Moving on with Blended Learning

Moving on with Blended Learning

The modules in this course are designed to support every school in identifying their own priorities as part of the school development planning process for the academic year 2020/21. The first step is the Readiness and reflection module, which is designed to promote thinking about the needs of the pupils and the staff, at whole-school, departmental or team, key stage and/or individual classroom level, as we face into a year which is likely to be disrupted and unpredictable.

Having completed this first step and identified priorities you can choose from the other professional learning materials which are built around supporting and promoting independent learning in a disrupted context. Much of the material will be reassuringly familiar, reflecting the aim, objectives, attitudes and dispositions of the NI Curriculum.

The resources can be used in establishing practices in remote and blended learning that will reflect the established classroom practices that support the curricular objectives. Although we are in a new context, the classroom skills you have developed throughout your career are as important and relevant as ever. The modules are not linear, and are not hierarchical. They have been developed as flexible tools for you to apply to your own context in a way that you find useful to you and your pupils.

Having identified areas for improvement within your context, the next step is to plan a bespoke programme of professional learning that may be completed as an individual, a department or team, or as a whole school. This can be done:

• through in-school, collaborative sessions, using school-based expertise, or

• through online engagement with specific modules alongside other schools, or

• through an individualised classroom-based project or action research.