Key features for UK Schools

I was an English teacher in the UK, and Asst. Primary Head Teacher in International Schools in Malaysia, and China for 15 years.

One of my responsibilities as an AHT was to define our curriculum. I take no joy in reporting that I have spent countless hours poring over the National Curriculum to ensure we were thoroughly covering its objectives.

The NC itself is lifeless — it is teachers who put the meat on those bones and bring it to life through interesting and engaging lesson content and context.

With Rollama, we want to ensure thorough coverage too; we know many Primary Schools want to achieve good results in KS2 SATs.

That's why we produced an exhaustive document linking every NC objective to game pages on our site.

You can download the document free here: link.

What do all teachers want?

Besides a payrise, ask any teacher what they want to improve their work and you'll probably hear the same answer:

Time.

It's the one non-renewable resource, and the thing which always feels in shortest supply in schools.

There are so many competing demands that it can feel like we're not doing justice to any of it.

Creating time-savers and hacks is one solution.

Another piece of the puzzle is tapping into students' own motivation — when childen enjoy doing something, they will make time for it (as long as parents approve!).

That was our insight when building Rollama: make English SPaG fun to practise, and children will surprise you with their willingness to hone their comma placement, their 'shun' suffix spellings, and their irregular past tense verb knowledge.

We can't make extra time in the timetable, but we can spark a flame of interest in students to choose to invest some of their own time to SPaG practice.

We can see it in the site traffic - dozens of users jump onto the site at the weekend when they wake up, to earn medals, trophies, or just a new hat for their avatar!

Healthy competition

No one wants to add anxiety or stress to childhood. Growing up is tough enough already. Healthy competition is a gentle nudge towards raising effort and tapping into a sporting spirit in children to earn points for their team, or contribute towards a friendly game against peers.

Add in grammar gamification and you have a recipe for impact and a playful path to fluent fundamentals. When students are encouraging each other to make some time to play Space Race (when we know they're actually practising verb-subject agreement) – you know you are making a difference to their progress.

We now have 16 game modes and pages covering over 160 language objectives to spark SPaG superpowers in your school.

Don’t take my word for it – try a free 30-day trial and see how it can change the way your students behave towards English practice.

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