At St Martin de Porres teachers pride themselves on creating an environment where every child can flourish and achieve success. Year 1 teacher and ICT Lead Danielle Ganley explains how they use Discovery Education Espresso to broaden pupil learning and take achievement beyond the classroom.
SUPPORTING PUPILS AND TEACHERS
We started to use Discovery Education Espresso after being impressed by a free trial. It was quickly used across the school to support teachers with resources and accessed by our pupils at home. Espresso is now used across every year group and throughout most subjects. We like the range of learning materials which are very easy to access.
ENGAGING PHONICS
We mostly use Espresso to teach English. We use the video stories for comprehension and other resources such as the Poetry Module as a stimulus. Espresso helps us to meet National Curriculum objectives, and the Phonics resources are especially useful. Teachers use the videos at the start of each phonics lesson to introduce a sound. This really engages the children and supports accurate pronunciation.
MEMORABLE SCIENCE EXPERIENCES
We often draw upon Espresso in science lessons. Recently our Year 1 pupils were studying mammals, and Espresso provided some great video clips and pictures for visuals. These images are very useful. Our Year 5 class use Espresso’s photo library to prompt discussion about different topics and to source images for their fact files. This term they’ve been watching the videos about habitats. They can access these remotely to support home learning.
HOME LEARNING
The home learning aspect of Espresso is very useful. Our pupils are very active in accessing Espresso at home and seem to enjoy using it alongside their class topics to supplement learning. Children tend to use Espresso at home to focus on research or to follow their interests outside of school. Espresso’s digital content makes subjects more accessible for them.
LOVED BY PARENTS
Discovery Education Espresso is a very useful resource for our school. It’s used throughout from EYFS to Year 6. We thoroughly enjoy using the resources and so do our parents. They tell us that they have found great joy in using Espresso!
