A guide on how to use Oak's resources - Published February 2021
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A guide on how to use Oak’s resources Published February 2021
Welcome to Oak National Academy
This guide will explain how teachers can make best use of our lessons and resources.
Contents
3 What is Oak?
3 What can I use Oak for?
5 How can I teach with Oak?
6 Getting started
7 Teacher Hub
8 Curriculum mapping
9 Finding lessons
9 Lesson & Resource Directory
10 Lesson content and structure
11 Downloading and sharing resources
12 Tracking work
13 Classroom view
14 Accessibility
15 Specialist offer
16 Tips, support and FAQs
thenational.academy help@thenational.academy 2
What is Oak?
Oak provides a completely free, sequenced plan of video lessons and teaching resources. Your
school can use it as you wish, whether it’s to support remote teaching, aid in-school catch-up,
or help lesson planning and lower teacher workload.
There are nearly 10,000 videos, lessons slides and pupil worksheets across a broad range of
subjects from Reception up to Year 11. In most subjects, there are enough lessons for the
whole year. There are also 600 lessons for students who normally attend specialist settings.
Every lesson has been created by teachers, for teachers. They’ve been tried and tested, with
pupils having taken part in over 100 million lessons since April 2020.
What can I use Oak for?
You may know that Oak was created in response to schools closing during the pandemic. Since
then, use of Oak’s lessons and resources has evolved thanks to a growing number of teachers
using our materials in innovative ways – from catch-up and homework, to covering lessons and
continuing professional development.
Our plan is to use Oak as much as we can. I don’t see why you
wouldn’t; it’s there, it’s free and, from what we’ve seen, it’s quality.
Sam Harries – Headteacher, Swallowdale Primary School
One idea I’ve had is to give some staff training time over to
watching Oak lessons. To say to a teacher, ‘if you’re unconfident
in an area, then why don’t you watch how this subject specialist
explains this difficult concept’ is great CPD.
Nikki McGee – Subject Specialist: Philosophy & Religion, Hethersett Academy
thenational.academy help@thenational.academy 3
Lesson planning Some teachers are using Oak’s downloadable slides and worksheets to assist in school planning and teaching, editing and adapting them for their class. Downloading these materials can be useful for seeing what’s included in Oak’s offering, but also to help plan much further ahead. Catch-up Oak’s thousands of lessons and resources can act as ready-made, personalised catch-up support, for any topic across the majority of the national curriculum. Wherever it suits pupils, teachers can direct them to materials as a ‘top-up’ – in class, as an extension task, or as homework. Our quiz result sharing feature is also useful in helping teachers identify gaps in knowledge, and to help them therefore choose the next set of Oak lessons to progress a pupil’s skill in specific areas. Homework and revision Teachers have begun to identify particular gaps in understanding and are pointing pupils to lessons and units to do as homework or in preparation for exams. Flexible cover When the majority of students are in class, we know that more classes have needed to be covered, often at short notice. Teachers are using Oak to share a link to a lesson to make life easier for colleagues doing the cover, especially in a subject or key stage that is not their specialism. This helps teachers continue to provide high, quality, structured learning without significant extra workload. Continuing professional development We know trainee and early career teachers are missing out on lots of the classroom observations they’d usually experience during this time as there are increased restrictions. We’re hearing from schools that are using the lessons in staff training as an alternative observation resource or helping new teachers see examples of how other teachers teach a particular topic. thenational.academy help@thenational.academy 4
How can I teach with Oak?
Oak can quickly support your lesson planning in a variety of ways. Every setting is
different, so we're seeing schools take different approaches.
Mix and match resources
Many teachers are choosing to use Oak’s resources alongside their own to personalise
content for their classes. For example, you might choose to use an Oak video alongside
your own worksheet or quiz; or use Oak’s editable slides and worksheets whilst teaching
live, to help consolidate learning.
Flipped learning
You might choose to set a number of Oak lessons to pupils and then have live follow-up
lessons for formative assessment and feedback.
Team teaching
Some schools are choosing to use Oak’s lessons to ‘team-teach’ a topic. A teacher
hosting a class may choose to do a live introduction and then play an Oak video, using
the pause points embedded in the lessons as a way to check understanding and have
class discussions.
Live lessons with adapted resources
Where class attendance is disrupted, teachers may choose to use Oak’s lessons so that
all pupils are accessing the same content and to ensure curriculum continuity.
I did a quick mapping exercise of the Oak curriculum against our
subject schemes and found that simple to do. Applying that to the
whole school means taking volumes of work away from staff.
Donna Lewis – Headteacher, Broken Cross Primary Academy
thenational.academy help@thenational.academy 5
Getting started Get started by visiting our website at thenational.academy The website has been designed to be easy to use for teachers, pupils and parents, and is accessible on nearly all devices – including laptops, tablets and mobiles. Our lessons and resources are completely free and there is no registration required, meaning no logins or passwords. Oak is split into two main sections: a Classroom designed for pupils, and a Teacher Hub designed for use by educators. thenational.academy help@thenational.academy 6
Teacher Hub
To get started, click the Teacher Hub button on the website or visit
teachers.thenational.academy
Teacher Hub
Here, you can search our 10,000 lessons and resources, and download accompanying
lesson slides and worksheets wherever copyright allows, allowing you to create your
own lessons.
Oak Teacher Hub Search About Oak Classroom
Plan lessons with Oak’s
curriculum browser
Search by subject or topic
Or browse the curriculum
By subject By key stage Specialist lessons
You’ll know what’s best for your pupils and school, so our aim has been to make our
resources as flexible as possible.
We’ve worked with subject associations, exam boards, and a wide range of education
experts to try and choose the most popular topics, meaning we can support as many
schools as possible across a broad curriculum.
thenational.academy help@thenational.academy 7Curriculum mapping
If you’re using Oak to plan ahead or to help support with catching up, the first thing
we’d recommend is to go through Oak’s units and map them against your existing
curriculum to assess where they match.
We have created a curriculum map for each subject and phase; you can access these via
our curricula page, or at the top of each unit for a particular subject.
Each map provides a curriculum rationale, an outline of all topic units available and how
many lessons are in each. To help you, we’ve provided information on the pre-existing
knowledge needed for any unit.
There is also a suggested schedule and order of lessons, if that works for you – but you
are free to use the units and lessons in any order that suits you.
Oak Teacher Hub
Download our full curriculum by school stage and type
Download our full 2020-21 curriculum plans.
All Primary Secondary Specialist
Download Download Download Download
thenational.academy help@thenational.academy 8Finding lessons
Search by subject or topic
Use our curriculum browser search bar to search the entire bank of lessons and their
transcripts by keyword. This is helpful if you’re after a topic or objective that might be in
a number of different subjects or age groups.
By key stage
Via this button, you’ll find all of our subjects and units grouped by key stages. We have
omitted grouping by year groups to allow a more discrete selection of lesson materials
based on the different needs of pupils.
By subject
Viewing by subject allows you to search what’s available by each key stage, or by
suggested year group. Click through to a unit to see an overview of each lesson.
Clicking on any lesson gives you a detailed view of what the lesson entails, including a
transcript and accompanying materials.
Lesson & Resource Directory
You can also download the Oak Lesson and Resource Directory to help make your
planning even easier. This document breaks down each subject and key stage available
to units and lessons, and details what downloadable slides and worksheets are available
from each.
thenational.academy help@thenational.academy 9Lesson content and structure
Accessing the lesson via the Teacher Hub allows you to review each element of the
lesson individually.
Video
Each lesson follows a similar structure; many
Presentation
have a multiple-choice quiz, followed by a
video explanation from the teacher, and
Exit Quiz
there may then be a worksheet, exercise and
a multiple-choice quiz at the end to check Transcript
understanding.
Some lessons will have an introductory quiz at the very beginning to
retrieve and activate prior knowledge that needs to be built upon.
Similiarly, at the end of some lessons, an exit quiz will help to check
pupil understanding.
Each lesson has a video with an explanation of the topic. Typically,
a video will include lesson objectives, questions to ensure
understanding, and various practice tasks, with prompts to start and
pause the video.
Most lessons have an additional worksheet or presentation
embedded and/or for download. These will contain any templates,
tasks or other content as referred to in the lesson video.
In Teacher Hub, you can also find transcripts for each lesson’s video.
This is useful for those who want to quickly skim to see what each
lesson covers, without having to watch the video all the way through.
Many teachers also use Oak lesson transcripts to help with scripting
their own lessons.
thenational.academy help@thenational.academy 10Downloading and sharing resources
Wherever copyright allows – which is on around 70% of our lessons – you can also
download the slides and any worksheets allowing you to edit and adapt them for your
class and for live teaching.
Share Download
Using the Share button, you can send links to lessons directly to Microsoft Teams or
Google Classroom. Alternatively, you can copy the lesson link and paste it wherever you
need to.
You can customise the lessons, choosing to share them in their entirety or part of a
lesson – maybe just the video without a worksheet, or turning on or off the quizzes,
if more appropriate for your pupils. You can do that easily to ensure the learning is
personalised and relevant.
Presentation (PPTX) Editable Worksheet Printable Worksheet
(PPTX) (PDF)
thenational.academy help@thenational.academy 11Tracking work
Quizzes
We have recently launched a new feature which allows students to share their results
after taking a quiz with Oak. Pupils can now share scores directly back to teachers,
with a breakdown of their answers for each question. Scores can give teachers a better
understanding of a pupil’s knowledge and skills, to better shape catch-up intervention
and to personalise revision.
100%
You got 4 out of 4 correct.
Share your results:
Google Microsoft Copy
Classroom Teams link
Other methods of tracking
Keeping accessibility at the heart of Oak means that there are no logins and passwords,
nor do we store any personal data. Although pupils can share their scores, Oak’s website
anonymises this data and any quiz results are generated from a unique, one-time URL.
We know that you’ll want to check on work completion and pupils’ understanding.
Other than quizzes, we’ve seen schools do this in a number than ways:
• creating and setting their own worksheets or quizzes, through their school’s learning
management system, with tasks asking about content taught in Oak lessons
• regularly contacting parents to check how pupils are managing with Oak, and
speaking to the pupil to ask them questions about what they’ve been learning – this
might be a good route for primary schools
• having a teacher available at set times to answer questions from pupils – again, this
might be particularly useful for younger learners.
thenational.academy help@thenational.academy 12Classroom view Our Classroom is designed to be user-friendly for pupils and parents accessing lessons at home. You can search by subject or via the search bar, or see lessons in a suggested schedule that is updated each week and gives a daily schedule that guides your students through the curriculum, in order. Each lesson builds on the previous one so they can start and then just follow through if that’s what you choose to do and it fits with your topic plans. Classroom lessons mirror corresponding lessons from Teacher Hub; it’s just more functional for a pupil’s learning needs. thenational.academy help@thenational.academy 13
Accessibility Accessibility is very important to us. Each lesson is designed to be undertaken by children without support from parents, although some lessons for pupils who attend specialist settings may need a little extra help. Each lesson can be paused and replayed to give children time to understand and complete tasks. All of our lessons contain captions which can be toggled on and off. KS1 English & Maths lessons are also BSL interpreted to help the youngest learners. Once pupils have finished a lesson, they can click back to your school’s VLE or their schedule, and finish any other lessons for that day. thenational.academy help@thenational.academy 14
Specialist offer Our specialist lessons have all been developed by specialist teachers or therapists, and sit as a separate area within our Classroom and Teacher Hub. These lessons are structured slightly differently to our mainstream offer. Each area has an introduction from a specialist teacher, aimed at parents or carers, explaining how to use these lessons and the upcoming topic for their child. These introductions help to explain how to use lessons most appropriately, as we know that an individual student’s needs whilst accessing the specialist content could vary significantly. Below this introduction are each of the units. The lessons follow a similar approach, but are video-focused with any extra instructions given directly by the teacher. thenational.academy help@thenational.academy 15
Tips, support, and FAQs
For extra support and the latest information, visit our support pages at
support.thenational.academy.
Here, you can find advice and how-to guides as well as case studies and on-demand
webinars from the Oak team.
To be among the first to hear about new lessons, resources and other helpful content,
make sure to sign up to our mailing list at oaknat.uk/email
You can also follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, by searching @OakNational.
Our lessons and resources are all created by teachers, for teachers. We really hope they
can support you as you continue to support your pupils, through what we know is a
challenging period.
help@thenational.academy
twitter.com/oaknational
instagram.com/oaknational
facebook.com/oaknationalacademy
thenational.academy help@thenational.academy 16You can also read
