In February 2020 we had great pleasure in introducing our Strike Lane iPad Scheme to our Year 3 and 4 children.
Our intention was to offer parents the opportunity to purchase an iPad through either a one of payment or monthly contributions which children would be using daily in class to support their learning and so that they could also take the iPad home in the evening to continue and expand this learning and to research and collect information for future learning topics. When the children leave school at the end of Year 6 the iPad becomes the property of the child/family.
To ensure online safety the school manages the content on the iPads such as the Apps that are used in classes and can continue to be used at home as well as enabling our staff to mark and provide feedback on work in a variety of ways and which is much more meaningful and engaging for our children. Using the same iPad at home as in school encourages children to respond to and improve work independently which is exactly the type of learning behaviour Strike Lane is so passionate about encouraging.
Through the uptake of this scheme we have been able to ensure that all of our children from Y3 to Y6 have access to an individual iPad in class which they can store learning projects on, collaborate and share their work with others via airplay to the screen in class and to improve and review their work more consistently and independently. Our Year 1 & 2 children are able to share a class set of iPads and our EYFS children also have access to iPads for group and individual use.
We were fortunate to have the scheme up and running just before lockdown in March 2020 and for our teachers to have worked on some of the Apps which helped them to deliver great quality online learning and to offer regular marking and feedback to all of our children.
In previous years we have been ahead of ourselves and managed to have our Year 3 iPads up and running, ready for use for the first full week of school in September. We have had an incredible response from parents to the scheme and are very grateful to them in recognising and supporting the benefits to learning of this scheme.
We are very fortunate that the ‘Friends of Strike Lane’ have kindly agreed to fund a whole class set of iPads and these are currently being used in our Year 1 & 2 classes. In only 1 year we had managed to quadruple the number of working iPads in school and therefor hugely improve not only the children’s skills and knowledge of digital technology but also to improve engagement in learning and the development of learning skills overall.
Our intention is to offer this scheme each year to our Year 3 pupils as they are ready to enter Year 3. We will therefore be introducing Year 2 parents to the scheme in the Spring Term of 2022.
Much of the children’s work is shared by classes on our Twitter pages and we have had many positive comments from parents and children about their renewed interest in learning. At Strike Lane it is hugely important to us to ensure we prepare our children for future learning and for them to be able to use their learning behaviours and ICT skills to be successful in their future lives.
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