{"id":7580,"date":"2020-04-17T14:41:59","date_gmt":"2020-04-17T14:41:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.littlebird.co.uk\/blog\/?p=7580"},"modified":"2020-04-21T11:21:10","modified_gmt":"2020-04-21T11:21:10","slug":"staying-engaged-and-learning-under-lockdown-with-tassomai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.littlebird.co.uk\/blog\/2020\/04\/staying-engaged-and-learning-under-lockdown-with-tassomai\/","title":{"rendered":"Staying Engaged and Learning Under Lockdown with Tassomai"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Home learning under lockdown<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s officially the start of the\nsummer term for lots of schools, but with the lockdown extended that means a\nreturn to home schooling for most of us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The novelty of having the kids at\nhome may be wearing off, so we thought it was a good time to ask Murray\nMorrison, education expert and creator of Tassomai<\/a>, the fab online learning program for his advice on homeschooling\nand using technology to help keep children learning under lockdown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don\u2019t forget we\u2019re also running\nan offer from Tassomai that includes savings of up to 75% on courses for\nyounger learners, you can read more about it here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019re not a teacher, and that\u2019s okay!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s get one thing straight\nright from the start: it is not your job to replace your child\u2019s teacher for\nthe duration of the school closure. Parents all over the country are piling on\nway too much pressure to meet their own expectations of what homeschooling\n\u201cshould\u201d be, while also trying to maintain their day jobs. Whatever you do,\ndon\u2019t be made to feel guilty by the posts you\u2019re seeing on social media from\nmythical super-mums and dads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don\u2019t stress about them falling behind – remember school will\ncover everything<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When children eventually go back\nto school, their teachers will make it a priority to run over everything from\nlast year, and cover everything that had been planned for teaching during the\n\u201clost term\u201d. There\u2019s no new learning that should be happening now that won\u2019t be\ntaught – so there is no pressure on families to be teaching this new content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having said that, getting your\nchildren to read what the school sends, reading around the subject (and making\nnotes ideally) will be positive – it means that when the material is taught in\nclass, it will be easier to absorb. That\u2019s going to give them a head start when\nthe teaching next year is necessarily compressed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Use what the school gives you, but make it part of the bigger\npicture<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You will probably have been given\nan outline of the curriculum to cover, and possibly some worksheets. The\ntemptation may be to blast through them all just to keep your kids busy… Instead,\ntry to make them last, and lower your expectations as to how much time will be\nspent on actual schoolwork each day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Encourage your children to do\nsome independent work around their subjects – for older children, that might\nmean some reading on Wikipedia, for younger children, drawing or craft projects\nthat relate to the topics covered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consolidate their knowledge<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For older children in particular,\nnow is a great time to get them organised. Encourage them to use this time to\nlook through everything they have done since September 2019 and consolidate\ntheir knowledge; by doing this, they will have a major advantage next year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regular retrieval practice is\nproven to be one of the best ways to embed knowledge. Flashcards and quizzes\ncan be made manually, or software like mine is ideal for keeping everything\nfresh in mind. Tassomai helps students practise knowledge through personalised\nquizzing while parents can see exactly how much has been done; other softwares\nteach through videos that track engagement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Education Technology, or \u201cEdTech\u201d\ncan really be your friend when it comes to getting your kids to study under\ntheir own steam: BBC Bitesize has some great learning games for all age groups,\nand a few minutes browsing YouTube will yield plenty of decent learning\nchannels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Choose the right technology<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a lot of EdTech out\nthere, so my advice to parents is to spend a little time finding the platforms\nthat are best-suited to solving your most pressing needs: you want something\nthat occupies your child\u2019s attention but doesn\u2019t require too much of yours, so\nyou have time to do your own work; you also want products that have a solid\nevidence base underpinning them, so you can be confident that their use will be\nbeneficial. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sites like Edtech Impact<\/a>, Lended<\/a> and Edtech Evidence Group<\/a> are a good place to start. They\u2019re angled more towards schools, but they also include relevant information for parents and they\u2019re a great place to read independent product reviews from teachers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Try to enjoy this time together<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Remember, you don\u2019t have to\nreplicate their school education – instead approach this as a time to get them\nas fit as possible for a disruptive year to follow – and try to enjoy the time\ntogether as much as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anything that involves sustained\nconcentration can help with the development of core learning skills, for\nexample activities like gardening, sketching, sewing, puzzles or model-making.\nBeyond these, number puzzles, logic puzzles and crosswords can be great for\nmaths skills, memory and vocabulary-building.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If, by the end of this, your\nchild returns to school happy and mentally prepared to learn what comes next,\nyou will have done an amazing job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About Murray Morrison<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Murray has personally taught\nhundreds if not thousands of students on a one-to-one basis to help them reach\ntheir full potential, pass their exams and grasp the process of efficient\nlearning. During Murray\u2019s career he has taught a diverse range of people. From\nstudents with learning difficulties, behavioural issues or psychological issues\nthat prevented them from achieving their best, to the children of rock-stars\nand royalty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since 2012, Murray has focused\nfully on developing Tassomai into a cutting-edge software business. Having\ncreated the platform, its algorithms and written the first 60,000 questions as\na means to support his own students, the program later became available as a\nsubscription service. In 2013, the platform was seeing over 1000 questions\nanswered daily. Now it is over 1 million each day. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Home learning under lockdown It\u2019s officially the start of the summer term for lots of schools, but with the lockdown extended that means a return to home schooling for most of us. The novelty of having the kids at home may be wearing off, so we thought it was a good time to ask Murray … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":7607,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlebird.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlebird.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlebird.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlebird.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlebird.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7580"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlebird.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7584,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlebird.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7580\/revisions\/7584"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlebird.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlebird.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlebird.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlebird.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}