Teacher Guide

Introduction

Please review this short video as a guide to navigating the site.

Projecting on a Whiteboard

The website has been designed to work when opened on a laptop/desktop and connected to a projector and a Whiteboard. If you have an eBeam or other interactive Whiteboard this can work especially well allowing you to navigate the website while standing in front of your class. The eBeam also gives additional functionality.

SOME USEFUL CONTROLS:

  • Press the F11 key to go into Full Screen display. Please note F11 exits full screen mode again. You can also right click anywhere on the screen to exit full screen mode. Resources will open in new tabs. You will have to leave full screen mode to get back to the site when you have finished with a resource.

  • Ctrl + / Ctrl - You can zoom in and out on the website, depending on the size of your whiteboard.

  • Ctrl + Tab Ctrl Tab switches between tabs without leaving full screen mode.

The structure of the resources

You an access either the Virtual Library (which has been divided into three core languages), Curriculum content (divided into the four relevant grades or Teacher Resources (divided into Slides presentations and YouTube videos).

All Curriculum content is divided into four different subjects: Afrikaans, English, Mathematics and isiXhosa (please note there isn't content for Grade R isiXhosa at present).

From there content is divided into terms and each link will take you to an Index that links to individual resources. Here's an example of the file structure for the Curriculum content.

  • Grade 1

    • English

      • Term 1

        • Comprehension (Index File)

          • Cat on the Mat

Be specific when you give instructions to your learners/parents on what they are expected to do.

How do I link to resources

The easiest way is to give your learners instructions as described above. Be specific so that they find it easy to follow. The design of the site is intentionally simplistic, as we try to keep data usage low while being easy to navigate.

The best option, if you use WhatsApp or other digital communication tools, is to share the resource URL directly. Put in simpler terms, as a teacher you can navigate to the Index files, right click on a link and Copy that link to send to your learners. This way you know that they will all access the same resources.

In a classroom environment, every Index file has a QR code attached to it. If you have learner devices, learners can scan the QR code to get to that index. From there they can click on the correct resource to open it on their mobile devices.

For some other ideas on how to do this, go check out our Ease of Access course on how to create QR codes and Bit.ly links.

Where do the quiz results go?

At present all results go to the Subject Advisory team. In keeping things simple, we did not add a requirement to sign-in or a requisite for learner names. At the moment there is no way to track individual responses.

This function is currently only for self-evaluation or for parents who are helping their children in the learning process. Learners can immediately see how they did in a quiz and can retake the quiz in order to improve.

If you have learners complete quizzes in a class or a computer lab, ensure that they do not close the quiz when completed and then you can still see the result.

The future vision of this platform aims to empower teachers to integrate the Google Quizzes with their own Google Classroom. This would mean that individual results could be tracked across multiple quizzes.