We were pleased to award Clore Shalom School an award for two laptops to enhance the learning and motivation of vulnerable pupils at the school. Lorraine Field (Office Manager) gave some strong arguments for how the laptops would enhance learning and motivation including a flipped classroom use:
"During class time, the laptops would be useful to support vulnerable pupils with pre-teaching topics they may not be familiar with e.g. during a topic on the Mayans, to show pictures to those pupils who may not have had the opportunities to go abroad and see ancient civilisations, or for a topic on healthy eating, for those children who are not given varied and balanced meals to be able to access pictures/videos/information etc.
Word banks would be created and used on programmed, such as Clicker and Widget, with access to dictionaries and thesauruses to help those children, particularly reluctant readers, who do not yet have a vast vocabulary and will encourage them to use keywords they are less familiar with as they will have access to the spellings, definitions and synonyms.
They will be used to support children with their home learning, which is now being done on an online platform. There will be opportunities for children to access and complete their homework using these laptops in school in a supportive environment i.e. in a lunch time session, where they are unable to access this at home.”
Lorraine went on to argue how access to various interactive programs would also help:
“We also find that children who are reluctant to learn times tables and practise handwriting and spellings, and have little support with this at home and little motivation, will be more motivated to do so by using online resources such as Times Tables Rockstars, Purple Mash Spellings and Letter Join. We have found that there is a high take up of access to these programmes for some of our pupils in school, but less so for our vulnerable pupils. Again, to ensure equality for all, we plan on making these laptops available throughout the day during break and lunch times for the vulnerable children to be able to come and access these to further their learning by practising more in these areas.”
Lorraine also brought in growth-mindset benefits of the vulnerable children being able to use I.T:
“The children we have in mind who would benefit from using these laptops during class time would be children who don't always feel ready to commit to paper what they want to say and are scared to take risks and get things wrong. Therefore, to be able to complete some of their writing on a laptop, where they are able to delete and make changes will enable them to feel safe to take further challenges. The idea is that they develop this skill first using laptops and can then transfer it to their books, with a deeper knowledge and ability that it is ok to make mistakes as this is how we learn best.”