kerboodle!

The Coopers’ Company and Coborn School

One of the biggest benefits I find in using kerboodle! with my A2 Biology class is the ease with which I can personalise my students’ learning. Because all students sit the same final exam at ‘A’ level, I’ve always set the same homework assignments to all students. As I became more familiar with kerboodle! I realised I could set up different ability groups in a matter of minutes. Now I can set them different assignments according to their needs:

• For the students who constantly need me to chivy them along I use the Test Yourself multiple choice activities as they benefit from the immediate feedback they receive. They can assess their understanding of a topic in a quick and, in their eyes, relatively painless fashion. Having seen that they understand the work they are often more willing to focus their attention on the examination style questions.
• Students who lack confidence in their own ability also benefit from the Test Yourself materials. They gain confidence as well as a new type of learning tool. Eg. the ability to get feedback on the questions they got wrong was invaluable and the fact that they were not just told what the correct answer should have been, but were directed to the relevant section in the textbook, is excellent. They have to re visit the material to find the correct answer and in doing so were reinforcing some ideas and as well as learning new ones.
• The high achievers value the stretch and challenge materials I assign to them.

Feedback is easily retrieved from the site and can be exported to an Excel spreadsheet for further analysis.

Ms Rickard’s students enjoy the online format of kerboodle!

With the recent changes coming through in the teaching and learning of Modern Foreign Languages and the new GCSE format in MFL next year, I needed to find a suitable text book that would match the requirements. Not only did it need to cover many of the topics that we have been teaching for years, but also new ones such as poverty and homelessness, environmental issues and new technologies. As a department we met several publishers but the one which ticked all the boxes was kerboodle! published by Nelson Thornes. Not only does it have a useful Key Stage 3 revision section at the beginning (indispensable to the new learners) but everything is accessible via the internet. This is used in class and at home. As a teacher I can ‘switch on’ what I want the pupils to see and review the work done online. I can even see who has done their homework, who has not and who is lying!! In class, the listening is done through the PC but we can access transcripts and adapt them for our own use. We can also view or hide the text. This online format is great for a school for whom one of the specialisms is ICT!