Back to School with 2Simple - Part 2

Explore 2Simple's innovative educational software for schools: Mini Mash and Python in Pieces, as well as exploring our CPD options. Enhance coding skills, interactive learning, and digital teaching and learning with our comprehensive resources. This is the second in a series of 2 blog posts that outlines the different ways that 2Simple can support you in school. You can read part one here.

Mini Mash: The online space for little learners

Mini Mash is the safe online space for children in the Early Years to learn, create and explore. The seven learning areas of the Early Years curriculum are included - in each area, you’ll find a range of engaging content and Early Years education tools that are perfect for individual or group activities, including over 25 topic packs covering all your favourite Early Years topics.

With simple visual navigation, even very young children can find their way around Mini Mash, there’s nothing to install as the Mini Mash learning platform works on a range of devices including tablets and laptops.

Work is saved into online trays and with just a click of the mouse, you can make a child’s tray visible for parents, perfect for seeing and celebrating what their child has done that day! 'Teacher Tools' give you the ability to quickly and easily make your own themed resources, including jigsaws, pair games and slideshows and these can then be shared with children by pinning them in the top right of their screen.

Mini Mash is free with Purple Mash or can be purchased separately for nurseries, childcare providers and parents. It's perfect to help get younger children used to classroom technology integration and online learning tools in a safe environment.

Python in Pieces: Coding that just fits

Shortlisted in the 2024 Teach Secondary awards for Curriculum Improvement, Python in Pieces is an interactive coding environment, designed to build student and teacher confidence in the text-based coding language of Python. With the ability to easily translate from block-code to Python, in BOTH directions, students will quickly become empowered to progress from the expectations of KS2 through to KS3. The guided lessons allow students to manage their own learning and teacher solution guides enable teachers to support student learning at every step. It is designed around the curriculum with guided lesson activities and clear progression built into the interactive coding environment.

You can see how one school make use of Python in Pieces in the video below:

Python in Pieces can also be used as part of your primary school coding lessons, as it's perfect for students working above age-related expectations.

Know my School: Bringing balance to school improvement

For school leaders, the start of a school year can be daunting, with a long list of jobs related to school improvement. With Know my School, you'll have everything you need to support your school's self-evaluation and improvement planning. Our leadership and management tools are all designed to take the pressure off and reduce the time and resourcing required to create focused improvement plans unique to your setting:

• Coach: Identify areas requiring improvement get a series of outcomes to inform your School Improvement Plans, whilst mapping evidence against the EIF criteria.
• Hub: Automatically feeds outcomes from Coach into your Improvement Plans and pre-populates editable action plans. Track the status of all tasks within your SIP with live feeds that all key stakeholders can access.
• Policy Portal: Upload and store all school policies and link them to your school improvement plans. Get automated alerts when policies need updating, and share access with key stakeholders, whilst keeping policies in a safe and secure place.

Training: Professional development, your way

There are many ways that our Professional Development team can support you in making the most of 2Simple tools to support learning in class and for blended learning. Our teacher training and CPD is a great way to kickstart effective use of technology across the whole curriculum, from a CPD session either at your school or online, to 2Simple webinars that concentrate on specific topics or features to 2Simple connects, 1-1 phone calls or screen-shares with a member of our CPD team, available in 30-minute slots at a time convenient for you. You can also catch up with all previous webinars via our 2Simple YouTube channel and we have our own training platform where staff at your school can complete up to 16 courses that cover everything from setting up Purple Mash to subject-specific guidance.

Newsletter

Our newsletter is a great way to stay informed of all the latest developments and updates from the 2Simple team. Every month we send out a newsletter letting you know of any changes, updates that we have made, details of competitions and ideas of how to make the most of 2Simple in your classroom.