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Connect Education Trust
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What are Blended and Hybrid learning?

You may well have heard both these terms and wondered how they apply to your child’s education at Grange Park.

Blended and hybrid learning are ways of combining traditional classroom experiences with digital delivery that emphasise using the best option for each learning objective. Face to face teaching is combined with communication technology in order to facilitate both independent and collaborative learning.

Since returning to school we have seen some fantastic group work and individual learning supported by the use of Chromebooks. Access to Google Workspace for Education tools has enabled children to, for instance, create a joint piece of work using Jamboard as part of PSHE, use Google Forms to conduct market research and collect data in maths, video drama activities for peer assessment in English.

Also importing text and images to Google Slides to create posters in geography, and go on a virtual field trip down the River Thames to name but a few!

Technology in the classroom needs to be seen as a basic learning tool, rather than a focus in its own right, so it needs to be as easy to pick up and use as a pencil. For this reason we introduced our G Suite Skills Passports.

Teachers are setting weekly HowdDoU Passport assignments through Google Classrooms as part of home learning, so that children develop and embed the digital skills they need to access the tools used in class. The more badges children achieve, the better their skills.

Teachers continue to explore ways of giving children fast feedback. The use of voice notes on work has proved hugely beneficial and we are keen to develop other tools which enable personalised learning. We are also capitalising on other benefits of using Chromebooks too; a reduction in the need to photocopy texts has both a cost benefit and an environmental one, as well as saving teachers’ time.