Doodle English & Doodle Spell
About 6 months ago we began subscribing to Doodle Maths & Doodle Tables. If you are not familiar, Doodle Maths adapts to the needs of each individual child a-la RM Maths from ‘the good old days’. They are excellent.
We originally subscribed primarily to give our children at the expected standard and above the opportunity to continue their learning and deepen their understanding. This is clearly working as children with Doodle Maths through contextual variation as well as helping children learn new content by focusing on the zone of proximal development. However it has even more significantly supported our children who are struggling, giving them ample opportunities to develop their understanding and a supportive framework to hit that zone of proximal development.
One of the (several) reasons we chose to subscribe was that Doodle English & Doodle Spell was in the pipeline. This is big news. Our children actually come out of year 6 attaining extremely well in the GPS test, however as I am sure is the same for many schools, that spelling (in particular) doesn’t translate into their writing. Step in Doodle Spell. Using the same principles and structure as Doodle Maths, the children are able to go on, little-and-often, with the package pitching their spelling pretty much exactly where they are. It tracks back through the National Curriculum really well, filling in gaps in knowledge. In addition, you can ‘drop in’ a set of words you want to personalise yet further for an individual or indeed, give the whole class a specific set. The only question mark is to decide if you are happy with the children learning something that hasn’t been taught yet in class. In reality, for the majority of children, it will help backtracking, filling in gaps.
Doodle English works in a similar fashion but focuses on the same content as the rest of a GPS test. It is even better than the spelling. The range of activities really works well for the children, developing vocabulary, building knowledge and understanding of how to use grammatical constructs within sentences etc. In short, I fully expect that increase in understanding to not only impact on the GPS test, but to filter its way into children’s writing as they build up their understanding of sentence structure.
One of the best things about Doodle is that it sorts itself out. Teachers don’t need to spend ages setting things. They can extremely easily look at usage and also pinpoint areas of strength and areas where the Doodle content has not been successfully achieved. Great for feeding into class lessons. Its simplicity really helps it get up and running quickly across school.
It’s still early days with Doodle English and Spell as it has only just been released but judging from the uptake and the enthusiasm of the children, it’s going to make a significant impact on our children’s learning.
***All images are from Doodle Spell. I and my school have not had any discount for writing this blog post***
