Churchill Gardens School
An Exciting Maths Lesson For Year 4
Overview
Ioan Evans, a teacher at Churchill Gardens School in Westminster, enjoys experimenting with innovative teaching and was keen to test TurningPoint with his year 4 class. The class has pupils with a wide range of abilities including a couple of SEN children (Special Educational Needs) so Mr Evans was looking for a teaching tool which would involve all pupils and make them feel included in the lesson. He was also interested in seeing what impact the TurningPoint tool would have on the excitable class of 8 and 9 year olds, during a challenging maths lesson on adding and subtracting.
Preparation
When preparing his lesson, Mr Evans browsed through the wide range of TurningPoint resources available to teachers, to see if there was something fitting his requirements (there is a huge library of resources with over 1300 questions specifically designed around the National Curriculum and covering the different key stages and pedagogic subjects). Mr Evans didn’t find exactly what he was looking for but took inspiration from the library in creating his own content using PowerPoint and the TurningPoint tool. He was surprised how quickly he could create his own material from scratch, taking only a few minutes to add TurningPoint questions on adding and subtracting to his PowerPoint document.
For the hardware, Mr Evans used a SMART Board and a set of TurningPoint radio frequency (RF) handsets, which are perfect for classrooms like his but can also be used in much larger rooms for events such as the school assembly.
Mr Evans labelled each handset with the child’s name and his lesson preparation was complete, (you do not need to name each TurningPoint handset as they are numbered, but he thought that giving the children a handset with their name on it would be more exciting).
The event
As predicted, the children were very excited indeed at the prospect of new technology in their classroom, particularly when Mr Evans told the children that what they were going to do was similar to, “Who wants to be a millionaire?”
The anticipation grew as each child was given a handset and Mr Evans explained how the tool worked and began to ask the questions.
Despite the high level of excitement in the class, the children quickly grasped the concept of how to use the tool and were keenly focused on the questions. Many of the children had never seen anything like TurningPoint before and were amazed at how it worked, some even shouting out and pointing when the answers appeared on the screen. But one of the greatest advantages of using TurningPoint for Mr Evans was that it enabled all his pupils to feel involved in the lesson, whatever their level of ability; even the special needs children, who found the maths questions difficult, were each able to have their own handset and get involved with the help of a teaching assistant.
After each question, TurningPoint showed which was the correct answer, what percentage (or what number) of pupils got the answer right, resulting in great mirth and merriment. TurningPoint’s detailed reports showing the answers from individual numbered handsets also allow a teacher to study individual pupils’ performance and analyse progress, either during the lesson itself at the plenary stage, after the lesson or over a longer period of time.
After the lesson
As well as being a source of fun and excitement for his pupils, Mr Evans found that the dynamic learning environment created by TurningPoint helped the children to focus on the subject matter itself. He also mentioned that as well as being a great learning tool during a lesson, Turningpoint would be perfect to use during SATs tests (Key Stage Tests).
The TurningPoint trial was a great success and Mr Evans will continue to use it in his lessons from now on. He commented, “This valuable resource introduces a new exciting and interactive way of teaching and learning in the classroom.”