Tips for Returning To School: An Interview with Dr Flávia Belham

By Carolina Kuepper-Tetzel

Carolina: "I’d like to welcome Dr Flávia Belham from Seneca Learning. I have the pleasure to interview her for this week’s blog post and am excited for her to share her expertise with us. We met in person when Flávia came to give a TILE Network talk in February 2019. Flávia, can you briefly introduce yourself and Seneca Learning?”

Me and Flávia in February 2019 after she gave her TILE Network talk.

Flávia: “Hi Carolina. Thank you so much for this. Pleasure to be part of your blog! My name is Flávia and I used to be a Science teacher in Brazil. In 2014, I decided to move to the UK to complete a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience at UCL. After getting my degree, I started working as Chief Scientist at Seneca Learning. I’ve done all sorts of things with Seneca, from visiting schools to helping develop our methodology. Currently, most of my time is spent on heading our Brazilian branch and also organising and hosting virtual teachmeets and conferences for UK teachers - of which you were a speaker in April!.”

Carolina: “Oh yes, thanks again for inviting me to be part of your brilliant virtual teachmeets. It was a great experience. Now, can I pick your brain about an important, current issue: Teachers and pupils are returning to school in September after a couple of challenging months during which pupils did not have face-to-face teaching and, in general, had to adjust to a new way to navigate the world. Is there anything that teachers should specifically pay attention to when pupils return to school this September?”

Flávia: “A few weeks after you gave your webinar for Seneca, I hosted another one with Sam Strickland, when he gave a really good answer to that question - in my opinion! Basically, he said we should let students know that we are open to conversations and to support them in any way they need when “going back to normal”. However, he advises teachers to teach, teach, teach. In other words, don’t spend too much time coming up with interventions and special policies to counteract the possible effects of the lockdown. Instead, we should focus on our curriculum and use retrieval practice to evaluate any learning gaps from the lockdown period and moving on.”

Image from Pixabay

Carolina: “Let’s dive into concrete teaching activities that can support teachers in their work. How can schools identify and close any ‘learning gaps’ in September? Can setting assessment and feedback strategically support this?”

Flávia: “Identifying learning gaps can be a huge task, so we should make data work for us! If we combine all the data collected from students’ work during the lockdown we will be better informed about their learning gaps and how to close them. All work that students do on Seneca is recorded and displayed to teachers on the teacher platform. We also have several “end of topic” quizzes that are even better to evaluate learning gaps. In schools, we should focus on great teaching and the use of formative assessment strategies. According to Michael Chiles, who just wrote a book about assessment and feedback and wrote a course for Seneca, we should use responsive teaching to try and diagnose what students do and do not know. A good approach would be to build a cumulative assessment and keep reviewing content that was covered during the lockdown. It’s important to focus on low threat, high impact assessment.”

Carolina: “What advice would you give teachers in preparation for the school start in September? What are your Top 3 tips?”

Flávia: “Like Sam said, number 1 would be keep teaching! Second one to make data work for you. Collect information from your students’ performance and use it to make decisions to benefit them. And third one to get more familiar with technology, in case we have a second lockdown (hopefully not, but who knows!). For example, get more familiar with platforms for live lessons, live calls, as well as Google Classroom and, of course, Seneca.”

Carolina: “We know that teachers will be busy preparing for September. Are there any further readings or CPD opportunities regarding these topics that you wish to highlight – preferably free?”

Flávia: “All of our CPD is always free! We have more than 15 online courses for teachers, covering different areas, such as assessment, literacy, dual coding, leadership, and even more specific ones such as mathematical methods. We will also be returning with more subject-specific virtual conferences. The ones we have run so far had between 750 and 950 participants live! So we will definitely do more of these. Lastly, my colleague Richard is running webinars to explain how to integrate Seneca with Google Classroom and Microsoft Teams, for example. All of those CPD opportunities allow teachers to get a certificate at the end!

Image from Pixabay

Carolina: “In the beginning, you mentioned what Seneca Learning offers: What are the most exciting new Seneca features that will help schools in September?”

Flávia: “There are two new exciting features coming up soon! Both of them totally free.

Smart Homework will let teachers automatically reset parts of previous assignments based on how students responded them the first time. So, for example, if 3 students in a class of 20 didn’t get to finish off the last topics of an assignment by its due date, our algorithm will re-set those topics specifically to those 3 students. Similarly, maybe teachers want all students to get at least 70% correct in a topic. Our Smart Homework will automatically reassign topics to each student only if they got less than 70% the first time around. I think Smart Homework will make it easier to get everyone back up to speed in September. I should thank Nesta and their EdTech Innovation Fund for helping make this happen.

The other new feature is our SLT Enhanced Analytics package, which will provide insights into student Seneca usage across the whole school, not only class-by-class as it used to be. That should especially helpful to Heads who need a broader view of students’ work and can split it into age group, subject or course. The package also comes with early access to our free Virtual CPD, personalised pages for the Seneca courses taught in their school, and just overall extra support for students, teachers and parents of that school.”

Carolina: “Thank you so much, Flávia, for all these useful tips. I’m sure you will join me in wishing all teachers and pupils good luck when returning to school. From a quick Twitter survey I did a few weeks ago on Twitter in which 186 people participated, 55.9% indicated that they are worried about returning to teaching after this challenging time (see here). I think the resources offered here can help take the pressure out a bit.“