use collaboration on Google drive.

• Videos

This is a new one for me but next week I am going to try creating videos with my year 7s and 8s as a revision tool. We spend a lot of time brainstorming different Common Entrance questions and talking about how they could be answered. I am planning to get them to record a point for a question and upload it to a folder. When they are all uploaded we will edit them in iMovie and each child will cut together the best points so we will get an idea of what might be written in the answer. I am so hoping it will work, I will report back and let you know!

I’d love to hear any other useful collaboration tools you use in your classroom. Thanks for reading.