Mock Exams in a Year of Remote Learning
After the other obstacles schools have faced this year, mocks will be a breeze… right?
Amidst all of the disruption this year, mocks may not be at the forefront of people’s minds this autumn term, but they’re creeping up on us nonetheless. With remote learning throwing a spanner in the works for many teachers earlier this year, it has been hard to gauge just how well students have been learning over the course of the pandemic.
There is talk that mocks might end up influencing final grades this year, so students should definitely take these exams seriously, but with a sensible approach to preparation, there needn’t be anything to fear. Fortunately, Tassomai is an excellent tool for preparing for mock exams, for both your students and your department.
Make the most of the Understanding Grid
In order to get the most out of this round of mocks, it is crucial to determine what your students need to prioritise in their revision. Students are notorious for saying they “don’t know what to revise” so make sure they have a clear understanding of the topics they should be covering. To help this situation, simply use the Understanding Grid on the Teacher Dashboard to help pinpoint exactly what each of your learners should be focusing on in the runup to their mocks. Find the grid by clicking on the Understanding Tab along the top of your dashboard.
The Understanding Grid provides teachers with a Personalised Learning Checklist, or PLC, that is generated by the data of your students’ work on Tassomai. Constantly updating every time a student completes a quiz, this PLC gives you a visual insight into the strengths and weaknesses of your classes. It’s incredibly intuitive; clicking on each of the subject names will break these down into their relevant topics, allowing you to be specific and objective when setting revision tasks.
How to use the Understanding Grid
Not only does the Understanding Grid show you the class average for each topic, but it breaks this down for each of your respective students, allowing for easy, individualised revision without the need to trawl through exercise books and past assessments. What’s more, you can identify your top pupil in each area, and make them your student helpers in your revision lessons. In fact, using the Understanding Grid’s data, you could even create bespoke seating plans that partner up those students in need of a boost with a class expert.
Read more about the Understanding Grid and how to use it here.
Remote Revision
We are all now well versed in remote learning and should another lockdown occur, schools all over the world have contingency plans in place to help keep learning in order. Tassomai have recently introduced a new tool to help both with remote learning and with identifying areas where individuals are struggling.
“The Tree” is a great overview for parents and students. The Tree is a visual representation of a student’s knowledge and understanding based on their Tassomai usage and the questions they’ve answered. While teachers do not currently have access to their students’ individual Trees, it may be helpful to encourage students to look at this new feature when planning for their own revision.
Using The Tree, students can easily identify ‘red’ areas in each subject that would benefit from more revision and can work to have as many green leaves (questions answered correctly) as possible.
To learn more about how “The Tree” works click here.
Planning for Revision Sessions
In the countdown to the mocks, you’re going to want to ensure that the work your learners do helps them to prepare for that specific paper - or papers! So, now you know what areas your classes need to prioritise… how can you ensure they’re working solely on these topics?
Pause selected content on Tassomai
The Lesson Plan tab allows you to customise the content your students will see when they login into Tassomai. Uncheck the topics not covered on the mocks, then hit ‘apply changes’. Your students’ quizzes will immediately focus solely on the areas you’ve chosen.
How to pause content on Tassomai
There’s just two things to be mindful of here: firstly, you’ll need to go back and update the Lesson Plan post-mocks to ensure your students continue to see new content. Secondly, warn your students in advance of the changes, so they can expect it and (hopefully) prepare.
The Lesson Plan tab allows you to customise each of the classes that you are using Tassomai with, but it cannot be done on a student-by-student basis. To get individual students focusing on specific subjects, guide them to the Subjects tab on their dashboards and instruct them to take quizzes on areas they’re struggling with - although our intelligent algorithm does this for your students too!
So, that’s how Tassomai can help you and your students prepare for the mocks. With a little bit of time invested in exploring the data on your teacher dashboard, you can ensure that your students have clear, personalised revision topics, and a streamlined ‘Lesson Plan tab’ ensures their usage on Tassomai is tailored directly to the content on the mock.
We hope that this blog helps you achieve your best ever set of mock results!