March 2016 - Edsys

Posted on March 30, 2016 by Edsys

Every child is unique and they learn and develop at different rates and in different ways”- Beverley Hughes

Every child deserves the best possible start in their learning life. Early Year Foundation Stage(EYFS) provides support to children and helps to fully utilize their potential. Most children develop and learn during their early years. And the experiences they have between birth and age five have a remarkable impact on their future life.

Every child deserves a secure, good, safe and happy childhood. EYFS sets the standards for learning, growth, development and care of children from birth to five years old.

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There are seven areas of learning and development by which a child develop skills, gain knowledge and demonstrate their understanding. Usually children develop three areas first. Those areas are

1. Physical development

2. Personal, social and emotional development

3. Communication and language

Proper development of these areas are essential for healthy growth and to have a better future learning. As children grow, they need to develop in four specific areas. And those areas are literacy, mathematics, expressive arts and science, and understanding the world.

All these seven areas help to plan the child’s learning and activities. It is the responsibility of teachers in supporting and teaching children according to their unique needs.

A separate curriculum is designed for child in primary and secondary schools. Hence it is most suitable for young children only. It is designed in a very flexible manner so that staff can change it according to the unique needs and interests of the child. In EYFS framework, children learn by playing and exploring both indoors and outdoors. Each child develop their own skills according to their creativity, imagination and critical thinking.

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How can Parents help their Child in Learning?

Learning and development actually begin at home itself. All the fun activities that are done at home have a vital role in the growth and development of the child. Learning done at home will have a long lasting effect on the child during their progress to schools. Even when the child is too young and unable to talk, never ignore them. Try to talk to them so that they could learn and understand new words, ideas and thus give them a motivation to speak. As a young learner, we should care to have at least some time with our child. Parents can do the following activities with their children:

Sing and tell nursery rhymes
Tell them about numbers, colors, letters and words when we go out
Allow them an opportunity to cut out and stick pictures from magazines
When we go out for supermarket tell them about different packaging shapes
Show them how to plant seeds and water it
Cook or bake together
Explore the park and give them an opportunity to mingle with other children
Try to read and share stories from good books

All these activities can greatly help children in their growth. It is better to seek some professional for knowing about different activities and books the child may enjoy at different ages. If the parents work together with caretakers or professionals, one will get a better result in their child’s development. They should exchange information and discuss things together that can provide benefits to the child. There should be a proper check and thus prepare a brief summary done by parents and teachers regarding the progress of the child at each age. This summary can help in the future learning and development of the child.

Posted on March 24, 2016 by Edsys

Whether you’re a new or experienced teacher, these 12 effective classroom management tips will help you run your class smoothly and will also help to create a positive learning environment for your students.

Free Class Room Activity Apps (Check it Now)

1) Stick to the Rules but don’t be too Strict

Rules and routines help to communicate and also establish the kind of behaviour and discipline you expect from your students. Stick to the rules you create but make sure that the classroom environment does not become too strict and rigid that students feel suffocated.

2) Deal with Misbehaving Students Personally

Ask a misbehaving student to talk to you in person and speak to the student in a calm demeanour. Try to be a friend to them but be firm with what behaviours you would and wouldn’t accept. When you truly get to understand them you might often be able to recognise patterns or issues the child tries to mask up with his/her mischievous behaviour

3) Keep Calm and Carry On

It is important to have control over your emotions to have better control of your classroom. A teacher who loses his/her temper and yells at the students often lose the battle. If a situation gets unruly, try standing in silence and look at your students. This will alert them to a change in your demeanour and will make them aware that something they did was not right. When everyone falls silent you can resume your lessons.

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4) Connect with your Students on a Daily Basis

An important classroom management tips is to greet your students every morning and at the beginning of class to connect with them on a daily basis and also to set the tone for the day.

5) Build Positive Relationships

To help a student be his absolute best, it is important to wear their shoes and walk a mile in them from time to time. This will help you look at things from the student’s perspective and be empathetic with them. Support them by encouraging them not only in academics but also with their extracurricular activities. This will help build a trusting and honest teacher-student relationship.

6) Reach out to the Parents

While you support a child from school, parents should also be considered as active contributors to a child’s growth. Make sure to not only address the drawbacks but also highlight the positive qualities of the child to his/her parents.

7) Be Interactive and Friendly

Interact with your students and speak to them in simple terms to help them be more comfortable in the classroom. Communicating and engaging them in conversations will boost their confidence and interest in studies.

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8) Change your Teaching Style from Time to Time

classroom management strategy is to adopt multiple instruction methods or styles. Students often lose interest when the lessons are conducted in a mundane manner. Following a singular mode of teaching often leads to a boring classroom session and disengaged students. You can disrupt this routine and keep your students engaged by frequently varying your instruction style.

9) Keep Students Engaged and Involved

It is a challenging task, but if you gain mastery over this your students are less likely to misbehave. Having an engaging classroom session will make the students actively participate in the lessons or task at hand and will prevent their mind from wandering.

10) Keep them Busy

Following up on the point above, you can create engaging classroom sessions by tightening up time management and by staying organized. This will greatly improve classroom culture as well as teaching and learning time.

11) Motivate Students to Work Hard using Rewards

A simple reward system can be a great motivator. The reward could be something that adheres to your school’s policies. It is also important to remind students that help is always available when they need it. Remind them that they don’t have to battle it out alone. Encourage students to ask questions to receive timely advice.

12) Show that you Care
A teacher’s attitude can easily rub off on their students and most often in the wrong way. Make sure to leave your emotional baggage outside of the classroom. If you are feeling any negative emotions like anger, sadness or boredom, make sure that you do not show it to your students. A bad emotion spreads as fast as the flu and your students should be the last one to catch it. As an educator, it is important for you to show that you are happy and excited about the lessons you are going to teach.

Posted on March 23, 2016 by Edsys

“Teachers who use technology frequently to support learning in their classrooms report greater benefits to student learning, engagement and skills from technology than teachers who spend less time using technology to support learning”- “Educators, Technology and 21^st Century Skills: Dispelling Five Myths”

Technology has dramatically changed the field of education over the past few decades. Teachers have a great role to play in a child’s education. It is found that 50% of the teacher’s time is spending on managing behaviour and not on delivering instructions. Each and every second is precious to them as they have only limited time to spare.

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School apps can make the job of teacher a bit easier. The following are the 10 school apps for teachers which is useful to teachers as well as students:

1. Too Noisy

Too Noisy is an app which helps us to control the student chatter existing in the classroom in real-time. This app stored with right level of noise and an alarm starts ringing when the class rises above that particular level. This is a useful app which helps the teachers to manage the classroom properly.

2. Remind101

Remind101 is a free app which is specifically designed for teachers. With the help of this app, teachers are able to send announcements and notices to students as well as parents. One of the greatest benefits of using this app is teachers do not need to show their personal details or contact number for communicating with parents and students. Teachers are not able to get access to the personal details of recipients. The real strength of this app is its emphasis on privacy.

3.ClassDojo

ClassDojo is an app which helps teachers improve their behaviour in classroom easily and quickly. It also generates and apprehends data on behavior which teachers can share with both teachers and administrators. Using this app, one can give feedback, encouragement and thus view report on the student’s behaviour.

4.GradeBook Pro

GradeBook Pro is an app which helps to manage the class. This app will help the teachers to check attendance and to record evolution of student’s performance throughout the course. One of the greatest disadvantages of this app is that it is not free to use.

5.Teachers Assistant Pro 2

Teachers Assistant Pro 2 is an app better than GradeBook Pro. It offers a range of function which assists in managing the classroom. This app helps to see real transformation of students behavior. Students personal information such as address, health conditions and their details about siblings is available in this app. These features will be useful to teachers for facilitating feedback reports to parents.

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6.Educreations

Educreation is an app which enables the teachers to draw and can thus share those creations of students in real-time. By adding audio to those creations, it becomes a teaching tool.

7.Podcast

Podcast is an app which allows access to thousands of podcasts or audio recordings. With the help of this app, teachers can create their own station to upload audio lessons which are suitable for students to download. The greatest advantage of using podcasts is that students can listen to this audio when they want and as many times as they want without any restrictions. This app is available only for Apple iOS but apps like podcast is available for Android as well.

8.TED

TED is a special kind of app which presents talks given by some of inspiring personalities all over the world from almost every field. This app offers all those conferences for free.

9.Math Formulas

Math Formulas give us a group of mathematical formulas from algebra, matrices, geometry, trigonometry etc. which are difficult to memorize. This app is available on Android, but similar apps are available on Apple products as well.

10.ExamTime

ExamTime with the help of this app, teachers can share resources, work on group projects and organize debates. It also allows to create multiple resources such as Flashcards, Quiz Maker, Interactive Notes and Mind Maps. The motive behind this app is to improve class participation, brainstorming and concentration power.

All the above 10 school apps are beneficial as well as useful to both students and teachers. Teachers are able to do their task of teaching easier with this app. Also school apps make learning interesting for students.

Posted on March 16, 2016 by Edsys

Today schools seek technology for improving their communication and involvement with parents. Use of student information system and parent portal features complements home school communication and thus keeps parents involved in every activities of the school. Student information system is a software which helps to store data on each student’s performance. This system has been widely used by schools.

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Parent portal helps parents to log in to the system for seeing child’s data, tracking attendance, read teacher’s comments on child’s performance, and thus able to contact teachers for expressing their concerns and questions. By providing access to student information system, a sense of responsibility is created between parents and schools about student learning. School authorities should give proper awareness to parents about how the data in the system help to improve studies of their child. If proper education and training is not attributed to parents about the effective use of student information system, parent portal would never aid in student learning. Parent portal helps to foster and improve parental involvement.

Reasons for using Parent Portal

Out of concern, parents use the portal for checking the academic performance of their child. Specifically they use the portal for checking or monitoring their child’s grades and not for checking child’s attendance or checking teacher’s comments about behavior, class performance etc. Parents will have a feeling that it is their responsibility to check out those details.

Reasons Indicating How it Contributes to School-Home Communication:

Parent perceived parent portal as an excellent medium of school home communication without completely replacing traditional way of communication via phone calls, email and progress reports. Among other communication methods which schools offer, parent portal is the most used and preferred one for parents. It was found that there is improvement in communication between parents and teachers with the usage of parent portal. And mainly it is done with the help of e-mail correspondence set up in the portal.

How do Parents use Data from Parent Portal

Mostly parents use the portal to know about their child’s grades. Such information will be useful to parents as they are able to know and thus be aware of their child’s progress in schools. With the help of parent portals, parents could also keep up a proper communication with the child on their performance in schools and behavior. Parent portal helps to change the attitude of students towards school and thus show a huge improvement in their studies. Parents can check the data and understand their child’s grade for each submitted assignment. But without proper training, some parents are unable to get access to the data stored in the portal.

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Parent portal usage help parents to improve their involvement as the child progresses to higher grades. It also helps parents to increase involvement and thus take extra care in their child’s schooling. The only thing to be noted is that parents should have proper understanding about features and usage of the portal. Training given by school authorities can help to best use and thus lead the child to a meaningful and learning centered environment

Parent portal can indirectly improve the parent’s involvement in their child’s education. It is used in a proper and meaningful way to support their child’s education. Also, it helps to bridge the communication gap between the home and school. Parents are able to get a meaningful data on child’s progress. By using internet based student information system parent portals, education and behavior of students can greatly be improved. Apart from these benefits, it helps to make sure safety of children as well.