This is a translation of the page for schools in the Netherlands, so it can be read in English. The Dutch original: ludensflow.com/voor-scholen
Your school has lessons where students are actively at work. What we keep reading in school plans and annual reports is the next step: that it happens in every lesson, including with the colleague who just started, and that it lasts beyond the training day.
LudensFlow helps with that, without adding another programme for your team. Structures with their sources, and next to each the learning strategy students practise in it: that is how learning to learn becomes part of the subject lesson itself. Packaged for the lesson: steps, roles and timer on the board, started by any colleague in a minute. And all in one place, so what was learned on the training day is still in use the week after.
Book a 30-minute conversationNo demo and no sales pitch. We would like to hear how things are at your school.
The basics are in place, but not every lesson gets students working to the same degree. The differences lie between lessons and teachers, less between students.
Structures a teacher puts on the board and simply runs: step by step, with the time and the roles shown. Everyone knows what to do and no one races ahead. The colleague doing it for the first time works with the same structure as the colleague who has done it for years.
The training day was good. A few months later it still shows in one department and not in the next. The word we read most often is «borgen»: making it stick.
What was discussed on the training day is ready as a structure for the next lesson, with the teacher's own questions in it. The teacher decides the content and the time; the steps and the roles stay. So on Monday there is something to do, not just something to remember.
Teachers often work within their own subject. New colleagues and career changers find their way alone, and good examples stay in one classroom.
A teacher shares a prepared structure with a colleague through one link; the colleague opens it, runs it in their own lesson and makes it their own. In a department meeting the team does a structure itself, so everyone knows it from the inside once.
“Learning to learn”, self-regulation and ownership appear in almost every school plan. In practice it becomes a mentor lesson or an outside programme, cut off from the subject. What is learned there rarely comes back in the biology lesson.
Every structure trains one way of learning that works: pulling it from memory, explaining it in your own words, applying it in a new situation. The board names it, the teacher says it aloud, and the class practises it with the material of that lesson. No separate programme: it happens in the biology lesson, with biology.
No new programme next to everything already running. Each step below uses a moment your school already has.
Lesson observation
Agree on one structure beforehand and, during the visit, watch what students do, not only what the teacher does.
Department meeting
Twenty minutes: the department does a structure itself and picks one for the coming weeks.
Training day
End the afternoon with a structure that will be in the lesson on Monday, instead of with a binder.
New colleagues
A beginning teacher or career changer gets the steps on the board and does not have to read a book first.
Test week
Two weeks before, each department runs one retrieval structure with its own material, so revision happens in the lesson and not only at home.
Students have no account and we ask them for nothing. There is nothing to install: it runs on the screen already in the classroom.
When a structure is running, you can look for this:
The board shows the step the class is on, and how much time is left.
Students talk with each other, taking turns, in a set order or role.
The teacher walks around and listens, instead of talking at the front.
At the end, a short question back: what did you hear from someone else?
The board also shows what the class is training: from memory, in their own words, applying it. The teacher names it aloud.
Examples per subject, already prepared. Each one opens on your screen without an account.
The Team scan measures, in fifteen questions, how your team works together and what it believes students can do. Anonymous, free, with a report at team level.
Go to the Team scan →LudensFlow is new. Teachers already use it in their own lessons; how it works with a whole team is what we want to find out together with the first schools. That is what a pilot is for: not to prove something, but to see what happens in the lessons. What works, what does not, and what your teachers think of it. We are after real data and real feedback, including when it disappoints.
Behind LudensFlow is Oksana Oliinyk, team leader of an ISK (a class for newly arrived students) in South Holland and founder of LudensFlow. For three years she worked with her team on active learning, with training days and coaching, and saw that teachers still rarely chose it in their lessons: the preparation took too much time. LudensFlow takes that preparation away.
Oksana on LinkedIn →Half an hour, online or at your school. We ask how your lessons are going and what you have already tried. LudensFlow only comes up at the end, if you want it to.