Category: Curricular Areas

Innovation in moderation in Falkirk Schools

Carol Paton, Curriculum Support Officer offered all establishments the opportunity to access some additional funding to support innovative practices in moderation. In January this year, 3 Primary Schools, 3 Secondary Schools, 2 Clusters and 1 Special School successfully bid for funding. This innovative work allowed teachers to think differently about moderation. Projects focussed on moderation through teacher discussion and collegiate approaches at the planning stage; the use of visualisers to develop consistent approaches to the teaching and application of numeracy skills across learning. The development of agreed success criteria at the planning stage also featured – most  interestingly in a PE – English collaborative project.

For more information on some of these projects use the links below.

Graeme High School – Numeracy across learning using visualisers Graeme High School – moderation report ( Numeracy)

Graeme High School – Presentation skillsGraeme High School – literacy ( Presentations)

Larbert High School – Numeracy PassportsLarbert High School Approaches to assessment and moderation 2012 Report master

St. Andrew’s Primary – a new approach to planning in  ScienceSt Andrew’s Primary – report

St. Mungo’s cluster – starting to think about mental agility across the clusterApproaches to assessment and moderation feedback June 2013

Bookbug

Carolyn Sharp, Early Years Librarian, Curriculum Support Team Falkirk Council Education Services, in the past year has gifted 1906 Baby Bookbug packs, 1954 Toddler Bookbug packs, 1934 Pirate Bookbug packs and 1947 Primary 1 family packs to children in the Falkirk area.

Bookbug provides free book packs for every child in Scotland from birth to primary 1 (5 year olds).  Each local authority area has a Bookbug co-ordinator who tries to ensure that all children in their area receive their packs. The Bookbug programme is operated by the Scottish Book Trust.  For more information about the Scottish Book Trust and the Bookbug programme please visit the Scottish Book Trust website.

 

Russian relations

Yvonne Manning, Principal Librarian, Curriculum Support Team, Falkirk Council Education Services gave a presentation via Skype to the annual gathering of 100 children’s librarians in Russia on 17/6/13.

In November 2012, Library Support for Schools hosted a visit from Directors of children and young people’s library services in Russia where they were particularly interested in Falkirk Council’s RED Book Award and storytelling initiatives. This visit prompted  Andrey V. Lisitsky, Head of the Training Centre “School of Librarian Leadership”, Pushkin Library Foundation, to arrange a Skype meeting with Yvonne. After Yvonne talked to the group about the RED Book Award and storytelling projects there was an opportunity for questions. They were particularly interested in ideas to engage young people in reading for enjoyment and oral storytelling.

Pupils start making their version of Learning to Achieve

Yvonne McBlain from the Curriculum Support team is working with groups of pupils and their teachers to create the pupil version of Learning to Achieve, Falkirk’s education policy. Christine Snedden and Yvonne have been working with pupils and pupil council members for a while, to create the draft version of this policy. Groups of teachers and their pupils have now volunteered to turn this text document into something digital like a video or animation. John Chalmers primary 5 class at Grange Primary brainstormed ways that they could bring each bullet point to life. Click here to see some of their initial ideas – most groups thought about making drama performances which could be filmed. The animation club run by Sarah Ritchie at Bonnybridge Primary spent most of an afternoon coming up with ideas for animations which could bring each bullet point to life. Click on the photos to take a closer look at their initial ideas. Yvonne was very impressed by the way all of the pupils began this task – they quickly understood the message and content of the policy text in the document and made very clever judgements about how best to get their message across to fellow pupils. When these ideas are turned into a digital multi-media policy, the senior pupil council have suggested that this is shared with all pupils and staff working in education services at a launch assembly in every school, sometime in October.

Kinnaird Primary Joint Fitness Sessions

Morag Young and Morag Simpson, PE Lead Officers, Falkirk Council Curriculum Support Team visited Kinnaird Primary to observe their joint fitness sessions. This involved two or three classes joining together to maximise facility use and help the delivery of their two hour Physical Education programnme. The class teachers take a team teach approach, sharing the responsibility for planning and delivering different aspects of the lesson.

The children enjoyed their learning and were active and engaged throughout. P2-3 were involved with a zumbatonic and fitness session learning about how the body feels during exercise and what is required before and after activity. P3-4 did an outdoor games session where the focus was on personal choice and working together in pairs or small groups. P5-6 were practising and developing different movement patterns in a relay style format. This provided the opportunity for learners to work on their self-determination, motivation and co-ordiantion.

We have already recommended this format to other schools who have limited access to facilities for Physical Education.  Thank you to all staff and pupils involved.

English Focus Group – Active Literacy

Sharon Wallace, Effective teaching and learning teacher and Carol Paton, Curriculum Support Officer, both of the Curriculum Support Team have begun work with a focus group of English teachers with representatives from all Falkirk High Schools.

This group has been set up to identify the key features of current approaches to the learning and teaching of English and to identify commonalities and differences between Primary and Secondary establishments.

The group began the first meeting defining Active Literacy. They then went onto provide an overview of current practice in the teaching of English in their schools.

 Colleagues from our High Schools have requested a further meeting with Sharon and Carol to examine the Active Literacy key methodologies and strategies explicitly taught at Early, First and Second level.

Sharon was able to share some of the online resources available via GLOW, Falkirk’s You Tube Active Literacy training videos as well as the Curriculum for Excellence – engaging parents short film.

Colleagues were able to consider next steps in establishing effective transition of literacy skills across learning. These included sharing ideas with their department, reviewing materials on GLOW and finding out more about Active Literacy in their cluster primary schools.

Comments included:

‘Am looking forward to coming back and finding out more about Active Literacy’.

‘Thanks – looking forward to meeting again’.

Airth Primary Staff use Teaching for Deep Learning Session 5

Yvonne McBlain, Support Teacher effective learning and teaching, facilitated a collegiate session with teachers at Airth Primary School using session 5 from the Falkirk Teaching for Deep Learning Programme. This session uses an interdisciplinary learning quiz to help evaluate existing practice. Staff involved said it was useful to “discuss how we effectively plan and deliver interdisciplinary learning, as well as highlighting our next steps.” In addition, the session “defined the different types of interdisciplinary learning and the need to make it obvious what skills were being used in type 1 and type 2”. Yvonne was able to adjust the content and format of this session so that staff could consider how to track the knowledge, understanding and skills being developed in the interdisciplinary work done at Airth PS. The session resulted in identification of some initial specific tasks for the staff as a whole, as well as individual next steps for teachers which included:

Think more about type 1 interdisciplinary learning and its place in my class

Look for type 1 IDL in the experiences and outcomes

Continue to encourage children to make connections between curricular areas.

 Click to take a look at the power point notes for Session 5 , and here  to take a look at the whole Falkirk Teaching for Deep Learning Programme in Glow.

Let’s get pupils more active

Christine Snedden, Curriculum Support Officer, Falkirk Council Education Services in parnership with Morag Simpson, Karen Thomson and Morag Young of the Curriculum Support Team have been looking at options to deliver the 2 hours of Physical Education entitlement.

On Thursday 9th May a pilot project began in which all pupils at Moray Primary school in Grangemouth accessed one hour of physical education in an afternoon. All staff were involved in the planning, preparation and delivery of a variety of activities including, orienteering, games circuits,hockey, fitness, crosscountry, core skill, dance and gymnastics. These activities took place both indoors and outdoors and will continue for a further 3 weeks when the blocks of activities will change. The enthusiaum and energy from both staff and pupils added to the excitement of the afternoon.

For more information and photographs – follow Moray Primary on Twitter

Active Literacy Packs Distributed to Falkirk Primary Schools!

 

Sharon Wallace, Effective Teaching and Learning teacher, Curriculum Support Team delivered an overview session on Active Literacy second level to 90 colleagues at Camelon Education Centre.

Colleagues from P6/7 classes and members of  Senior Management Teams received the new second level packs to take back to their establishments.

Sharon provided an overview of the strategies and methodologies contained in the new pack. Colleagues who have been involved in the trials of these new materials spoke about the impact of the new resources and how their pupils have responded to the content delivered so far.

Carol Ann MacLeod, P7 Class teacher from Laurieston Primary shared her experiences of delivering reading, spelling and vocabulary building lessons. Her pupils have really enjoyed the lessons, with vocabulary building work on affixes proving the most popular.

Susan McLeod, P7 class teacher from Bankier Primary also spoke of how her pupils enjoyed the challenge of working with prefixes, root words and suffixes.

Alan Willox, DHT from Head of Muir, spoke on behalf of their P7 class teacher who has been working on some of the writing lessons. He said the pupils certainly enjoyed the lessons.

Maria McNally, P6/7 class teacher from St. Bernadette’s shared some videos of her pupils incorporating spelling rules and strategies into drama scripts and performances.

Colleagues took their new resource back to their establishments and Sharon is keen to hear how colleagues would like their training to be delivered. Sharon can be emailed or colleagues are invited to leave posts on this forum.

The second level pack develops and extends the strategies and methodologies introduced at earlier stages.

Spelling lists contained in this new pack can be accessed via the Active Literacy section on GLOW.

Sharon is also working with Secondary Schools to develop, consolidate and extend the Active Literacy skills and strategies taught at Primary School