2 Identifying underutilised resources within and outside your school
You are now going to consider how well your staff use the existing resources that you have identified to support learning. You may have blackboards in all the classes, but how well and how often are they used for active student learning? Maybe they are not used very much because the black paint is so worn away that the writing is illegible to the students at the back of the class, or they are used as static displays rather than demonstration sites. You may want to work collaboratively with the members of staff involved before you make these judgements in order to accurately identify the actual use of different resources.
Activity 2: How far are resources actually used?
Using your list of resources you identified in Activity 1, think about how effectively the resources support learning by adding one of the following gradings to each:
- A: Very effective in supporting active learning.
- B: Partially effective in supporting active learning, but not used as frequently as it could be.
- C: Partially used to supporting active learning, as not always used effectively or to its full potential, or only used with some students.
- D: Not effective at supporting learning, as either not used at all or used ineffectively.
Again, you may find it useful to include others (teachers, school management committee (SMC) members, students and parents) in the judgements about the grading or assessments of these different resources.
You may have found that you need to include others in the judgements about the grading or assessments of these different resources. Using the example of the blackboard, you may need to conduct classroom observations or ask teachers and students to describe how the blackboard supports their learning in order to judge whether it is used effectively to support students to explore topics, share ideas or develop arguments.
1 Types of resources within and outside your school