Nick Cleator, Head of Science at Ormiston Bolingbroke Academy in Cheshire tells us how Tassomai data has changed his department’s approach to homework and lesson planning.

- This case study was updated in April 2023 to include 2022’s GCSE exam results and link to a recording (below) of Nick presenting at the PiXL science conference.

Our school is very community focused – we don’t get many students coming in from outside the local area and the majority of the teachers are local too. When I joined Ormiston Bolingbroke Academy, the Assistant Principal had used Tassomai in their previous school and recommended it, so I did some research and was keen on using it as homework for science. Ever since then it has really taken off in the science department – using Tassomai data has overhauled not just the way we think about homework, but what we cover in lessons too.

We started off just using Tassomai for the GCSE years but have since expanded into all 5 year groups, setting each year group a slightly different target each week – for example year 11 students need to complete 200 correct questions but year 7 are only expected to do 100. I think it is good to have targets like this and it really gives the kids something to aim for. The majority of the students engage with the program very well and really like using the app.

Transition to daily practice

After successfully settling the students into this system, I had a call with Murray Morrison, founder of Tassomai, and he encouraged me to get the students involved in a daily, rather than weekly practice in order to get the best results. Since this call, we have really been encouraging regular practice, rather than letting students complete their allotted question allowance all in one go, as this will help them to build more sustainable, long-lasting knowledge.

We ask our GCSE students to complete at least 4 daily goals – a set amount of correct questions each day – every week. On average for a Year 11 this is somewhere between 25 and 40 correct questions a day which only takes about 10 minutes each day. One of the best things about Tassomai for teachers is how much you can monitor the daily goals students achieve. The system will tell me if any of my students complete anything less than their target so it is easy to intervene.

The students genuinely do like using it. Obviously, there are always a few kids who say things like ‘it’s not written homework so it’s not as important’ but I think that now they’re used to it, that attitude has changed. Tassomai has become a word you use around the school – the students ask each other if they have done their Tassomai. It’s not science homework any more, it’s Tassomai. 

Staff impact

Staff love it because it’s never been so easy to tell when someone hasn’t done their homework. They log on, look at the class list and know who still needs to complete their daily goal. Plus, none of it has to be marked by staff as it marks itself. When I started, the idea was that everyone set an hour of homework per subject per week. If you were setting rigorously every week that’s almost five hours of marking and that’s just not feasible when you’ve got a lot of students. Now the only homework our students have for science is Tassomai and they get detention if they haven’t done it, so it’s really hassle free for us. It has reduced our workloads massively.

Making use of the extra time

The big thing for us now is to improve teaching and learning – to really use that time freed up from homework setting and marking to plan more high quality lessons. On Tassomai, teachers can look at an analysis grid that displays the strengths and weaknesses of every child in a class per topic – colour codes go from red for struggling to green for good. You can see at a glance exactly what is going on with your class as a whole and use that data to run an intervention session. 

Our current Year 11s have had Tassomai since Year 9, so the hope is that if they do it properly they won’t have to revise as much. They can spend more time on practicing exam questions and less time going over basic knowledge because Tassomai has helped to ingrain this into their long term memory. We want to spend more time on exam technique and the application of that knowledge, as this is what will really make a difference to students getting the top grades. 

There’s a period before GCSE when a couple of months become completely devoted to revision. Before Tassomai, I would spend that time going over key concepts with them but that’s really not the best way to spend this time. It should all be about exam technique by the time it comes to revision and now that the basics are being continuously recapped by Tassomai, we have the time to focus on trick topics and technique in the lead up to exams.

Impact

Qualitatively you can see the impact – students will get something right in class because they saw it on Tassomai the night before. Quantitatively we didn’t get results in summer (2020) because of the pandemic, which was really disappointing because it would have been interesting to see the exact impact it has made on results, but we are hoping for something more concrete this year. I believe that last year’s results would have shown an obvious correlation of students doing better since using Tassomai. You can see just from being in class – the students that do it regularly are more confident and able to perform well in the retrieval quizzes we do at the start of lessons. 

We are currently only using Tassomai for science but I’m hoping I can prove to the senior team at the school that there is a strong enough link between Tassomai and enhanced performance to encourage them to adopt it in other departments too.

Update: For the 2021/22 academic year we saw an increase in the overall progress 8 score in science as well as an increase in the number of combined science students achieving grade 4 and 5's.

Rewards

In the first couple of years of using Tassomai, we focused on giving detention if students didn’t complete their tasks, but I think this was the wrong tactic. This year, we want to use more rewards to encourage students to engage with their Tassomai, so we’ve introduced Year 7,8,9 rewards cards. When students do a certain amount on the app, they get a raffle ticket that goes into a draw at the end of term for an Amazon or Dominos voucher. We also have smaller rewards for skipping the lunch queue etc., just little things like that to keep engagement above the bare minimum.

Tassomai provides these great data drop spreadsheets, which help us put together proper intra class competitions and these have really improved rewards and class prizes. We are also planning on running a Tassomai Olympics where different houses compete against each other, so there’s a lot of scope to have some fun with it all too!

Further reading:

• Information for teachers and families about Tassomai’s science content