Measuring pupil's progress is a regular topic of discussion in any school around
the country. One of the key barriers to this is often the timescales involved with
the marking of work, and the subsequent feeding back to learners of this information.
The use of the Optivote pupil response system provides a mechanism where data can
be collected every lesson, and due to the nature of the software, a range of reports
generated. This allows far more time to be spent on the analysis of the data, rather
than its generation.
At King Richard School
in Portsmouth, all Mathematics lesson now begin with a starter that uses Optivote.
These may take the form of times tables, divisions, fractions or a range of other
mental maths problems. Unlike other voting systems, this data is stored each day
in a central database and provides historic data that is analysed. The software
that runs the voting system is extremely flexible and data from individual classes
can be rolled together to allow analysis across year groups and the whole school.
The voting system in also used for plenaries and end of topic tests. This allows
a classroom teacher to check at the end of each lesson if learning has taken place,
and identify immediately those pupils who have not made progress.
A common criticism of such voting systems is their inability to test for methodology
in a subject like mathematics. We have overcome this problem by asking pupils to
identify the correct method of working out problems from a range of possible answers.
Although this will never replace a thorough marking of students work, it does provide
rapid and immediate feedback that can then be acted upon each and every lesson.
Our decision to use the Optivote system as opposed to the many other units on the
market came from a review of all possible models. The primary reason stemmed from
use of a database at the heart of the program, and the ease of software use. Coupled
with this was the fantastic support from the Optivote team to answer queries and
even adapt aspects of the system to accommodate our needs. I have to stress that
this aspect was extremely important when it came to up-skilling the entire department
in the use of the program.
I would recommend this product unreservedly to any Maths Department. While it is
still too early to measure any long term outcomes, the immediate impact has been
astonishing and we are confident that we will see a steady and sustained increase
in attainment through its use.
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