Let Teachers SHINE 2015: Winners Announced

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Today, we are delighted to announce the winners of Let Teachers SHINE 2015. As in previous years, the competition was fiercely contested, and we received a record 155 applications.

Alongside our media partners TES, as well as our funding partners Bloomberg, Capita SIMS and Teachers Assurance, we’d like to thank every single teacher who applied, and congratulate the winners. We are very much looking forward to seeing how the projects develop over the next academic year.

Take a look at the winners here:

Gavin Summerfield: Heber Primary School, London

Nao Robotics Story Telling: Children learn how to program and tell stories using Nao Robot technology. NAO is a humanoid educational robot with voice recognition and speech capabilities which are used to retell a story written by the children including gestures and different character voices. It can also interact directly with the children using its speech capability. Older children will also learn to program the robot to combine literacy and computing into a series of storytelling lessons.

Heba Al Jayoosi: Mayflower Primary School, London

Sensory integration for all! Sensory integration to maximise children’s readiness for learning and to promote higher academic attainment. This project addresses classroom behavioural issues stemming from underdeveloped sensory systems (visual, proprioceptive, tactile, auditory, and vestibular) that often result from poor housing conditions and limited social experiences. Underdeveloped sensory systems lead to an inability to process information and in turn poor classroom behaviour which is counterproductive to learning. This project is supported by an occupational therapist.

Jackie Flaherty: Chipping Campden School, Chipping Campden

SHINE in Science: To set up a training programme for sixth form students which will enable them to run a successful after school support scheme and aspirational enrichment programme. The mentors will receive a 6 week training programme covering basic teaching techniques, behaviour management and safeguarding. They will also plan lessons and prepare the session resources they will use. Sessions then run over 16 weeks and include enrichment trips and talks by external STEM Ambassadors.

Jane Kay: Bolton Wanderers Free School, Bolton

All Stars Mathematics: Using sports as a context to facilitate the development of mathematical and numerical skills, supporting the achievement of GCSE mathematics at the C grade or equivalent. Focused on children that are traditionally difficult to engage in maths, the sport context for these activities will include number, measurement, shape, space, geometry, data handling and algebra and be built into a toolkit that can be distributed to other schools and further education providers.

Katie Gibson: Minsthorpe Academy Trust, West Yorkshire

Caught in the Act:  Interactive creative writing and reporting to improve the literacy and oracy skills of disadvantaged boys in year 8. Using portable green screen technology to bring creative writing to life by placing the author in the situation they are writing about. An example might be for a story about Egyptian history to then place the author ‘virtually’ amongst the pyramids. Being portable, the green screen equipment can be shared with other schools.

Kirsty Graham: Marner Primary School, London

Time to Engage: Engaging parents and children in workshops and experiences within the wider community, to create stronger links between home and school. Low starting points for early year’s children in disadvantaged communities is most often due to limited world experience resulting from their parents’ lack of spoken and understanding of English. This project engages with these parents through curriculum based workshops which coach them to better support their children’s home learning.

Marie Hazel: Bridge Learning Campus, Bristol

Operation FLIP – (Flipped Learning = Impressive Progress): Using hand held devices to bring homework to life, flipping the input side of the lesson and allowing the teacher to focus on applied learning. The lessons will be prepared by the gifted and talented students in the school, including the recording of videos showing practical demonstrations. The students will act as learning leaders supported by teachers, then starting at year 8 the techniques learnt will be cascaded down through years 7 and 6.

Robert Jackson: Goole High School Academy, Goole

Maths Covers with Purpose:  Providing students with quality cover lessons in which learning takes place, when a maths teacher can’t be present. These sessions are prepared to cover whole lessons but allows them to still be taught by a ‘familiar’ voice. They can also be used as professional development for less experienced or non-maths teachers. Prepared using a standard video/screen capture software, the lessons can be accessed online, sent via email and carried on a memory stick.

Seliat Agboola: Sydenham School, South London

The Maths Pit: A collaborative real world mathematical challenge which requires pupils to dig themselves out of a learning pit autonomously. Pupils are put in a challenging, unfamiliar situation in which they must ‘strategise’ to solve a real world mathematical problem – thus getting themselves out of ‘the pit’. Pupils are assigned personal roles; e.g. facilitator, recorder, verifier and resource manager. The Maths Pit will be run as a series of intra-school and then inter-school competitions.

Shane Nolan: Christ the King RC Primary School, Manchester

Tinker Tailor Robot Pi: Encouraging children to learn through tinkering, problem finding and problem solving, helping them to develop engineering habits of mind. The project explores how engineers work and solve problems by ‘deconstructing’ their approach to tasks and applying this to simplify problem solving across the science curriculum. These approaches are then applied to the learning, development and practical application of the DT and computer science curriculum.

Thank you once again to all teachers who applied to us. We wish all the winning teachers the very best of luck with their projects.