Background
Riverside School is a mixed, secondary school with a selective sixth form, situated in Barking, Essex. Despite the large number of students of a wide range of abilities, the school prides itself on promoting a caring, friendly atmosphere. In accordance with the motto ‘excellence for all’, each student at the school is placed in a Form Group under the guidance of a tutor, who gets to know each student very well. Learners with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) follow the same carefully considered curriculum as their peers.
Soren Ramsing, Assistant Headteacher – Personal Development, says: “In our second year of using Kloodle, we realised that we could track learners’ progress almost in real-time and at any stage could intervene early when we could see that a specific group of learners either needed more support or extra provision. These interventions helped us to achieve our objective which is for every single student to participate in six or more enrichment activities which specifically develop their skills and character. Kloodle has a functionality feature which enables us to identify quickly and effectively all sub-groups of learners, such as pupil premium or ethnic background, and maps them to the activities performed. The data also empowers us to decide whether a particular activity attracts sufficient participation, and, if not, it can be replaced, keeping the suite fresh and appealing to students.”
The school places emphasis on learning, excellent parental support and a close-knit team of enthusiastic and talented staff. The strong culture is embedded through the key values: Learning is at the heart of everything; celebration of diversity; respect for each other; high aspirations. Thus, the pupils are encouraged to succeed.
Activities And Essential Wider Curriculum (EWC)
The curriculum is supported by a wide range of extra-curricular activities, referred to as ‘essential wider curriculum’ at Riverside School, which have been designed so that the pupils can develop their personal and social strengths. This includes:
Leaders ensure that pupils from all backgrounds and of all abilities take up these enrichment opportunities.
The school wants to collect the data on all the activities to demonstrate all of this enrichment and the activities the students have participated in during the term to the Senior Leadership Team and parents. The easy way is through Kloodle.
The Way Kloodle Is Used
The Activities Library
Activities are uploaded en masse onto the Kloodle digital platform by a member of staff from a spreadsheet. Alongside this individual teachers or tutors can create activities and add them to the ‘activities library’.
The uploaded activities identify the enrichment exercise and indicate the associated character traits and skills inherent within the different experiences. The process is teacher-led, which means that tutors can ‘grab’ from the library activities and assign them to groups or categories of students as and when they decide to undertake them. This way the system captures any student who has participated in an activity.
The rich experience and skills’ development from enrichment at the school is captured by being recorded on Kloodle during or after each lesson or activity. Teachers can post awards to celebrate positive behaviours and achievements.
Classification of Learners
There are many ways of differentiating the learners at the school into categories attending different events or performing tasks, such as year group, individual class, SEN and free school meals. The classifications of students was uploaded from SIMS at the beginning of the year.
QR Codes
QR codes are used to instantly upload information about an event or group activity, like a talk or a form session.
The QR codes are assigned to each pupil so that the teacher responsible can scan the codes of the relevant participating students and the information relating to the activity is instantly attributed to the student and uploaded to the data bank. Thus, group activities can be accounted for and data gathered.
Building The Group Skills’ Wheel
Pupils can complete an activity as a class, in different groups or individually. The head of years will be responsible for managing attendance data for a year group, the form tutor for form groups, senior leaders for the whole school and individuals have to log their own activities. Then the skills relating to that exercise can be tagged and captured on Kloodle and a skills’ wheel for a whole group or class of pupils can be presented, which can illustrate the growth in skill development.
Teachers have the facility to add individual students to an activity if required.
Data Collection On Participation And Gatsby Compliance
The school is keen to gather evidence relating to participation in enrichment. As well as this, they also capture data which measures the ‘distance travelled’ by their learners universally in regard to their character development and educational journey.
There is a dashboard on Kloodle, as seen below, which collates all of the information relating to the activities and, at a glance, illustrates the learner participation data, such as the volume of activities the school is creating and how many activities are hitting Gatsby Benchmarks.
This data helps management to identify and measure the meaningful impact of enrichment activities.
Early Warning System
Through Kloodle, Riverside School can track learners’ progress almost in real-time and at any stage teachers can intervene early when they can see that a specific group of learners either need more support or extra provision. These interventions help the school to achieve their objective which is for every single student to participate in six or more enrichment activities which specifically develop their skills and character.
Kloodle has a functionality feature which enables teachers to identify quickly and effectively all sub-groups of learners, such as pupil premium or ethnic background, and maps them to the activities performed. The data also empowers the school to decide whether a particular activity attracts sufficient participation, and, if not, it can be replaced, keeping the suite fresh and appealing to students.
The Convenience Of Having All The Data In One Place
By uploading the information to Kloodle, the school is provided with all the necessary data on progression over time. Also, all the enrichment data is in one place and there is no need for different systems and spreadsheets for the numerous activities.
All This Satisfies Ofsted And More
Ofsted’s inspection framework now includes sections for assessment called “Personal Development”. It means that schools need to provide evidence of extra-curricular activities, character and personal development, and careers guidance. This includes tracking and meeting Gatsby Benchmarks. For the highest outcomes in personal development, school must present their pupils with a wide, rich range of experiences. Consistent with the school motto of ‘excellence for all’ and an ‘Outstanding’ rating from Ofsted, this is what Riverside School is achieving.
Using Kloodle is a fantastic way of supporting and demonstrating compliance with personal development and Gatsby.
If you would like a demo of Kloodle please book it here: Calendar
