What challenges were you facing as a department before you started using This is School?

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One of the big things was finding listening exercises that the students were interested in and that were relevant to them.

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It's one of the skills that students really panic about, so we were always trying to find the right kinds of exercises to help them feel more confident going into their GCSE exams. We tried to find news items online, but they were of far too high a level and much too fast. We also used a couple of other sites but they were mainly for learning vocab - we didn’t have anything to help students understand the language in context before we signed up with This is School.

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How do you use This is School at Standish Community High?

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We use it a lot as a plenary and then every other week we try to get students into the computer room to work independently on listening tasks that we set for them on the site. We also print off the worksheets for students to work on in class and we set homework on the site which is fabulous because it’s all marked for us.

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How does it compare to other sites you’ve used?

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I think the standard of language used is what differentiates it, as well as the fact that it isn’t just vocab or grammar resources, though they’re both covered too.

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Having access to real people answering GCSE topic questions means that the students are working with the language on a deeper level and they’re really engaging with it so much more.

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What do you particularly like about This is School?

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We didn’t know what to expect from the new GCSE other than that it was going to get harder, so it has been really valuable to be able to give students access to native speakers, speaking at a natural speed and to see their understanding improve. We’ve also been grateful for the ability to set differentiated tasks in our mixed-ability classes.

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For students I think the instant feedback is the main advantage: they are immediately shown what they got right and wrong and can go back and try again. Not having to wait days for feedback from us has been a big breakthrough for them. It’s also really good value! A couple of schools in our network were concerned about cost, but if you look at what you get for the price, it’s fantastic!  

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We absolutely love it here, it’s definitely one of the best things we’ve found and it gives measurable results: the year before last was the first year we'd used This is School fully across the department at KS4 and we had phenomenal GCSE results.