Waldegrave School for Girls
TurningPoint passes maths test
Overview
Maura Cassels, Head of Mathematics at Waldegrave School For Girls, is always looking out for interesting ways to liven up her lessons and encourage her pupils to participate in more interactive learning. So when she heard about the benefits of TurningPoint’s multiple choice assessment tool, she was really keen to give it a try. We arranged for her to have a TurningPoint trial.
Preparation
Maura was a little apprehensive about how the lesson would go, because she had never used the product before and didn’t have much time to familiarise herself with it. But one of the biggest advantages of TurningPoint is how easy it is to set up and get started; as it works inside PowerPoint, you can be up and running in just seconds. Maura wanted to focus on fractions in her maths class so Mitt Nathwani, the TurningPoint Product Manager, helped her find some relevant content and set her up with the software. As she was already familiar with PowerPoint, she was able to get to grips with it straight away.
The next step was to set up the hardware. Maura had heard that TurningPoint usually worked alongside a SMART board, so was slightly concerned that the Hitachi Cambridge Interactive Whiteboards used at Waldegrave School might not be compatible. But another great feature of TurningPoint is the flexibility in the choice of hardware - it works equally well with other manufacturers’ whiteboards. This is also the case with the response device or handset. TurningPoint allows you to use all kinds of competitors’ units if you already own them, or even PDAs with the new vPad software, if this is normally how you teach.
The event
Maura began her lesson by asking the class questions using PowerPoint slides as an introduction. She then moved on to the interactive questions and after each one the whole class could see a report in graphic form which showed what percentage of the pupils got the question right or wrong. After each question she went through the correct method for finding the answer before moving on to the next one.
Another clever feature of the tool, which encourages group participation, is a grid on the screen that lets the pupils know which pupils have not answered yet. This feature can be hidden if necessary or, as in this case, it can display the keypad numbers rather than the child’s name. This encouraged all the children to concentrate on answering the questions as quickly as possible and excitement grew in the class about who was quick to answer and who was slow.
As is often the case, some new questions came up as the lesson progressed and Maura easily added new slides and followed the course of her lesson without wasting any time. She was also impressed by the wide choice of hardware that can be used with the tool, especially with the PDA option which was demonstrated to her at the end of the lesson by Mitt Nathwani, the TurningPoint Product Manager.
As word of the exciting new tool spread around the school, one of the two Deputy Heads came in to see TurningPoint in action and was very impressed with what she saw. Both she and Maura were interested in how it could be incorporated into the school as a whole.
Following the event
Afterwards, Maura was able to review all the answers given by the class by looking at the detailed reports for each child, showing how they had answered each of the ten questions. These reports were a great way of helping her to notice weaknesses and areas for improvement and she was able to use the information to set individual targets for each of her pupils.
Overall, Maura was delighted with the results, commenting after the lesson, “Using TurningPoint in the classroom allowed every single pupil to have their understanding of fractions individually assessed and the lesson objectives were adjusted immediately to the specific needs of the group. The lesson pace and level of difficulty was altered to suit the group and the learning was assessed during the plenary. Pupils who required intervention were identified, without public exposure, by their responses and individual help was then targeted towards them during a paper practice exercise. This is an excellent Assessment for Learning tool”.