Hear From Our Sumdog Schools: Jo Quince

We’ve been speaking to some of our Sumdog schools to find out how they use Sumdog with their pupils.

Jo Quince is the Director of Education at Tennyson Learning Community, a multi-academy trust based in Luton.

High-quality resources that help us achieve great results 

The schools within our trust have above-average numbers of pupils eligible for Pupil Premium and over 60% of pupils with EAL so it’s really important for us to ensure we’re providing fantastic teaching and learning resources. Year after year our results at the end of KS2 are always very high, in the top 2% of primary schools in the country and we’ve been using Sumdog since 2018 to support our levels of achievement.

Using Sumdog in-school and at-home

We love the flexibility of Sumdog and have used it in a number of ways with our pupils. Teachers use it as a lesson or TAs may use it with a group of pupils to help work on their mathematical fluency and knowledge – Sumdog is brilliant for that. It definitely helps with fluency and recall, without a doubt.

We’ve recently rolled out a new rotating homework programme where in Week A the pupils are set a spelling, grammar, and maths challenge. In Week B they’re set a creative challenge so they have a balance of online-based learning at home. If they can’t access from home, we’ve set up Sumdog clubs so they can complete their challenges at school.

Supporting teacher wellbeing 

I just think Sumdog is so good. We’ve said to our teachers, if you’re feeling overwhelmed, thinking about their mental health and wellbeing, if you’re feeling overworked one week, perhaps it’s assessment week for example, or lots of things to do in the class then you can set the Sumdog challenges for pupils to do in the lesson. 

To help empower them to set up the challenges and homework, Sumdog led a training session for us in May, which was really engaging and clear. The trainer was responsive to our needs and gave us plenty of opportunity to ask questions which was incredibly useful for our new members of staff.

Making maths fun for our pupils

The children love the game side of it and what’s been nice are the new games and updates that the Sumdog team have made. As a parent, as my child goes to Tennyson Road, it’s great to see him enjoy it. His teachers set homework that links to what they’ve been doing in class so whether that’s measures or time and he loves going in his virtual house, seeing his pet get a new skill – lots of little things for them to enjoy like that.

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“It definitely helps with fluency and recall, without a doubt.”

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Supporting catch-up this summer

We don’t normally set a challenge over the summer but this year is very different. Although we put a regular timetable of learning in place for pupils over lockdown, not every child was able to take us up on it and we know some pupils will have fallen behind.

Setting a Sumdog Summer Challenge for all our pupils is something we're looking to do over the summer holidays as we know just 5 minutes of practice every day for each child makes a massive difference.

Bring excitement and fun to your maths learning!

Sumdog's challenge tool is a great way to set personalised practice for children. Create engaging targeted learning for your pupils by requesting a trial to Sumdog Premium.