Case study: United Learning
How the power of video and images can engage secondary school pupils in English - and teach them crucial future skills.
The need for a new and engaging way of helping Key Stage 3 and 4 pupils learn and retain vocabulary put United Learning on a path to discovery. Find out how they are getting students to learn and apply new vocabulary using digital technology - and how that’s led to pupils creating outstanding video poetry.
Meet Brian Doyle, Director of English at United Learning.
Brian Doyle is the national Director of English for United Learning, a collection of schools across the country, including 55 secondary schools, from Carlisle to Bournemouth. Brian and his team provide hands-on, in-class and curriculum support to heads of department and English teachers across Key Stages 3 and 4.
“To get students to learn new vocabulary, they have to really engage with it and have ownership of it, and Spark seemed just right. The process of finding an image to match a word that you’re using that week really helps students get used to that new vocabulary.”
Brian Doyle, Director of English
Word up: the path to better vocabulary.
Brian recognised that there was a need across many schools within the United Learning collection to improve pupils’ vocabulary and teach new vocabulary at Key Stage 3. He wanted a tool that would help pupils retain new words and know how to apply them, and realised that simply getting them to learn a new set of words and being tested on definitions each week wasn’t effective enough.
When he discovered Adobe Spark, Brian saw that using it to associate the words pupils were learning with relevant images would make that learning “stick”. He says, “We weren’t particularly looking for something digital to support vocabulary learning, but when we saw what Adobe Spark could do, we knew digital was the right way to go. To get students to learn new vocabulary, they have to really engage with it and have ownership of it, and Spark seemed just right. The process of finding an image to match a word that you’re using that week really helps students get used to that new vocabulary.”
“As well as teaching subject matter, we also need to teach pupils how to to articulate their needs, express themselves, speak publicly, and argue a point. I think that’s why Spark is so powerful.”
Brian Doyle, Director of English
Implementing technology into English lessons: the teacher challenge.
Many teachers will relate to the feeling that using new technology in their classrooms can be intimidating. As Brian says, “One of the challenges with any new technology is that we know students will be able to start using it pretty quickly. The barrier is getting teachers to do the same, and trying to convince them that it’s something that’s going to help them and make things easier, rather than yet another task they have to complete.”
Brian was convinced that Adobe Spark would be an immensely engaging technology for English teachers to lean on, and says, “What really appealed to me about Adobe Spark is that when I tried it, what became apparent to me really quickly is how straightforward it is. I can remember being on the train on the way to our head of department meeting where we were going to be talking about it, and I just shot some vocabulary revision videos. It’s so straightforward you can do it anywhere.”
Brian acknowledges that teachers have hundreds of things to do each day, and a to-do list that never ends. While learning new technology might not be at the top of the list for many English teachers, Brian says, “One of the things I wanted to do was just try and show them how quick and easy it is to do something really engaging with Adobe Spark, and that’s part of the reason I created some videos on the train. That’s what’s been so great about it, it’s just really straightforward.” One of Adobe’s Education Evangelists also delivered a teacher training session at the head of department meeting, which Brian believes also helped teachers to overcome the technology barrier and understand how easy Adobe Spark is to use.
It was also important to Brian to get a few English teachers on board so that they could show their peers how easy it is to use Adobe Spark, and how pupils were really getting engaged in learning new vocabulary. Brian says, “It’s easy for me or heads of departments to speak at meetings and tell teachers how easy something is to do, but that’s not the same as a teacher showing another teacher how to use it with their students. So that’s what we did, and we’re really pleased with what it’s led to.”
“What really appealed to me about Adobe Spark is that when I tried it, what became apparent to me really quickly is how straightforward it is.”
Brian Doyle, Director of English
The next step: taking part in a national poetry competition.
United Learning schools had just started using Adobe Spark when the country went into lockdown. Because of that, Brian saw a new need to bring English lessons to life in a creative way while pupils were learning from home, and, in tandem, he wanted to get students to work on projects that felt more positive and would go some way to helping them through the challenges of their ‘new normal’.
Brian says, “Our curriculum resources hadn’t been particularly creative up to that point. The idea is that we provide the curriculum, and teachers bring it to life in the context of their schools. But in lockdown, we created videos rather than written resources, and we used Adobe Spark to support that process. It’s definitely something we’ll continue to do when pupils are back in class. It’s a tool we can use for homework and home learning, and it’s a new way of being more creative, inventive and engaging in our lessons.”
“At the same time, some of our English units were a little ‘dark’. There was a unit on dystopian literature and one on social justice, and we wanted to do something that was a little lighter, because of what was happening with the world. We created a nature poetry unit to celebrate the wonders of nature. Coincidentally, we’d also engaged novelist Patrick Gale as a keynote speaker at an English teacher conference. He’s also a judge of a national competition for poetry organised by the Charles Causley Trust. The theme for this year’s competition was ‘environment’, which fitted in nicely with our nature poetry unit.”
“We realised this was a great opportunity, and we encouraged our schools to enter the poetry competition. Because pupils were home learning and had more ownership of what they were doing, it was also an opportunity to use Adobe Spark to enter the competition with videos of their poems. We also ended our conference with a selection of poetry videos, which were of a really high standard.”
Brian adds that, “One of the requirements that we have at United Learning, and especially during lockdown, is that any technology must be able to work across different devices and different platforms. That was another thing that appealed to us about Adobe Spark. It was something that pupils could use even if they had a relatively limited platform.”
‘A Single Rose’ poem by Kyra Davy.
How the combination of imagery and words helps improve communication skills.
While using Adobe Spark has been a great way of engaging pupils in English, Brian also believes that it also improves the quality of work, pupils’ confidence as speakers, and their presenting skills.
How? As Brian says, it’s because, “if you’re creating a video of a poem you’ve written, it’s essentially a mini presentation. One of the things that’s really important to me is that, as well as teaching subject matter, we also need to teach pupils how to to articulate their needs, express themselves, speak publicly, and argue a point. I think that’s why Spark is so powerful.”
What’s next?
Brian has also found another use for Adobe Spark. He’s using video as an engaging way of presenting text to Key Stage 4 literature pupils, recording key moments and using images to reinforce their reading to make it more engaging. Relatedly, one of the things Brian feels is missing from home learning is the connection between a piece of text and the world around us.
He says, “In the classroom, teachers can discuss big questions about the human condition, family, relationships, etc. But if you’re not in the classroom, it’s harder to explore those bigger questions, so we’ve created Spark videos based on key moments or themes from a text, and we’re going to use them as a springboard for students to ask big questions about life, so they can see the link from the text they’re reading to the world around them. I’d like to use Spark video more for that, getting students to think about things outside of the text.”
See how the apps are supporting pupils.
Adobe Express
Adobe Spark is a free educational tool for making presentations, graphics, posters, videos, web pages and more.
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