Premium Plus: 5 key updates for Autumn 2
For those who don’t know, Premium + is our flagship membership which provides video lessons with a native speaker teacher for every lesson in Key Stage 2. Irene and Emilie, teach Spanish and French schemes virtually.
I am happy to announce that Autumn 2 is now ready to view and use!
Feedback, Feedback, Feedback
Thanks to everyone who sent their feedback for Autumn 1. It was overwhelmingly positive, with some really good working points which we have addressed in the Autumn 2 scheme of work. Please keep the feedback coming throughout the year, this product is for your schools, and therefore your feedback is invaluable for it’s ‘fine tuning’
In this blog, I will go over the 5 key updates to the Autumn 2 Scheme, which we have built off the back of the feedback forms and our own review.
1. Autumn 1 was really effective!
The product is working! 100% of respondents agreed that it is ‘good support for non-specialist teachers’ and that the product ‘functions effectively’. This is fantastic news, and something we (obviously) want to maintain throughout the whole year. Furthermore, 100% of feedback would ‘recommend Premium Plus to other schools as an alternative to a specialist teacher in class’. Interestingly, The key values that premium plus provides were ‘Pronunciation practice for students’ and ‘Quality languages Lesson modelling’ for staff
This is some of the written feedback from schools:
Early days for us but so far so very good. It has got the class teachers off the starting blocks'
We are really impressed by Premium plus. It is a huge jump on what was previously provided and invaluable for non-specialists.
Staff love it, I haven’t had a single excuse to not teach Spanish
Both staff and children love premium plus, I think we have finally found a solution for French in our school
2. Increased pronunciation practice
Something we were adamant about was ensuring students practiced and improved their speaking. It was a gut feeling of mine before I saw the feedback (which reinforced this assumption), that we needed more opportunities earlier in the lessons just to focus on saying key sounds.
Therefore in Autumn 2, you will find a new slide ‘Speak’. These will usually start off lessons and will practice key phonetics in both French and Spanish.
3. Shorter lesson length
Upon feedback from both schools and our own review, we have decided to be stricter with lesson length. We (Irene, Emilie and myself) agreed that the lessons were a little longer than we wanted, and we have planned appropriately to ensure that the lesson length will remain under or around the 15 minute mark. In result, you will find the lessons in Autumn 2 a little ‘snappier’ than Autumn 1. Finding the correct balance between information and action is always a little tricky, but the product has been refined and improved in relation to this, and I am confident that you will see this for yourselves.
4. All Tasks relate to learning objectives
Something that we have improved upon is ensuring that everything in the video is related to the learning objective. Feedback indicated that sometimes the lesson went a little away from the objective, and upon reviewing ourselves we noted this. You will notice in Autumn 2, everything relates to the LO and lessons are more refined and concise.
5. Speaker size on screen
Some feedback from schools was that the size of speaker was too small for too long, we know how important it is to see the speaker use their mouths when speaking another language, therefore we will endeavour to keep the speaker as large as possible in the lessons. This is a balance however, as we do want the information presented as well.
Final notes
We really appreciated the feedback, this is a developing product and one that will continue to be shaped for your benefit. The feedback only confirmed our assumptions of the product and allowed us to move with confidence when preparing Autumn 2.
Finally, As a director of PLN I am very happy with how Autumn 1 has gone, and extremely excited for you to try out Autumn 2, as the improvements are there to see.
If you are interested in finding out more about premium plus or want a free trial or demo of the resources, click on the links below.