GEMS Winchester School, Dubai, has a mission to provide quality education to its 2,700 students. Its choice of curriculum reflects the school’s international outlook. They believe that the ability to think globally and as an innovator has never been as vital as today, which may become even more vital for the next generation of graduates.
Rachelle Racal, Primary Maths Curriculum Leader, was kind enough to share her experience working with Whizz Education for the past eight years and using the resources with the virtual tutoring solution, Maths-Whizz.
THE CHALLENGES
Delivery of an Individualised Learning Journey for Each Child
“GEMS Winchester School is a large school with mixed ability students. A challenge for many schools like ours is how do we efficiently differentiate each child, identify learning gaps, then deliver a learning journey that caters to each and every child’s unique learning profile.”
Providing Reliable Data to our Regulator and our Parents
Every year, the KHDA (regulatory authority for private schools), as part of its inspection of schools, requests detailed, reliable and quantifiable information on attainment within the student body. This requires a significant investment in our time to demonstrate the success we have as a school. Additionally, our parents are very motivated, wanting their children to excel, seeking regular feedback from GEMS Winchester School regarding their child’s progress at school.
THE SOLUTIONS
Whizz Education partnered with GEMS Winchester School to provide a scalable solution that could be implemented consistently across our 75 classes. At the beginning of the academic year, we jointly agree to a strategic Implementation plan, with our educational goals are the centre. I work with the Whizz Education team to successfully roll out their suite of services to all primary year groups, with over 2000 students across the 75 classes. During the year, the Whizz Education team continuously mines the data generated each time the child interacts with the virtual tutor, then supports and advises us on improving learning outcomes, ensuring we are on target to achieve the pre-set goals.
“The Maths-Whizz virtual tutor’s ability to differentiate each and every child’s learning profile is vital for our teachers. It quickly supports us with in-class teaching and then delivers an adaptive and personalised maths journey for every child.
The tutor’s ability to target each child’s individual learning gaps at the right level has given children confidence in their own maths ability whilst also challenging our more gifted and talented students”.
“We made a lot of changes to the way we teach maths; Maths-Whizz was a fundamental part of that. It helps to support us with the analysis and understanding of each child’s needs — as well as their enjoyment of maths. Another benefit of Maths-Whizz is that it is mastery-based and aligns perfectly with our current scheme of work, PowerMaths”.
THE RESULTS
The data provided by Whizz Education via its scaffolded and differentiated personalised virtual tutor, Maths-Whizz, is very detailed and reliable for our management reporting and supports us for the annual inspection.
By using the Maths-Whizz Suite, teachers are able to effectively maximize instructional time because Maths-Whizz provides support in marking, planning, and data management, whilst the virtual tutor will continually assess students’ strengths, weaknesses, attainment and progress and produce easy to read formative and summative reports as a by-product of learning. The reporting centre shows our teachers the topic strengths and weaknesses of their individual students and each class, enabling our teachers to take the necessary corrective steps.
Whizz Education also provides a library of over 1,250 interactive lessons to support teachers and students in the classroom. These Teachers Resources can be used for whole-class or small group instruction and are a perfect complement to the virtual tutor. Importantly, parents are delighted to have access to their child’s activity and reports via a parental account through which they can gauge their child’s progress in maths. They can view the reports at any time, and then in more detail at our Parent-Teacher evenings.
GEMS Winchester is so delighted with the impact the virtual tutor has had that it is now being rolled out to 10 FS classes, bringing the total number of classes using Maths-Whizz to 85.
“Our results in Maths have been soaring since GEMS Winchester School started its partnership with Whizz Education. We can see attainment and improvement among the students who now have a solid understanding of maths which will equip them well when the subject becomes more complex.”