The point of ignition

“Once the interest of a student is ignited, it becomes a catalyst for enthusiasm and engagement,” says Martyn Soulsby, member of the Senior Leadership Team at North Lakes Primary School.

Together with colleague Vicki Jenner, Martyn shares the stories from their Year 5/6 classrooms about the ease with which ClickView’s quality educational video content ignites student engagement to transform even the most hesitant student into a confident learner.

For Vicki, the ignition point is that magic moment when the learning journey for a particular topic starts. “We use a ClickView video at the start of our lessons to hook the children’s attention. The children love the ClickView content. The clips are just the right length for keeping their attention. It has a wide variety of videos that cover all our subjects, from SPaG, maths, history, design & technology and more. The videos are high quality, purposeful and just the right length.”

Building student knowledge and supporting the quality of teaching

Initially adopted at North Lakes as a tool to accelerate learning and to support attainment in writing and maths, ClickView is now used across all subject areas at North Lakes PS. Martyn adds that ClickView significantly builds students’ knowledge. “The grammar and punctuation clips have helped to improve the quality of their writing. The content in other subject areas has helped to provide children with the right amount of information at their level while challenging their thinking and acting as stimuli for learning.”

“This provides further benefits especially for the ‘trickier subjects’,“ he adds.

“As PSHE lead I know I can find relevant info to cover the PSHE curriculum in schools. A good example is the Next Stop Puberty Series. Delivering in an area such as PSHE can be daunting as a teacher. However, the ClickView resources make us feel relaxed. The impact this video had on the children was significant. They were so knowledgeable at the end.”

ClickView has become integral to how I teach,” Martyn explains. “ I can’t praise the resource enough; it really does make your teaching great!”

Focussing on what matters

North Lakes teachers know how to capitalise on an engaged learner.

“We use ClickView’s digital resources to enhance what’s already been used in the classroom,” Vicki begins. Alongside curriculum video resources, ClickView has films, documentaires and wider TV content.

This can bring learning to life whilst supporting the development of a student’s cultural capital.

Martyn agrees. “One major benefit of ClickView is taking a large clip and easily cutting it down into a short manageable chunk with the right amount of information to engage the students. Short meaningful ‘blasts’ of content keep the learning moving forward.”

Vikki adds; “They’re not watching things that are irrelevant or not important, which is when they would switch off.”

In a classroom this might look like watching a 5 minute clip from ‘Disney’s Wall E’ talking about recycling or from ‘Harry Potter’ for Literacy, or 10 mins from a David Attenbrough documentary to transport students across the globe whilst learning about climate change.

Promoting discussion and deepening learning

Commenting on deepening learner engagement, Vicki describes how she uses ClickView’s interactive videos with embedded questions.

“The students make sure they’re listening and paying attention because they know there’s questions coming!” This promotes active learning with rich discussion in the classroom.

Martyn’s enthusiasm for ClickView is driven by key learning outcomes he witnesses in his classroom and across the school:

“We use ClickView’s interactive videos and the accompanying resources for formative assessment. The questions provided are excellent and a key part of the video content. Because the students have been so engaged we are able to target questions and foster discussions to develop their knowledge further.”

Reducing teacher workload

It’s clear that the work of North Lakes PS students is well catered for. But what about the benefits for their teachers?

“Saving time!” says Vicki. “ClickView has been a life saver in terms of saving time in my teaching workload”.

Martyn expands: “ClickView reduces teacher workload. We know that video content is safe, curated and quality from good sources. The additional resources are very good, easily accessible and they make an impact for our learners.”

Saving time underscores the benefits of ClickView playlists which can be customised according to the subject and year level / stage of each class, then easily shared among other classes.

“We do not have to be doing the same thing over and over again. One person can take responsibility for that and share it across the whole school team,” explains Martyn. “And we know the resource is safe and reliable.”

Engaged and motivated students together with teacher confidence and trust in their content create the perfect conditions to ignite learning and reduce teacher workload.

Martyn concludes:

“This is an exceptional resource, easy to use and support from the ClickView team is second to none!”