Sandra Medley, Head Teacher, Whitstone Community Primary School, Cornwall
Whitstone is a rural primary school of 88 pupils. We cannot house a computer suite but we have ensured an updated computer in each class and two large teaching screens, one in the library and one in Class 3.
During the last 4 years we have focused on getting the children up to agreed levels of competency and have had the Dolphin System since September 2001 to support this. We were initially interested because we found we did not have enough hours in the day to include individual tutoring and assessment, especially for those children who did not have their own computers at home. It was these children who were being left behind their peer group.
In my class (years 2-4) I have introduced Dolphin to the eleven Year 4 children. Two of the children are presently acting as tutors and the younger children in the class are keen to join in. In Class 3 (years 4-6), all 34 children are participating, and there is an effective tutoring system in place. The class teacher teaches himself for each step of the ladder, and then tutors two children. These two then tutor others, creating a snowball effect.
The ladder is well structured to include all the aims and objectives suggested by QCA and the tutoring works especially well, as the children gain an insight into each other’s needs. We also now have something in place that is monitoring individual progress - something that we all found difficult to achieve before.
With only 3 computers able to take the software at present, the ‘hands-on’ time is restricted; but because of its success we shall endeavour to up-grade our other computers so that we can use Dolphin across all of them.