Using BlendSpace as an English Teaching Resource

I have found another teaching resource I really need to share with everyone else. This teaching resource is simply called BlendSpace (https://www.tes.com/lessons) . It makes preparing for a lesson simpler as all you need to do is simply take all the teaching resources you were going to use anyway and place them all together in the BlendSpace.

The great thing about this is you can add additional teaching resources which either challenge or supports your students further. This means the students are able to review and extend their learning at home as well as in the classroom. Those students who understand it all can find more information, while those who need more support can also find some supporting work, all directly in the same workspace area.

The great thing about this teaching idea is that your students can create their own BlendSpace lessons which they can then present and share with the rest of the class. As the BlendSpace area can be open on more than one computer at a time, the students can also work from home or at school to create interesting collaborative pieces of work.

The nice thing about the BlendSpace area is it is visually appealing – a bit like an educational version of a chocolate book, full of different exciting activities. This means the students will be more engaged and focused on the lesson.

The Times Educational Supplement (TES) team has also made it a lot easier to make lessons. I discovered if you type a word into their search box, they will automatically search different places, such as their own database and interesting YouTube channels, helping you collect together all the information you need in record time.

The other great feature is you can embed your lesson directly into a website. This means if the school agrees, the teachers could actually present their lessons on the website, creating flipped learning. This simply means the students do the bulk of their studying at home, and then they complete the assessments and fun stuff in the classroom. This then is also an excellent tool when it comes to revising the different topics. Rather than looking at their notes, students are now able to see and watch YouTube videos and read interesting texts.

As I know this is a British innovation, I think it would also be an excellent marketing tool for the school. How many other Romanian schools let website visitors peer into the inner workings of an English lesson? These lessons could also be stored and used time and again with different classes in different year groups.

Try it and see if you can make a fully functioning digital lesson in only 5 minutes?