The schools bringing lessons to life

Today’s schools are moving with the times, and many are investing in highly sophisticated technology, discovers Paul Bray

Break new ground: Ardingly pupils search for fossils
Break new ground: Ardingly pupils search for fossils Credit: Photo: Getty

Nine-year-old Annabel Bailey is a quick worker and finished her art teacher’s set task on Matisse with time to spare.

A generation ago, she might have whiled away the remainder of the lesson by gazing out of the window, irritating her fellow pupils or doing something interesting with her hair.

Not today. By the end of the lesson she had — entirely without prompting — used her iPad to create a photo album of Matisse’s best pieces, found and read a short biography, and designed a presentation about his life and work.

If you want proof that the iPad generation are not all bored, boorish and butterfly-brained in the classroom, Annabel and her peers at Putney High School in west London are it.

All Putney High’s girls from Year 4 upwards have the use of an iPad, part of a growing trend among independent schools to ensure pupils are equipped with the latest technology and encouraged to use it with imagination and flair.

“The iPad is incredibly engaging,” says Jo Wallace, head of Putney High’s junior school. “Education has evolved to become much more interactive and enquiry-based, and the girls relish the opportunity to be free to explore their thinking and learning. They’re getting much better at finding their own solutions to problems rather than being spoon-fed.”

Going on a school trip to Hampton Court Palace? Take your iPad to record the highlights. Want to know why summers in India are so wet? Look up monsoons and create your own graph. Orienteering around the school grounds? Use a map app.

It’s never too young to start. “We’ve introduced LearnPads in our pre-prep, which enables teachers to easily manage what the children are using, or lets them take control of their own learning by scanning QR [quick response] codes to choose topics that interest them,” says David Horton, ICT systems manager at Ballard School in Hampshire.

Even the school nursery has a couple of tablet computers on which one- and two-year-olds can improve their coordination skills (although at that age, the sandpit is usually more attractive).

It’s not just pupils who can resort to new technology; teachers are also finding innovative applications for it. Ballard’s PE, dance and drama teachers use video recording to give feedback and allow pupils to view their performance in an objective light, including slow-motion analysis.

Foreign language teachers can record and play back students’ pronunciation on their tablet computers, and let them compare their efforts with recordings of native speakers.

Suzy Pett, deputy head of English at Surbiton High School in Surrey, has used YouTube videos to give students feedback on essays and create virtual classrooms to guide them in developing their skills.

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She also creates poetry podcasts to recap on lessons and provide further stimulus for pupils who want to be stretched. “I have girls staying after school to guest-star in the podcasts,” she says. “Nothing beats working with a pupil one-to-one to create a bespoke resource for the rest of the class.

“It’s also beneficial to allow children to express themselves outside traditional written methods. Making a podcast with one of my Year 12 pupils, I was struck by how eloquent she was orally. Speaking her answers — as opposed to writing — helped her, and me, to see her huge potential.”

Increasingly, schools are incorporating students’ own cultural reference points into the curriculum. At Malvern St James Girls’ School, for example, GCSE and A-level students were tasked with designing a car, creating a business plan and pitching it to “investors”, including the head of product design at 1the Morgan Motor Company, in a nod to the hit BBC series Dragons’ Den.

Increasingly, schools are investing in highly sophisticated technology. Croydon High School in Surrey has installed a total immersion space — dubbed the 4D room — which combines light, sound and projection to “take pupils to any time or place”. When Year 4 studied a novel about the Lebanese civil war, teachers uploaded images of the conflict to the 4D room and programmed noises of bullets and shelling.

“Stepping into the immersion space was like opening a window into the heroine’s world and allowed our girls to identify with what they were reading,” says Sophie Bradshaw, head of the junior school. “It was no surprise that they then wrote poetry filled with vivid images and emotion.”

New technology need not always be expensive, however. The Perse School in Cambridge uses an app called Plickers, which enables students to vote on questions by holding up pieces of card; the results are automatically scanned and collated by the camera on the teacher’s tablet.

“Students — like the rest of us — tend to focus better if they’re actively engaged,” observes Perse’s deputy head, Paul Baker.

Of course, teachers don’t rely entirely on technology. The Year 5 art class at Dorset House School in West Sussex are working on iPads using an app favoured by David Hockney. Previously, they spent some lessons in the school’s woodland, creating art from “found objects” à la Andy Goldsworthy.

“The mixture of methods keeps lessons fresh and the children approach their sketchbooks and pencils with renewed enthusiasm,” says the school’s head of art, Carly Harrison.

“It’s about striking the right balance,” agrees Pett. “I enjoy using technology in class, but there’s no substitute for a teacher’s enthusiasm.

Pupils can sense a lukewarm teacher a mile off, and no amount of whizzy gizmos will make up for that. My classroom is full of colourful and creative materials. I have a big ‘jar of quotations’ on my desk and a growing ‘word tree’ on my wall.”

Croydon High School in Surrey has installed a total immersion space — dubbed the 4D room

“In history lessons, best practice tends to involve primary sources,” says David Flower, head of history at Dulwich College in south-east London. This could mean using documents from the ancestry.com website to understand the course of World War One. But most boys are more excited when shown the college’s rare, 16th-century copy of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs.

“It provokes a wonderful reaction,” adds Flower. “Documents can be displayed on screens, but seeing, touching and smelling the past is almost always the most enticing prospect for pupils.”

Living authors and artists can also create a stir. ACS Hillingdon International School in Middlesex has welcomed Axel Scheffler, illustrator of The Gruffalo, and the storyteller Niall de Búrca to run workshops on creative writing and illustration.

“You can always detect a frisson of excitement,” says lower school librarian Peggy Travers. “This immersion in rich language improves students’ vocabulary, increases their confidence and encourages them to share ideas.”

Ardingly College Prep School in West Sussex bases its curriculum around termly topics, each enlivened by inspiring events dubbed Stunning Starter, Marvellous Middle and Fabulous Finish.

“In Year 5, our recent topic on the Romans began with the children creating Roman shields, incorporating their design and research skills,” says director of studies Harriet Connor.

“After learning about Roman battle formations, the two classes ‘fought’a Roman battle. The Marvellous Middle was a visit from an independent drama company, which engaged the children in a play about Roman life. Our Fabulous Finish featured a Roman feast, where the children reclined on the floor, tasting different foods while learning about Roman culture and etiquette.”

When resources aren’t available in school, they may be found outside. Pupils at Felsted School in Essex wondered whether it was practicable to produce energy from the oil in discarded orange peel, so they worked with scientists at the University of Cambridge to conduct some practical research.

“The flexibility of our timetable allows us the freedom to explore new ideas and take time out of school to visit institutions and professionals who can help pupils develop their understanding and knowledge,” says science teacher Christina Bury.

The Cambridge academics were so impressed that they invited the boys to present alongside them at the Cambridge Festival of Plants, and they’re hoping to publish their findings.”

Sometimes fate takes a hand, too. Ardingly College was delighted last year when students and teachers found real dinosaur bones and other fossils during building work for a new boarding house.

Weekly “dino digs” soon became a hit with all age groups, and because palaeontologists from Imperial College London are studying the site, students have visited the university and gained insights into scientific research.

“Pupils have been amazed at the picture we’re able to paint of the school site from early Cretaceous times, with Iguanodons wandering around instead of cows and huge, flying Pterosaurs instead of jackdaws,” says Jane Blythe, the school’s head of biology.

“One joy of our dino digs is that they get away from a lot of the technology students are now so used to. The excitement of cracking a rock open with a big hammer and finding fossilised life that no one has ever seen before isn’t something that can be generated from a textbook or the internet.”