How Masada College enables students to reach their potential with Atomi

The HIVE of potential: Happiness, inclusion, values and edge. An Atomi partner school story: Masada College.

Located in Sydney’s North Shore, Masada College is a Jewish co-educational school. With students from all backgrounds attending the college, it considers itself to be a close-knit community that strives to offer students an exceptional education to succeed.

The challenge

As a school that prides itself on inclusivity and raising individual and confident thinkers, Masada consistently looks for ways to enable all students to achieve their potential. In accordance with this vision, the school developed a culture of thinking as an approach to increase independent learning, make thinking visible and maximise class time interactions between teachers and students.

Given the broad diversity of learning areas in senior years, the school began searching for a simple, reliable solution that could facilitate this strategy, and support students outside class time.

Atomi has definitely been a platform that has engaged our students learning—it has been pleasing to also see the opportunities for further consolidation of topics and themes.  
— Martin Tait, Principal

Strategy

With so many learning areas and unique points of concern with every student, the school turned to technology to reduce the burden on teachers, and make the process of flipping classes and supporting students with their study as smooth as possible.

The school looked to Atomi’s suite of engaging content and flexible formative assessment tools. As students are pushed through content at pace in a highly engaging manner, they achieve base-competency quicker, and on their own time. Students arrive to class ready and energised to tackle new and interesting applications of content in ways that deepen learning and understanding.

Atomi has been very well received by our students and teachers alike. It has quickly become a vital element of our unique Masada offering, enhancing our pedagogical approach to building a Culture of Thinking.
— Ryan Gill, Head of Learning and Teaching

Upon embracing Atomi, class-time became a profoundly more relational educational experience. Through Atomi’s formative assessment tools, students are quickly differentiated according to their unique learning needs. Accordingly, teachers are able to intervene more rapidly as well as face-to-face, spending more lesson time in supporting and pushing students. Greater levels of student engagement and in-class dialogue have enhanced the school’s Harvard ‘Culture of Thinking’, and made higher-order thinking and bolder student outcomes accessible for all.

In Atomi, the school found the perfect complement to the highly differentiated and personalised approach of its staff.

Atomi is an awesome program that provides education in a way that is entertaining and accessible.
— Year 12 Student

Impact

Teachers have now gained more time to restructure their in-class teaching, enabling them to a deeper understanding of where to focus their time to cement student understanding. Whilst some teachers have used Atomi to enhance their flipped learning approach, others have used it to reinforce and deepen the in-class learning. Teachers can now not only support their students in class, but have a platform to take this support online, outside of the classroom without the additional time or burden.

Atomi is an effective and easy way for students to understand the content of the course relating to the syllabus. The simple explanations and visuals really help to make it clear and engaging for the students. I like how the quizzes make students answer the questions they got wrong again to reinforce their learning. It is presented in small, manageable chunks so students can engage with the activities little and often.
— Senior School Teacher

• School type: Co-educational Independent
• Established: 1982
• Students: 537
• Teaching staff: 53

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