Hello friends, I am Dr. Sam Fecich and I am so excited to be sharing with you some Fecich Favorite edtech tools when it comes to engaging students in the online learning space.
At a time when the opportunity for global travel is diminished, with school trips and external visitors to the classroom off the agenda for most schools, expanding students’ horizons and giving them access to a world beyond their immediate environment is more important than ever. Being able to experience different places, and hear other people’s lived experiences is key to fostering global citizenship as well as building values like empathy and compassion.
As an educator, knowing the students and families I work with is essential as a child-centred approach is at the heart of what I do. This is why I identify with the MARIO Framework—it is an evidence-informed practice which has the students’ well-being and progress at its core. Equally, it helps practitioners and students by providing a scaffold for support classes, small groups, and individual student sessions. It clearly complements the work which is happening in the mainstream classroom through focusing on skills and knowledge whilst allowing students to become efficient, resilient, and reflective.
When the country needed to close its schools due to coronavirus, like many schools nationally, Beacon Hill Academy found this challenging. All staff and learners in Beacon Hill Academy already had both email addresses and Active Directory login details, but our technology implementation in lessons was limited at this point. School closures forced us to accelerate using digital technology to support pupils’ learning and development.
Nothing transforms a young life more than literacy. And, for a few young children in Years 1 and 2, the hours at home during lockdown might have been a blissful opportunity to devour books that they hadn’t previously had time to read. For many others, especially among the 380,000 UK schoolchildren who don’t own a single book, regular reading will simply have stopped when schools closed. With no daily reading record to complete, no dedicated reading time in class and no chance to share stories with others, the gains that these young children might have made in reading fluency and confidence before schools closed will have melted away.