How Tassomai has replaced homework for core subjects in our school
Amy Craven, Lead English Teacher at St John Fisher Catholic Voluntary Academy in Dewsbury, talks to Tassomai about using the program in her classroom and how much it has reduced teacher workload at her school…
My school uses Tassomai in a big way: we have all three core subjects across years 7-11, so it’s firmly embedded in the curriculum and the culture at the school. I started using it with my English classes a few years ago and it’s brilliant.
I love having all the usage data on my students and being able to keep track of who has and hasn’t done their homework so easily without having to mark any of it! It’s now the only homework we set, aside from a few essays for year 11 students.
Embedding knowledge
The place where I see the most dramatic difference for my students is with my KS3 classes – using Tassomai really helps them to embed key knowledge points for the texts we are studying and core basics for English language. I find that I don’t have to go back over topics anywhere near as much when the students are all keeping up with their Tassomai usage, because they’re reminding themselves of what we’ve already covered in their own time.
Even the most diligent students seem to learn something one day in a lesson and have immediately forgotten it by the next, so keeping everything ticking over in the background really helps them to progress.
Reclaiming teaching time
This whole process means I win back more time in the classroom and can go into more detail about texts in lessons, as the students already have the core knowledge covered. This has allowed us to have much more interesting lessons and conversations with my students about the texts we are studying.
I can’t stress this enough, I love Daily Goals. It’s the simplest way to set homework as a teacher and you know your students are covering topics that will be relevant to everything you’re doing in class, while also reminding them of topics we covered a few weeks or months ago. The data we get back from it is so useful for planning lessons and working out where my students are struggling. I’m always checking their usage data and seeing which students have gone above and beyond their Daily Goals each week.
The understanding tab is absolutely genius. There’s so much information there for teachers and it’s so clearly displayed. I always check my students’ progress on Fridays and having a consistent day when I monitor their scores means I can really monitor their progress.
A great tool for the English department
This year we have been using Tassomai for Macbeth, A Christmas Carol and An Inspector Calls. I’m a big fan of all of this content because you can really tell it was written by someone who knew the texts inside out, unlike the questions on some other platforms I’ve tried.
When so many of the students are using Tassomai, it’s easy to keep the momentum going, though I’ve noticed it’s impact is highest for students who are aiming for 4-7s. The students who are aiming for 8-9s tend to already be engaging with the texts and focusing on analysis but Tassomai is still great for their background knowledge.
There are some questions that give students a list of famous quotes from a novel and then ask them which one appears first or last in the story – they’re brilliant! They really throw the students a curve ball and make them think about the quotes and what they mean in certain areas of the text. They’ve provoked a lot of class debate.
Running competitions
We have a school-wide incentive scheme where students are awarded points for good behaviour, including having high Tassomai usage, and are able to save them up and exchange them for various rewards at the school shop, ranging from rainbow coloured rubbers all the way up to a trip to Alton Towers.
It’s great to have the school supporting this process so much but a few of us teachers also have our own little incentives to keep our students motivated in class. I run a competition where they can win some chocolate each half-term and this creates an extra layer of competition between the students, which they really seem to love.
We don’t tend to incentivise the year 11s quite as much, as they tend to be revising for themselves and the sake of their exams, but it definitely helps to keep the younger years engaged.
Students are on board
The students at my school are really eager with their Tassomai – I think it helps that they use it across multiple subjects, so it is always being discussed. Students walk into my lessons saying ‘have you got my Daily Goals, miss?’ and are always chatting about it. I really like getting parents involved too – the other day a parent emailed asking for help with getting their child to revise and I sent them some articles from the Tassomai blog. There are so many resources on their website beyond the main quizzes for the students.
Students jump on any excuse to use their phones, so while we don’t directly use Tassomai in the classroom, we know they’re always using it on the bus to and from school. I think it helps that it is so easy to start doing – it doesn’t feel like work in the same way as some other revision methods, so they’re always happy to start it.
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