Why did you start looking for a tool like This is School?  

It actually came out of the Covid lockdown period when This is School offered free use of the service to schools that registered, I think for a month or two during that phase; it was very obviously something we could do productively with pupils stuck at home and teaching remotely and, because we had a positive experience with it then, we decided we would actually take out a subscription and have continued with that for German in this school ever since.

So that’s a few years now of using This is School! How have you found your use of the platform has changed in that time?

During Covid it was a very natural part of our lessons and incredibly useful for setting and monitoring work. Since then we of course continue to use it, now it’s more for resources in class - such as the listening and grammar videos - or for setting cover work.

Sometimes we use it for setting homework tasks, which is again quite good for the listening, grammar and vocabulary building exercises, and it's there for pupils' personal self-study as well. We buy the subscription for pupils for their full GCSE course and we keep it for our A-level students as a means of revision, so pupils use it independently themselves as well.

Do you find This is School helps with teacher time generally, in terms of saving time across the department?

It's saving time in terms of when it's used as a classroom exercise for learning a point of grammar or setting some cover work. It's quite easy to click on the assignment, set them, that's then automatically emailed to pupils, automatically tracked and so on. So that saves time rather than having to put together or look up other work and check that and just as a general resource as well.

It gives a bit of variety to pupils, too. In our school all our pupils are issued with a Chromebook which they are asked to bring to every single lesson so it's very easy to dip in and out of as and when the teacher wishes to.

And how about student progress when using This is School?

Results for German as a whole have been very strong and have improved over the last three to four years since exams restarted - we've been running for German at 50 to 60 percent grade nine/eight among our GCSE cohort with a larger group, and higher than that even with small groups, so performance at GCSE and indeed at A Level are very good. We use the platform so presumably that can be credited as a part of it!

Do your students have a favourite part of the platform?

Nutty Tilez, naturally, because of the competitive element. If you set some cover work for example and  they've got to get a certain number of points as a target then I think they quite enjoy that one as a bit of fun.

They also like the grammar videos which can be a rather dry topic but that just adds a bit of flavor to that, and then the follow-up practice exercises which I think are good because they force them to get it right before they can move on to the repetitive retrieval practice.

Would you recommend This is School to other teachers?

I would, yes!

I think it's good value for money as it's quite a bit cheaper than other equivalent products, and it's very easy to use.

It’s enhanced our provision in terms of different areas and I think that the authentic videos of native speakers are very good and it shows the pupils the language in more genuine use than just listening to GCSE resources and so on.

It's also good that you offer those authentic resources and I think they're popular as well; it's about that balance between the organic colloquial language and also when students are in an exam and they get faced with these questions that they do feel prepared and that this resource has helped them get there so that's really important.

‍