Susan Galloway, from Drumchapel High School in Glasgow, shares how she has used O365 Forms to engage learners and improve attainment in English with it.
We have been using Microsoft Forms to support pupil engagement in English and we’ve found that this has had a positive impact on attainment and supported assessment of learners at all stages.
In the BGE, we’ve primarily used Forms as quizzes to support pupils with short reading tasks. These are self-marking and classes often have access to quizzes with different levels of challenge. We generally use the ‘chilli challenge’ concept for this with the majority of learners being asked to do the ‘Hot’ challenge with a ‘Spicy’ and ‘Extra Hot’ version to offer challenge and support. What surprised us was how keen pupils were to choose the more challenging versions and their increased resilience even if they got quiz questions wrong. This approach particularly benefitted pupils who struggled with literacy and who could use assistive technologies to support them if needed.
For Senior Phase pupils our focus has been in using Forms to support RUAE. Questions from past papers or any close reading can be easily copied into Forms and it only takes about 5 minutes to create a Higher paper. Self-marking is less effective here as we expect pupils to have a wider range of responses so the basic Forms format works best. The ability to see all pupil answers in spreadsheet format means teachers can quickly identify questions learners have struggled with and accordingly target teaching. It also means you can easily share anonymised answers with pupils and get them to peer mark, identifying quality answers and how to improve weaker ones. Previously I would have typed example pupil answers or used a visualiser on a pupil’s work but this approach saves time and makes peer assessment more straightforward for pupils to access. RUAE results have directly improved as a result of this approach.
Both the quizzes and forms are really straightforward and quick to make, and easy to share with colleagues which helps reduce teacher workload. Pupils benefit from being able to use assistive technologies to read questions aloud and pupil feedback has been extremely positive.
