Education Scotland have today published advice and guidance, with exemplification in a range of subjects to support learning and teaching in the new NQs. More material will be published over the coming months.
The updated NQ website can be found here:
http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/nationalqualifications/index.asp
During Term One, my Primary 7 class decided they would like to create a Class Newspaper. Within my class, as within most classes, I have pupils with challenging behaviour. I wanted all pupils in my class to be fully motivated throughout this learning context. I also wanted my pupils to have ownership of their class newspaper.
The pupils were eager to get started writing their articles. However, as a class we decided that it would be a good idea to establish a ‘planning wall’ first. One of my pupils asked if we could set up a Glow Group to compliment the planning wall in our classroom. My pupils were eager to add to their planning wall even when not at school. I set up an interactive planning wall using wallwisher.com. This allowed the children to add their ideas to a wall that they all could access at any time through a link placed within their Glow group. I initially asked the question, “Which features should we include in our newspaper?” This wall allowed the children to share their ideas, comment and add to them. It gave them an opportunity to give constructive feedback on each others suggestions. All comments made by the children needed to be approved by myself before they went live.
My class decided they wanted to give our newspaper a name. We discussed suggestions and they decided they would each vote on their favourite. I asked the class if they had ever voted online or by text using their mobile phone? I heard a unanimous chorus of “Yes!” I wanted to encourage all pupils to vote for their favourite newspaper name. I decided create an online poll using polleverywhere.com. Poll Everywhere is a free service that allows the children to vote within a teacher generated poll using their mobile phones and voting by text or by completing a simple web response form. I first saw this learning tool in action during an input given by a very innovative lecturer, Sharon Tonner, at the University of Dundee. All the children appeared to be very enthusiastic about being able to vote – including the less motivated pupils who I was targeting this learning tool towards. I felt that if I had all my pupils fully engaged from the offset of the project, the finished product would be more rewarding for them. Overnight, I had a 100% response to the poll – all of the members of my class taking part in the project!
As the project progressed and publication date was nearing, the pupils used Comic Life and Textease to create draft copies of their feature stories. The boys in particular were very keen to write up their reports of the latest school team football match. Pupils who would struggle to stay on task during a writing lesson were fully engaged with Comic Life.
There is one pupil in particular who exhibits challenging behaviour within the class. She has excellent ICT skills. I decided to give her the chance to be the ICT Consultant in Chief. She excelled in this consultative role. She was focussed and willing to show to the rest of the class how to modify and produce their paper. She clearly explained how to create a drawing in Textease, save it and then import it into Comic Life.
As well as producing a physical copy of the OL Record (Our Lady’s Record), the pupils were very keen to release an electronic copy of the paper. We used youblisher.com to create an electronic version of our paper. We created pdf’s of each page and used the online program to create our paper.
The pupils were proud of their creation. They took great delight in handing them out to family and friends at their MacMillan Coffee Morning.
Matthew Monaghan, Primary 7 class teacher at Our Lady’s Primary, Dundee.
Post written by Lorraine Munro
I’m an Early Years Practitioner in a Primary One (ages 4 and 5) class in Dundee, Scotland. I am also a Promethean Advocate. As a previous ICT Staff Tutor, I was interested in using gaming as a hook to engage young children with all aspects of learning. We often loaned out gaming resources to schools and early years establishments as part of an initiative to support learning in the classroom through Curriculum for Excellence, Scotland’s curriculum for 3–18 year olds. The Learning Teaching Scotland website has a dedicated area to game based learning.
When I returned to school after the summer break, I was really excited to put my experiences into practice. In the last school year, we have used a variety of consoles and games to support our youngsters in their learning. This is our journey through the year…
We began by using two Nintento DS’ at the writing table. I introduced Pictochat to the children and they practised writing sounds and letters they had been taught by the teacher. They also liked to practise writing their name and it was a great way to encourage emergent writing. They enjoyed ‘sending’ their writing to each other and this activity was a real winner with the boys. They had no problem with the small stylus and, in fact, this really helped with pencil control.
We have approximately ten Nintendo DS’ and are using them across the school. It has been embraced and other classes have used them in different areas:
In Primary One, we then moved on to using the Playstation 2 with the Eye Toy. We used the game Play. I would give the children clear instructions on what game was to be played and the children would very quickly pick up the on-screen instructions. The area surrounding the game was set up to support number recognition and I would encourage the children to find their score on the number square. We also looked at Health and Wellbeing outcomes like sharing space, being aware of rules and turn taking.
We were lucky to buy gaming equipment for the school and purchased a Wii and Xbox with Kinect. Primary One children were allowed to try out the Wii and as we were doing a Health topic, we decided on FIT, which is a Dora and Diego game. Although this game is for one player, we had up to four children taking part at any time. One person held the Wii remote but all four children did the activities. Children won medals when they completed a routine so we decided to take this opportunity to support maths and every time the children won a medal they added it to our graph.
We also used the Wii game Just Dance as a whole class activity during our health week. We had four Wii remotes and everyone had a turn to hold the Wii remote and gain a score. This game was a huge success and is now one of our whole school Friday activities.
The next game we used was Yogi Bear. The children were engrossed in a Goldilocks and the Three Bears topic and I was looking at bears in my area. This game was less active, but we adapted the area to look more like Jellystone Park and although this was also a one player game we had two children participating at any time. This meant there was also a peer there to encourage and support when necessary. We moved the writing table beside the Wii area and this encouraged the boys to write and draw about their experiences with the game. Near the end of the topic, we had a Yogi Bear book. The children recorded their experiences of using the game in the book by drawing a picture and writing. Some asked me to scribe for them while others felt confident enough to have a go themselves.
We encountered a few difficulties using the Wii as it was a very popular activity and was very much in demand. This meant that not all the children were getting an opportunity to use the game, as some were always there fast and some would stay on for a while. We devised a simple laminated sheet of all the children’s names and a whiteboard pen. I scored off the name when a child picked the Wii and they weren’t allowed to go back on until everyone had a turn. Once all the names were scored off, we cleaned the name board and we could start again. We also had a ten-minute timer so the children were responsible for setting this when they began the game. We also discussed rules for the game with the children and displayed them. We reminded children of these rules regularly and these complimented our Health and Wellbeing lesson plan within our curriculum
As a school we had also purchased X Box Kinect with Kinectimals. As we had an Animals topic near the end of the school year, we thought this would engage our youngsters and give opportunities for lots of discussion about animals. It did, but also supported all areas of the curriculum. We had to look at a number of different elements to make this work for us.
The area needed to be big enough so the child using the Kinect could be found by the sensor, but we didn’t want children to be using this in isolation from others. This meant we also had to fit in some kind of seating for other children to watch, discuss and support their peer through the game without them also being picked up by the sensor.
At first, using our previous gaming organisation ideas, we all had a turn at interacting with and getting to know the different cubs. We then voted using ActivExpressions about which one would be the P1 cub. We then chose the cub, which was the Black Panther cub and then proceeded into the game. The children taught the cub tricks and played games with it. They supported each other in performing the activities and carrying out the tricks. Lots of different curricular areas were supported, from maths when one child read his score of 295 and others read instructions on the screen hitting literacy outcomes. Experience was gained in Health and Wellbeing outcomes when children showed how they led and supported the learning of others and showed genuine care and understanding in caring for the cub. Overall, this game had a huge learning potential. It is not as easy to use an early years setting as the Wii, but it was well worth the effort.
Our latest piece of work with the Wii has come from our transition with our nursery children (up to age 4) moving into Primary One. The nursery children had used the Mii Channel on the Wii console to create Miis for all the children as part of a topic about themselves. This allowed each child to create a Mii with their hair colour, eye colour, face shape and even find the letters in their name. When the children moved into P1, the Wii console came with them. The children have been using the Wii Sports game and bowling. This has given me an opportunity to create Miis for all the children who came to our school not from our nursery. It has also meant that the children can find their Mii when playing the bowling game. Furthermore, this game allows me to observe children who can read numbers to ten and begin early addition.
Our experiences with gaming are still developing and we are always looking for ways to engage our young people. Our latest purchase has been an iPad and we look forward to how we can support our children through their learning in new and innovative ways.
The Land of Me, Eric, Buddy and Willow have finally arrived in Dundee for some exciting adventures with our Early Level community! I think they’ll love it here as they’ve already enjoyed so many adventures with children throughout Scotland and England. Not content with being the birthplace of marmalade and the home of the fabulous new V&A building, our Dundee school children will now be welcoming three furry and feathery newcomers to our classrooms.
Following the incredible early success of The Land of Me project run by the Consolarium with our Dundee Nursery Schools, our Primary Schools wanted to get on board and continue to promote transition and active learning.
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The Land Of Me has been fully promoting ICT, Active Learning, Creativity and Language skills with our Early Level pupils in our Curriculum for Excellence. Pupils have been engaged and motivated to progress through the exciting chapters, discover the characters and continue their adventures away from the computer with the multitude of printable resources. They have been engage in imaginative play, collaborative tasks and have had great fun and enjoyment doing so! The animation is beautiful and it’s been a real joy sharing this fantastic resource with our community of early level pupils and practitioners in Dundee. Find out how Bernadette Donald from Wallacetown Nursery has been pioneering the use of The Land of Me.
Land of Me can be found in the Start Programs menu on Dundee curriculum computers. If you have any feedback about the resource I would love to hear from you. Just leave a reply to this blog post.
This blog is managed by all education staff and pupils across Dundee. It allows teachers and pupils to share and celebrate learning. Tell everyone what is happening in your class, school or cluster. You can add a link to your Glow Group, blog or wiki to share all the exciting learning that is taking place within our nurseries, primary schools and secondary schools across Dundee.
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