iAchieve’s 5th Birthday: 5 ways to use iAchieve

1. Front of classroom

The iAchieve framework lends itself really nicely to a teacher led approach to vocational options.  All the teaching and learning content for the course is ready to use and available in one place.  Meaning teachers can focus their time and energy on teaching and delivery, rather than planning.

A great example of this in practice is the ‘think first’ activities. The resources can be projected onto the smart board and the activity can be used as a group brainstorm at the beginning of a lesson.  This can be great for interleaving and revisiting topics from lesson to lesson and for encouraging group discussion.

2. Classroom with computers

If you have access to a classroom with computers, this can aid a more independent kind of delivery approach.  In this situation, the teacher becomes more of a facilitator and is able to provide individual support to students who can control their own learning pace.  This works well for learners that might struggle in a traditional classroom environment and prefer to work independently.

The iAchieve course content forms the building blocks of knowledge that students will need to complete their qualification. Students can work their way through the interactive, bitesize chunks of information, with support from the teacher to enhance and deepen their understanding.

3. Self-learning if students are away from school

Some students are not able to consistently attend school, perhaps because they have unintentionally excluded themselves from education, as with some students at Cranbury College, or because of  medical reasons, or because they are dealing with the trauma of permanent exclusion.  iAchieve can be a powerful tool to help learners re-engage with their education, because everything required to pass the qualification is contained within the iAchieve platform. The interactive nature of the content means students can really engage in and take charge of their own learning.

For example, there are many interactive features, such as clickable images, which expand to show more specific information throughout the units.  There are also many links to additional research, meaning students can further their understanding quite independently, allowing them to access the higher grades.

4. Homework / Revision

The iAchieve platform is accessible from any device with an internet connection.  This means students can access it from their home, if they have the equipment to do so. As well as access to the course content within the platform, there are also additional work sheets, exam style questions, quizzes and practice papers which can be printed at school and distributed as homework or used for revision when preparing for exams.

Using the corresponding answer sheets, teachers can then mark homework with ease, or encourage peer marking or self-assessment within a timetabled session.  This can highlight areas of misunderstanding and provide an opportunity to go over topics in more detail.

5. A mix of everything !

We have found that most teachers using iAchieve are approaching it with a mix of all the above delivery methods.  This really shows the flexible nature of iAchieve’s platform as a delivery method.

A great example of this is the end of section quizzes.  These could be projected to the front of the class in a teacher led approach, teachers could then either complete it themselves with students raising their hands to answer, or for a more interactive element, students could take it in turns to complete an answer.  For classroom and individual learning, students are able to complete the quiz when logged into their learner account.  Incorrect answers will bounce away from the blank spaces, meaning it can be great as a self-marking assessment.   The quiz works equally well as a revision tool, perhaps being completed at a later date to check students have retained the information from a previous session.  The answers do not save in place, so students can test themselves time and again until they feel confident they understand.

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