Serious Fun
Fantail Academy offers a range of courses based on the idea that to achieve truly great results, kids need to be challenged but they also need to have fun while learning. We call this approach, “Serious Fun”.
Using the Serious Fun approach, we promote advanced learning skills and techniques through:
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Spaced learning – repeating key concepts at different stages throughout the lesson.
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Active Recall techniques – spontaneous ‘tests’ designed to get learners to re-engage with content that was recently covered.
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Student Reflection Tasks – opportunity for kids to reflect on their own learning by providing written or oral feedback to the tutor. This is a great way to fix material into long-term memory facilitating deeper learning and understanding of material.
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Student Centered Learning - needs and learning styles are not the same for everyone, so tutors make sure they address the specific needs of each child individually.
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Experiences of Success – children are given plenty of supportive and positive feedback as well as realistic and achievable goals for learning
Integrated Learning
At Fantail Academy, we understand that learning needs to be fun and interesting for children. Also, it's important that parents are easily able to follow what their child is learning during lessons. That's why our digital partners play such an important role in helping us deliver fun lessons and at the same time, keeping parents informed about what''s happening in the classroom.
MyCat is an information system for language schools that we use to enrol students, organise classes, schedule lessons and maintain contact details of students and parents. Teachers use MyCat to record what happened in their lessons so parents or students can keep track of all the language that was covered in class and even pages covered. Is students are sick or have to miss a lesson, they can simply log in to their Fantail MyCat account, locate their course and check the record for the lesson they missed. Parents can also use MyCat to cancel or re-schedule lessons and communicate with the teacher.
ClassDojo is an online platform that we use in school in a number of different ways. It is ultimately used to reward good choices that the children make on an individual, small group, whole class or whole school basis.
The Dojo points are awarded to the children and the children are given a reason for why they have earned it so that they know what they did that was a good choice. Some examples of what teachers reward children for are for creating beautiful work, showing readiness to learn or extra curricular activities.
Class dojo can also be used as an effective communication tool between class teachers and parents. There is a messaging service for individual one-to-one messages as well as a 'class story' by which the teachers can share events that are happening in the class and photos of the school day. We have found this a wonderful insight for parents especially those of very young children.