Category Archives: Third

All Posts, Technologies, Third

Pico boards at St Paul’s RC Academy

Leave a comment

S3 CfE Scratch Unit

As part of our new S3 course I’ll teach the pupils Scratch using a mixture of written materials and some video tutorials from the Teach ICT website –
http://www.teach-ict.com/programming/scratch/scratch_home.htm.
Before the end of unit assessment where pupils design and implement their own maze game I do a lesson on sensors and let the pupils use the getting started with Pico boards notes – http://www.picocricket.com/pdfs/Getting_Started_With_PicoBoards.pdf

I introduce the board using my visualiser, pointing out the various sensors, then let pupils work away.

I was slightly limited by the fact that I could only cobble together 5 micro USB cables (these do not come with the kits unfortunately) so pupils work with learning partners and share boards between groups. Having said that the pupils respond really well and get stuck in taking the notes and adding extra functionality to the projects.

Next steps…

I found a tutorial on using the pico board as a controller for  a driving game using the slider to steer left and right.

http://scratch.mit.edu/tags/view/picoboard

Pico board under the visualiser and bounced up on the projector so all the class could see the sensors
Pupil testing the sound sensor by tapping it to make a change to the sprite.
Pupil using torch app on his phone to test out the light sensor.
Pupil using slider to move the sprite on screen.

All Posts, Featured, Sciences, Second, Third

Physics Fun in Space

Leave a comment

The following film is a recording of a science show for primary schools presented by Dr Alan Bruce of the University of Abertay to a mixed audience of primary 6 & 7 pupils. It has been developed as a spin out from the popular Tayside Space School and shows a series of fun science (particularly Physics) experiments. It is designed to promote science in a fun and entertaining manner using space and space travel as a means of introducing basic scientific principles such as gravity and electricity and highlighting their importance in our everyday lives.

The following presentation was one of a series of 12 shows enjoyed by more that 800 pupils from across Dundee and Angus during 2012 and the University would like to thank the Institute of Physics in Scotland for providing funding to support the development and delivery of the shows.

Pupils will be shocked, surprised and entertained by the show, but more importantly Alan and the team at Abertay, hope the show will excite and encourage them to take their first steps towards becoming Scotland’s scientists of the future.

Leave a comment if you use the film with pupils e.g. What are their reactions? Will you plan any follow up practical work?

You can contact Alan at A.bruce@abertay.ac.uk and see the video on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRTDqf0IyE0&feature=youtu.be

Glow, Technologies, Third

Wikis at Braeview Academy

Leave a comment

Internet Safety Wikis at Braeview

As part of the S1 CFE Computing course pupils are studying a unit on the Internet, and a topic within that unit is Internet Safety. Pupils watched some short videos on issues like Cyberbullying using the BBC On top of the digital world site (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00fq2n1) and visited the thinkuknow (http://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/11_16/control/), cbbc (http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/topics/stay-safe) and kidsmart (http://www.kidsmart.org.uk/) websites. Following on from this the class divided themselves into groups of 2 or 3 people and were given a topic picked at random on which they had to produce an informative Wiki.

The topics they had to choose from were:

  • Cyberbullying
  • Social networking sites
  • Mobiles
  • Chatrooms and IMs
  • Hacking and viruses

The teams then divided up their topic into chunks so that each person had the chance to create a sub page for their wiki. Pupils were shown how to capture, upload and insert images into their wikis and how to create hyperlinks to subpages and other websites.

Finally when the task is finished pupils then peer evaluate another member of their team using traffic lighting and two stars and a wish sheet (shown below). The teams then also peer evaluate another teams wiki using a similar evaluation sheet (again shown below).

This exercise brings in group work, cross curricular themes building on work the pupils have already done in Social Education and develops their technical skills in producing a Wiki for the first time. Obviously Health and Wellbeing outcomes are covered but also numeracy can be slipped in if the teacher talks about file sizes of images and compression e.g. comparing bitmaps with jpegs. In addition Literacy outcomes can be touched on with pupils proof reading their own and other pupils pages and creating their own text.

The wiki can be seen by clicking here. (https://wikis.glowscotland.org.uk/0001444/Internet_Safety_Wiki/1X2)

Teachers can review, edit and comment on pupils wikis in a straighforward manner.

What I’d do differently:

1/ Team dynamics can be a problem with pupils starting off the best of pals week 1 and then falling out by week 3 over artistic differences, I would pick teams more carefully in the future.

2/I would allocate more time to the task as 3 lessons was not enough to allow pupils time to learn the software, get good quality original content in and then evaluate the wikis.

Below are some pictures and captions outlining the lessons:

Front page of wiki

Editing a wiki

To insert a picture it first has to uploaded by clicking attach file button, I found that the Flash uploader worked quicker than the Classic uploader and that it can be hit and miss with a few attempts before the upload actually works and doesn’t just hang, but it worth the wait. Once uploaded or attached you can then insert it using the editor tools and play about with sizing and alignment.

Peer evaluation sheet

Team evaluation sheet

Lesson 3 LIs and Scs – Internet Safety

Featured, Health and Wellbeing, Technologies, Third

Choices and Challenges

Leave a comment

Within S2 Health and Wellbeing we have programmed a 7 week  Choices and Challenges block.  This year we wanted to develop our pupils awareness of life and learning by introducing a couple of lessons encouraging personal career planning and preparation.

To build on, and make the pupils investigation more meaningful, Harris Academy invited over 40 professionals from different occupational backgrounds / education or training to one of their Social Education classes.  The volunteers  were interviewed by small groups of S2 pupils. These interviews were recorded using Talk-Trakers. The Talk-Trakers were ideal for gathering evidence and the recordings (podcasts) were an excellent assessment tool as they could be shared and compared. 

The experience and outcome covered is

“I am investigating different careers/occupations, ways of working, and learning and training paths. I am gaining experience that helps me recognise the relevance of my learning, skills and interests to my future life”.  HWB 3-20a

Pupils have also published their pictures and podcasts to their e-portfolios.

Learning Intentions 

  • To construct a set of questions to gather information about their visitor
  • To identify other post-16 routes such as Modern Apprenticeships
  • To identify the local college and university
  • To identify the links between school subjects and occupations
  • To anticipate future decisions in education, training or work
  • To identify influences on career decision making
  • To investigate the knowledge and skills people need at work

We found that pupils really found this experience worth while, they were completely engaged in their learning and enjoyed listening to recordings of the other groups.

Technologies, Third

Inter-Disciplinary Learning at Braeview

Leave a comment

Our ICT courses in S1 and S2 have been designed to accommodate meaningful cross-over with other subject areas as recommended in the Curriculum for Excellence.

S1

In S1 we have links with Modern Languages, Home Economics, RME and Science.  In the units studied we use topics pupils learn in other subjects as a context to apply the skills we teach, e.g. in our Word Processing unit pupils create a word processed evaluation form for Home Economics and for RME,  pupils create a Wheels of Faith poster using MS Word and the BBC World Faiths website for research. In our Presentation unit pupils are working on a hyperlinked PowerPoint on the theme of the Animal Kingdom. These links continue throughout the year  in other units, for example in our Graphics unit pupils  draw a face and label it up using Modern languages vocabulary and for Home Economics we show the pupils how to design a funny face salad using graphics tools. In addition to the above there is the cross-curricular work the Technologies subjects do in the S1 Rich task where pupils work in teams on a challenge which pulls in skills learned in all four departments in a real world scenario.

S2

As part of our animation unit with the Story Telling Alice application we have an exercise whereby pupils devise a foreign language conversation using vocabulary learnt in Modern languages. We also deliver a small unit looking at numeracy and literacy educational games with all of the S2 pupils competing to get the best scores in each area with prizes for the top boy and girl.

All Posts, Featured, Languages, Literacy, Other Big Stories, Second, Third

‘Find your inner zombie’

Leave a comment

I was excited to enter my newly qualified teaching year on the advent of Curriculum for Excellence in 2010, and was looking forward to delivering creative lessons throughout the curriculum.

Teaching English, I found I had endless opportunity to not only create new lessons but modify existing lesson plans. The Secondary English curriculum requires pupils to experience a wide variety of writing genres, which cover the main writing outcomes. Towards the end of the year, my S1 pupils were required to write a transactional piece. The purpose of this writing task is to convey information, and topics such as ‘how to care for a pet’ are used.

Throughout the year, I attended a few TeachMeets and listened to various speakers discuss how to motivate. In one visit, we had a speaker from the Scottish Book Trust who told us to ‘find our inner zombie,’ as the children really engaged with this current topic. Although I had discussed Zombies with my pupils when we discussed childrens’ books, or T.V. programmes, I had never integrated them into my curriculum before this writing task.

The whole school cross-curricular week was approaching, and this time the topic was Rapid Response. I chose to engage with this theme by discussing disasters with the intention of creating a transactional piece of writing.

We started off by researching past disasters, hitting reading outcomes throughout this process. The pupils engaged with the texts they were using and gathered information, summarised, organised, took notes, prioritised and created new texts (Eng 3.12a, Lit 3.14a, Lit 3.15a, Lit 3.16a, Eng 3.17a) from these pieces. We then compared environmental disasters with chemical, nuclear and man-made disasters. Using real-life examples from newspapers, the pupils then used the computers to find a story of a person who had survived these disasters.

By investigating real life stories, the pupils were able to engage with the effects of these disasters, and explore the causes of these incidents. By using these stories as stimulus and exploring other people’s rights we also hit Health and Wellbeing Outcomes. The pupils found the causes of some man-made disasters thought provoking, and we were able to have moral discussions about this.

The outcome task I set the pupils was related to the Zombie phenomenon. We moved on from disasters to discuss apocalyptic versions of disasters, focusing on The Bee Movie and more science fiction type scenarios. We discussed a zombie apocalypse at great length and the information the pupils could bring to the discussion was immense! During this discussion, we examined old ‘Protect and Survive’ adverts from previous decades, which the children found very intriguing. They discussed the various media that can be used to convey information. At this point, we delved into various types of transactional writing, which ensured the pupils could be successful in this task.

The pupils created a Microsoft Publisher brochure entitled “How to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse.”

For higher ability pupils, their brochure contained a lot of writing, whereas the lower ability pupils concentrated on features of informative writing, such as bullet points, sequential instructions, and simple facts. Pupils then used ScribbleMaps to scribble on a map of Dundee and alert the public to the safe zones, water supplies, infected areas, and shelter zones. The pupils loved designing routes through their own town and engaging with local landmarks and shopping centres in order to create their map. Creating this map also served as an opportunity for assessment of understanding, literacy and cooperative working.

Each pupil gained a lot from this unit and were all engaged while creating, and then presenting their brochure. Some pupils extended this further and showed examples of what tools were needed to survive, while some focused on the basics of the task. I think making this extremely relevant tapped into some of the more disengaged pupils, and was therefore an appealing task from the start. The work speaks for itself, and I am currently using the same template for an S3 class. Watch this space…

Early, Featured, First, Fourth, Glow, Other Big Stories, Parental Involvement, Second, Senior Phase, Technologies, Third

Blogging to enagage with Parents at Dens Road Primary School

1 Comment

Post written by Lorraine Munro, Dens Rd Primary School Dundee

Blogging with our class has helped me and my colleagues engage with parents in their children’s learning and the life of the school, and given an opportunity to consulate, communicate and open a dialogue with both learners and parents. I hope that by sharing our experiences, I’ll give you some ideas for starting your own class blogs.

I work in Primary One in Dens Road Primary School in Dundee, Scotland. Our Scottish Schools Digital Network, GLOW, introduced Glow Blogs and we decided to think about blogging as a way to engage parents. These are blogs based on WordPress. I wasn’t really familiar with blogs and wasn’t sure of their purpose, but we were really enthusiastic about trying to use them to engage parents with learning.

Parents in nursery (pre-school) usually have quite a lot of contact with staff, can ask about learning and see their child’s progress when they collect them. Moving into Primary One (ages 4 and 5) is slightly different. Parents tend to have limited contact and pick up and drop off at the school gate. Children are also notorious for answering ‘nothing’ when asked what they have been doing at school!

We embarked on using a blog to show parents the learning that was taking place in school and hopefully foster good home/school links. We called it Dens Road Primary One. At the beginning, we didn’t gain permissions from parents/carers as we only used images of areas or displays in the classroom. As this is a public facing blog, we knew that if we wanted to use images of children we would have to gain permission from parents/carers.

We started by sharing what our topic was and some of the areas of learning that children would have an opportunity to use during the school day. We also uploaded images of sound work that they were introduced to by the teachers and number work we were doing in the classroom. Here is an example of the type of images we used. These images were used when we were learning about growing and plants.

 

The blog posts were shared with the children every week and the children were encouraged to ask their parents to comment on the blog posts.

We put up some website links that children could access at home to support learning too.

The URL for the blog was printed on the bottom of our homework diary so parents were reminded where they could access it.

The comments that were made by parents were really encouraging. Here are some examples:

Chloe’s Mum – What fantastic sock puppets! Chloe is going to show her little brother Callum how she made hers this weekend so he can have one too! Keep up the good work primary 1.. Can’t wait to see what your up to next week!

Caseys mum – hi Casey really enjoyed Idris and had lots to tell me about him it is fun and interesting to look at the blog and see what Casey has been doing.

Donna (lee’s mum) – Hi, Really enjoying seeing all of the photo’s of the school. This blog is great. Look at it all the time. Enables me to see what Lee does at school. Keep up the good work. Thanks

kayleigh´s mum – I loved the caterpillar and the pictures.Thank you teachers for all your hard work . Kayleigh is so happy and everywhere we go she explains how wonderful her school is. When is the next party?

During snow week – when the school was closed for a week – we put up websites that the children could access and gave them ideas for having fun at home in the snow.

We put reminders up on to the blog about events in school, for example, as an extra way of keeping parents informed.

We also blogged with another P1 class, as our school was celebrating its 100-year birthday. The other school, St Andrew’s Primary School in Dundee, is a very new school. The children took photos of our school and I put them on the blog. They helped me write the blog post. The other school took pictures of their school. We looked at the photos and commented on the blog posts.

We used tags to build a word cloud of the popular posts and made it easy for people visiting the site to find areas that they were interested in.

We added a ClustrMap widget to the blog and we soon saw that it was getting lots of visits from around the world. This gave us an opportunity to share a totally different learning experience with the children.

We looked at the world map and discussed different countries names and where they were. We had some parents who had relatives abroad who were visiting the blog and children were able to discuss this in the classroom. We also looked at how many people were looking at our blog every day. Nearly 3500 visitors and we are still very popular!

Blogging in Primary One has been a great way to help engage with the parents of our pupils. Some things we will look at next include promoting the use of the local library for free Internet access and having drop-in sessions at the end of the school day as a way of reaching parents who don’t have Internet access so we are truly inclusive.

Curricular Level, Early, First, Fourth, Other Big Stories, Sciences, Second, Senior Phase, Third

Learning in the Sciences in Dundee

Leave a comment

ScienceProfessor Anne Glover, Chief Scientific Adviser to the Scottish Government, has said that science, engineering and technology are not only essential for driving our economy – now and in the future – but are also significant parts of Scotland’s heritage and culture.

Here in Dundee, eminent local scientist Sir Philip Cohen has said of our city that it is no longer famed for “jute, jam and journalism” but “biochemistry, biomedicine and biotechnology.”

Young Dundonians with an interest in science may hold the key to Dundee’s future prosperity.  Such a responsibility rests with us as teachers then, to deliver science topics in an active, confident way to inspire these scientists of the future.

Our local DSC – Sensation has loads of interesting exhibits and activities all year round and there will be lots of opportunities to do extra science activities in November at Dundee’s Science Festival. Look out for more news on this!

CPD for science teaching is also in the pipeline. CPD Online will have sessions on the ASE “Be Safe!” material for primary and early years staff, and also a secondary review and exploration of free online resources. Secondary sciences and social subjects teachers will also have the chance to sign up for Carbon Capture, a one day session to be delivered by SESEF (Scottish Earth Science Education Forum) later in the session.

Scottish Government is investing in science education, and we are definitely getting something right – see this article about science subject uptake in Scotland. Make the most of the resources being provided – our pupils and our city will benefit. Check out STEM Central and Do Science sites.

Even more importantly, please share your science lesson success stories here and what you are doing for Curriculum for Excellence delivery in the sciences. See the instructions on posting at the side.  We can all learn so much from each other!

CfE Curriculum Area, Curricular Level, Dundee Active Learning, Dundee Projects, Dundee School Music Theatre, Early, Eco Schools, Expressive Arts, First, Fourth, Global Citizenship, Glow, Health and Wellbeing, Health Promoting, Languages, Literacy, Mathematics, Numeracy, Other, Other Big Stories, Parental Involvement, RME, Sciences, Second, Senior Phase, Social Studies, Technologies, Third, Transition

Sharing our learning

Leave a comment
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.
Checklist test