Cranford Review 2021

# ENGLISH
When
schools closed in March 2020,
the English department rolled up
their sleeves and got to work. From the sight of Mrs
Brooks running along Cranford High Street giving
out copies of A Level texts to departing students, to
staff delivering exercise books and folders forgotten
at school, to delivering a steady stream of technology
across what felt like most of West London, the English
department have been fully committed to ensuring
that our students stay engaged in education, whether
at home or in the classroom. We were a core part
of trialling blended and online learning (creating
YouTube channels, piloting Zoom and Teams lessons
and delivering beamed lessons live to whole year
groups at the end of the summer term 2020) and this
has continued as we refine our online skills in 2020-
21.
Adopting Microsoft Teams as a medium was an
incredible asset to our department. It meant that
we were able to make resources immediately
accessible to students, uploading revision materials
and resources which would have been prohibitively
expensive to print. From the Autumn term, Teams has
been used to set and submit homework which makes
submitting and giving feedback on work much easier.
The facility to share and edit work in real time with
students is an incredible way of giving meaningful
feedback and helping students improve their skills
with individual attention. We used Teams as a way
of delivering intervention and catch-up materials,
based on our very successful “learning mat” format
which aims to summarise learning with a range of
activities in accessible, “chunked” stages of learning.
This allowed students to work through revision at
their own pace, while also providing opportunities for
stretch and challenge.
of arts material now available online while theatres
are closed: students have watched productions from
the National Theatre available free to all schools
through the National Theatre Online Library, and the
school have invested heavily in students’ access to the
Arts through our subscription to Digital Theatre Plus,
an online platform which houses hundreds of filmed
productions of plays from leading theatre companies
across the world alongside teaching resources,
documentaries, films and interviews. Students have
been able to access this from home, bringing them as
close as possible to incredible productions which they
would not have been able to access otherwise. We
continue to make use of our subscriptions to Audiopi
(a bank of podcasts on GCSE set texts, available
online and as an app) and the EMag (a magazine from
the English and Media Centre for A Level students)
to foster independence and give our students access
to the very best possible resources.
When the second national lockdown happened in
January 2021, we were able to move into full live
teaching immediately; as a department we played
a significant role in professional development of
others in the school and driving innovation. While
online lessons will never be able to fully replicate the
18
We also used this year as an opportunity to investigate
resources available online to support our students,
particularly in Key Stages 4 and 5. We now subscribe
to Massolit, an online database of short lecture series
by university professors on a range of subjects –
these include every set text for A Level and GCSE
alongside wider contextual and genre studies to
support students’ wider knowledge and to stretch
and challenge. Mrs Brooks is also working with the
site, writing questions to accompany these lectures
which will be published online in the summer in order
to provide a more interactive learning and revision
experience. We have also made the most of the wealth