Year: 2013

Creative Conversation with Paul Collard

Gayle Martin, Arts & Culture Offiicer, Curriculum Support Falkirk Council Education has been working in partnership with Clare Hoare at Stirling Council to develop Creative Conversations.  The lastest event was led by Paul Collard.  Paul has over 25 years experience of working in the arts and is an expert in delivering programmes that use creativity and culture as drivers of social and economic change. He joined the U.K government’s flagship creative learning programme, Creative Partnerships in January 2005 and played a crucial role in clarifying the purpose of Creative Partnerships and streamlining the delivery of the programme in schools.  Paul delivered our latest Creative Conversation ‘How do we Capture & Measure Creativity’ on Wed 17th April at the Tollbooth. 

Throughout the session Paul discussed how to identify and recognise creativity in order to measure.  As part of the Creative Partnerships work in England Cambridge University carried out research examining the pedagogy of creative practice, as part of this they outlined the following:

Pupils need risk for motivation – this gives learners incentive to work. Schools can be too low risk – pupils need high visibility outcomes.  High functioning pupils will be physically, socially, emotionally and intellectually engaged equalling high performance pupils.  

 Other Creative indicators are:

Essential Psychological Needs

Key Ingredients

Defining Creativity

Taking Science Outdoors

A group of primary teachers spent a very wet morning with Jane Jackson,  Outdoor Learning Development Officer, Falkirk Council Curriculum Support Team, exploring how to deliver Science in the outdoors.

Practical ideas from several of the CfE science organisers were demonstrated, and included exploring how small mammals keep warm during the cold, wet winter months.  The participants insulated their own ‘home made’ mammals in a range of ways and there was a lot of competition when we re-tested their core temperatures after 20 mins!

As well as giving teachers some practical ideas, the course encouraged participants to think about their planning, and consider where taking their learning outdoors would enhance the teaching and learnng experience for pupils.

Links to some of the supporting material used on the day can be found below:

minibeast ID key

nature detective resources

Science E’s and O’s handout

Creativity – What Is It?

Gayle Martin, Arts & Culture Officer, Curriculum Support Falkirk Council is working in partnership with Stirling and Clackmannanshire Council to develop Creative Learning.  Gayle recently attended a presentation by Sheila Paige of Education Scotland who is leading Creativity Across Learning, which is a creative review across a range of education establishments in Scotland.  The review will complete in June and results will be published in September.  As part of this Sheila was able to share how Education Scotland has defined Creativity, which is listed below:

 Definitions of Creativity

 Creative skills, sometimes referred to as capacities, include being:

  • Inquisitive
  • Open-minded
  • Able to harness imagination
  • Able to identify and solve problems

 We also define people who have well-formed creative skills as being:

  • Confident in their right and ability to influence change

 These organisers are used to describe more fully those key learning behaviours which will support the development of these skills and capacities.  The following list aims to expand these concepts.  It is not exhaustive but includes:

  • Being curious
  • Registering patterns and anomalies
  • Drawing on previous knowledge
  • Researching productively
  • Formulating good questions
  • Defining problems
  • Exploring multiple viewpoints
  • Functioning with uncertainty
  • Lateral thinking
  • Hypothesising
  • Synthesising and refining multiple options and viewpoints
  • Inventing
  • Crafting, delivering and presenting solutions
  • Applying discipline and resilience
  • Evaluating impact and success of solutions
  • Identifying next steps in refinement or development of process

We would also expect children and young people to become increasingly:

  • Motivated and ambitious for change
  • Confident in validity of their own viewpoint
  • Able to apply a creative process to other situations
  • Able to lead and work well with others

Falkirk Music Show Reel

Gayle Martin, Arts & Culture Officer, Falkirk Council Curriculum Support Team has created a show reel of some of our senior music ensembles and projects that performed at the School Senior Concerts in March.  The clips were filmed during rehearsals prior o the concerts at Falkirk Town Hall on 25th & 27th March.  The film shows both the talent and achievement by pupils and staff, with new compositions and arrangements by three senior pupils – Christopher Paully of Falkirk High, Andrew Brown of Graeme High and Danielle McKenna from St Mungo’s High.  Their composition was part of New Found Sound Project, where they worked alongside composer Tom Butler from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland to create a new piano composition to accompany silent film.  Percussion Tutor Stuart Blackwood composed a new piece of music The Americas and Guitar Tutor Keith Jenner arranged The Beatles Eleanor Rigby, which was conducted by Strings Tutor Gisela Hans and performed by Senior String Ensemble.  Also performing in the clip is Falkirk Traditional Music Project band Up Beat, supported by senior YMI Trad Tutor John Somerville and YMI Trad Tutors Marc Duff and Steven Holland.  The final clip is an excerpt from Falkirk Schools Senior Orchestra rehearsal which is conducted by Brass Tutor Ian Boutler, with pupils from across all secondary schools.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/AOv9sFyxPOw" width="425" height="344" allowfullscreen="true" fvars="fs=1" /]

Active Literacy in the Secondary School

Sharon Wallace, Effective Teaching and Learning Teacher, Curriculum Support Team is currently working with two Falkirk Secondary Schools on a very exciting Active Literacy transition project.

The recently published Active Literacy pack takes the Active Literacy programme into S1 and Sharon is currently team teaching with John Doherty at Larbert High School and an S1 class, and soon Graeme High School, also with an S1 class on higher order reading skills.

The P4/5 Active Literacy pack develops the higher order skills introduced at P1-3 and the P6/7/S1 pack takes these skills even further.

The S1 classes are developing the six key reading comprehension skills using the Alfred Noyes poem ‘The Highwayman’ as a ‘text’.

The initial lesson looked at Strategy 1 – prior knowledge of ‘highwaymen’ and this period in time, followed by Strategy 2 – using ‘metalinguistics’ – picking out key phrases/ interesting vocabulary. The pupils then used Strategy 3 – using visualisers to produce a mind-map which incorporated the main themes of a non-fiction text about ‘Highwaymen’.

This is a very exciting project taking the Active Literacy programme into S1 and the skills even further into real life.

The second lesson in this series was really successful and examined comprehension strategies 3 (using visualisers), 4 (inference), 5 (main ideas) and 6 (paraphrasing). In a very short timescale, S1 pupils from Larbert High were able to produce visualisers to summarise the main ideas of two stanzas from the poem. Working in cooperative groups on two different stanzas each, the pupils were able to cover the entire poem. They then went onto producing a summary/ paraphrase of those two stanzas using only 140 characters and published these live on twitter.

Some of the tweets included:

‘The highwayman knocks on the window of the inn and finds Bess #younglove x’

‘The Highwayman is a structured poem which has good describing words #shotottheface‘

‘The highwayman rides to the inn. Sings a song to the girl. Redcoats make her shoot herself. #death‘

Sharing the Learning of Active Literacy – A Collaborative Approach to Achieving!

Sharon Wallace, Effective Teaching and Learning Teacher, Curriculum Support Team has been investigating the role of other stakeholders to support pupil attainment in Active Literacy. Sharon has devised a series of sessions useful for Support for Learning Assistants in order to share the Active Literacy Programme. These two sessions have already been delivered in establishments across Falkirk and proving popular, as these quotes demonstrate:

“I wish the sessions were longer, I have learned so much already this morning!”

“I am excited to try out some of these ideas with the pupils I support!”

The two sessions look at spellings and phonics, and reading and writing and Sharon provides participants with useful handouts on activities which consolidate classroom learning in Active Literacy. Support for Learning Assistants are given a brief overview of the programme, along with practical tips to use with the pupils they support. These are hands-on sessions with Support for Learning Assistants having a go at some activities such as the five finger strategy, Elkonin boxes and diacritical marking.

The impact on pupil learning is that Support for Learning Assistants are able to use the same language associated with the Active Literacy programme and look at alternative ways to enhance the learning e.g. through the use of the outdoor environment, Smart boards, CD-roms and other sensory experiences.

These sessions are proving very popular and have so far been delivered at St. Bernadette’s, Bainsford (incorporating Drumbowie Primary) and Laurieston.

Early Years Conference

Karen Thomson –  Senior Early Years Officer, Curriculum Support Team, together with Daniel Barrie – Quality Improvement Officer, Heather Hush – Headteacher, Denny Nursery and Avril Robertson – Headteacher, Queen Street Nursery, organised the Early Years Conference on 13th February 2013.  This event was held at St. Bernadette’s Primary School in Larbert and participants were able to take part in 2 workshops throughout the day (from a choice of 13) as well as hear from Tam Bailie, Scotland’s Commissioner for Children and Young People and Kerry Crichton, Health and Wellbeing Development Officer, Education Scotland.

Despite the snowy weather this event was a great success and the outdoor workshops still managed to take place due to the Yurts that were kindly loaned by Falkirk Community Trust.   

The workshops were:-

ENTER THE EXCITING WORLD OF BLOGGING (A BEGINNER’S GUIDE)

Mary Jalland and Siobhan Cunningham were kind enough to showcase the blogs they have developed at Westquarter Primary School and Nursery Class. 

Mary and Siobhan also gave delegates some introduction information in getting their own nursery/school blog started. 

Blogging links (information given out during workshop)

Here are some of the comments from the workshop:

“Thanks very much for the very useful handout and great presentation.”

“Can see the benefits to parents/carers and how they could be more involved in the life of the nursery.”

“very informative and a great presentation – will take ideas back to setting – thank you for all the information.”

THE GRUFFALO – OUTDOOR STORYTELLING

Many thanks to Yvonne Manning from Library Services for facilitating the storytelling workshop – fortunately we had managed to get a loan of a yurt from Falkirk Community Trust which was very useful due to the snow that morning!

Here is a selection of the comments:

“good to see storytelling to children without books, using visual props and the child’s imagination.”

“I am going to get the sewing machine out and make my own story cloak!  Wil love trying out my abilities at oral story telling!”

“few good ideas for oral stories – liked snowdrop and story stick.  Seen some new stories to read.”

REFLECTING ON LITERACY DEVELOPMENT FOR UNDER THREES

Many thanks to Avril Robertson, Headteacher – Queen Street Nursery for facilitating this workshop.

Here are some of the comments from the exit passes:

“A good tool for self-evaluation in line with Child at the Centre.  Good opportunity for idea sharing.”

“good ideas to support children with additional support needs and provide early literacy activities.”

“useful literacy development tools and being able to recognise different ways to help develop children’s literacy.”

TRANSFORMING PRIMARY 1 LEARNING SPACES

Ashley Johnston, Principal Teacher, St Margaret’s Primary School has been develoing the Primary 1 space and shared the journey with the delegates.

Here are some of the comments:

“Greater use of variety of tasks for maths including outdoors.  More play for deeper learning and consolidation.”

“I will look at classroom organisation and how to move away from whole class lessons and speak to stage partner about possibility of changing use of classrooms.”

Seeing how well two Primary 1 classes can work together and also hearing that the the work we do in nursery is appreciated and useful to P1 teachers.”

PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT

Many thanks to Laura Jarvie, Depute Headteacher for facilitating the Parental Involvement Workshop.

Click here for Presentation

Here are the comments from delegates:

“I will always

make myself available for parents who just want someone to listen to and to make them understand they are not alone.  Will always try to give my best advice to make them feel valued.”

FIRE – A VALUABLE LESSON?

Jane Jackson, Outdoor Learning Development Officer, held the Fire Workshop at the Conference – this was not an easy task with the snow, however all participants managed to get the fire lit with a variety of materials/resources.

Some of the feedback from this seesion:-

“this has helped to develop my confidence to do this activity with pre-school children who will benefit from a valuable learning experience”

“Excellent workshop, covered all safety and fun aspects – brilliant!”

“Apart from the lovely smokey smell, the course was very well delivered,  The facilitator’s passion for outdoors and for re-introducing risk in a controlled way came across wel and is one I firmly agree with”

WHAT IS A NURTURE CLASS?

Many thanks to Belinda Tomasik and Carole Roberts for the Nurture Class Workshop.

Click here for The six principles of nurture groups

Click here for Nurture Class Presentation

Some of the feedback:-

“I now have a better understanding of what a nurture class is and the additional needs of some children.”

“The value of the team approach and the significant effect on the children and the support for parents/carers.”

“I am beginning to think of children that could be potential for our nurture room”

“I am going to consider how to make my class more of a nurturing environment.”

“Highlights the importance of what is going on at home and of building good relationships with the parent.”

ACTIVE LITERACY

Many thanks for Sharon Wallace, Caroline Sweeney and Chelsey Johnson for facilitating the Active Literacy Workshop. 

The feedback received was very positive – here are some of the things that delegates took away from the workshop:-

“The idea of creating a ‘bear hunt’ within our toic of Toys.  Loved the innovative idea of fan to blow ‘snow’ – great! Thank you!”

“More use of pair work to encourage working together.”

“I will use more visual aids and use some of the suggested ideas to enhance active literacy in practice.”

“I will access the North Lanarkshire Pack and use it within the nursery.  I will liaise with P1 teachers.”

“We do some of the ideas already but I now feel more confident in going back and going loads more, especially shoulder partners.”

“I will encourage the nursery to use terminology and partner work for active literacy.”

EARLY YEARS – PHYSICAL EDUCATION

Morag Simpson and Morag Young, PE Specialists/PE Lead Officers showcased some activities that Early Years children can take part in during the nursery sessions.

Early Years Presentation

“Lots of good ideas that will be of use in our nursery gym time”

“The warm up acivities were excellent.  Great links to literacy and numeracy.”

“PE is great resources fro interdisciplinarly learning!  Fab presenters!”

“Great, practical, easy ideas.”

“A lot of good ideas for use with 0-5 and tips of how to adjust to level of child.  Lots of great ideas for topics and especially early literacy and numeracy.”

Here is the handout that was given to all participants.

 

LEARNING JOURNEYS

Many thanks to Jan Baxter and the Peripatetic Support Team for the Learning Journey input at the Conference.  This gave participants an opportunity to look at some learning journeys from other establishments and raise any issues they have had while implementing these into their setting.  Click here for Learning Journeys Presentation. 

Here are some of the comments:-

“I will now use the children’s quotes in their Learning Journeys and continue to look at the child’s next steps.”

“Some reassurance that what we are doing is OK”

“I am going to collect some significant photos that could be used in future learning journeys.”

“Hurrah, I think the penny has dropped and should be able to fill in journeys with more confidence.”

“This workshop has clarified Learning Journeys for me and I feel we are making progress and are heading in the right direction.  We will continue to develop our learning journeys.”

LOOSE MATERIALS – NATURAL PLAY

Many thanks to Julie Buchanan from Grounds for Learning for delivering the Loose Materials Workshop (in the snow!)  It was great to see Outdoor Learning at it’s best in the weather.  Julie has thanked us for inviting her and let us know that she had a lovely day and it was great to be part of our exciting event!

Here are some of the weblinks that Julie mentioned during the workshop:-

http://www.ltl.org.uk/pdf/March-11Playnotes1300101493.pdf

http://www.ltl.org.uk/pdf/PN-Storing-your-resources1354030007.pdf

http://www.ltl.org.uk/pdf/Risk-benefit-pro-forma1354026507.pdf  

http://www.muddyfaces.co.uk/

Here is some of the feedback:-

“really good ideas.  A lot of everyday resources you can use that you already have.”

“the use of tarpaulin to make dens – simple but easy to use with children.  Will try to resource equipment for den making – it looks like fun!”

“Really liked the small loose meterials that can be used to be creative eg picture making and can then lead onto using other curricular areas eg storywriting about picture.”

CREATIVE DANCE

Many thanks to Kirsty Wallace who demonstrated how Creative Dance Project can be included in the Early Years.

Some of the comments from the exit passes were:-

“Inspirational – good ideas – very good!”

“I feel more confident in using the pack and making dances up myself.”

“lots of good ideas to help the children have fun through movement and dance.”

LEARNING INTENTIONS AND SUCCESS CRITERIA

Yvonne McBlain also facilitated the workshop “Strong Learning Intentions, Good Success Criteria AND Interdisciplinary Learning – How do we put it all together?”

Click here for the Presentation

Some of the evaluations are:-

“I am going to share different style of planning with management team.”

“Everyone is finding the whole LI and SC challenging and good to know others feeling the same!”

“The difference between learning intentions and success criteria is now a bit clearer!”

“writing shorter, sharper learning intentions and success criteria.”

As a result of this workshop Yvonne has been invited to deliver this again to all Denny Cluster Schools on 16th April at Denny Primary School.  For further details contact Lee Campbell on 50 8810.

HIGHER ORDER SKILLS IN EARLY YEARS – HOW USEFUL IS BLOOM’S TAXONOMY?

Yvonne McBlain also facilitated the Higher Order Skills Workshop.

Click here for the Higher Order Skills Presenation

Here are some of the comments from the participants

“I now have a better understanding of blooms triangle.  I will think of this in my future work.”

“I know have a better understanding of how this could be implemented when planning for each child.”

“This wil help with planning and organising new topics for the children.”

“I will start to identify the specific higher order skills at planning.”

“I will obtain examples of skills and apply this to questioning and activities within the classroom.”

SHARING GOOD PRACTICE

Here are just some of the excellent displays from Early Years Settings in Falkirk Council – more photos will be uploaded shortly.
 
 Bainsford Nursery
Wallacestone Nursery Class

 

Bankier Nursery Class

 

Bantaskin Primary School

 

Bo’ness Public Nursery Class

 

Smart Response tools to support Assessment for Learning

Malcolm Wilson, ICT Curriculum Development Officer in Falkirk Council Education Services Curriculum Support team, organised and supported a hands-on continuing professional development session presented by Anne Forrest of Steljes for staff from a variety of primary and secondary schools in Falkirk on the use of Smart Response tools to support Assessment for Learning.

Anne Forrest took participants through the use of Smart Response handsets to respond to a series of questions, then showed how that information could be used by the teacher to support learning and teaching in the classroom. Then she guided everyone through the steps to set up their own teacher profile and their class lists, so that when pupils use the handsets the responses could be analysed by the teacher to provide support as required. Anne Forrest made her resources available to all participants, which can be accessed by clicking here (note that a Glow username and password is required to access these resources).

Smart Response tools work in tandem with Smart Board interactive whiteboard software and provide a means for teachers to get feedback from all of their pupils in their class. This can be before a class starts work on a new topic in any curricular area in order to guage the prior learning of pupils, or they can be used regularly during a teaching session to let the teacher keep ensuring pupils have understood each step before proceeding to the next step (or quickly pick up where different teaching strategies might be required), or as an assessment at the end of a teaching session.

Sometimes called classroom response systems, class voting tools or clickers, these Smart Response tools are just one type of the many tools now available specifically to help gather feedback from all pupils in a class. These let teachers get a quick response at the beginning, during or end of a teaching session. This way the teacher has a wider overview of the undertsanding at any time of the whole class and not just of a few individual pupils. Used as part of an Assessment for Learning strategy a teacher can change the pace or direction of teaching to take account of responses from pupils.

There are many free pre-created templates and question sets ready to be downloaded and adapted by teachers to suit the needs of their own pupils. Click here for the online Smart Exchange site where these can be downloaded.

Click here for more information about classroom response systems.

Responses from participants included:

“Very useful session – took us through the set up step by step which was fab – learned lots – thank you! What an amazing tool.” KD – Stenhousemuir PS

“An excellent course – very informative and great, easy to follow instructions. I can’t wait to try them out. Thank you.” LD – Langlees PS

“A super session and great explanation on how to use Smart response.” JM – Bantaskin PS

Exploring elements of planning with Denny Early Years Cluster

On Tuesday 16th April Yvonne McBlain from the Curriculum Support Team worked with 27 early years practitioners from the Denny cluster. She facilitated a workshop which explored how practitioners were integrating essential elements of assessment into their planning of interdisciplinary learning. The workshop gave these practitoners an opportunity to work with their establishment colleagues on 2 “challenges”. These challenges were designed to enable collaborative and individual self-evaluation of planning effective connected learning. They also supported identification of the most relevant next steps for partricipants. The session was designed to generate questions as well as providing access and guidance on next steps. Participants said that the session was “useful” “informative” “made you think” and was “well-designed and enjoyable”. Here is a selection of next steps identified by participants:

Further conversations with colleagues around planning

Think more about what our success criteria will be while planning – which should make evidence and assessment more relevant

Develop team’s ability to identify appropriate learning intentions and success criteria

Review approach to planning

Share with other staff (higher classes in school)