Category: Fourth Level

Using Reciprocal Teaching to Engage Parents in Active Literacy

Sharon Wallace, Effective Teaching and Learning Teacher, Curriculum Support Team, along with Class teachers and  pupils, carried out an Active Literacy Parental Awareness Workshop at Deanburn Primary School.

Pupils participated in an overview of the strategies and methodologies relating to Active Literacy before engaging parents in an active workshop.

Pupils used the Reciprocal Teaching method to engage their parents in activities such as: spell-er-cise, fun spelling tasks, Elkonin boxes, diacritical marking and dictated sentences.

Parental feedback was collected by P7 pupils.

‘What did you like about the Active Literacy Workshop?’

  • WOW
  • Very informative session will definitely use some of those ides with my son
  • Very useful workshop has gave me a greater understanding of my daughter’s learning journey when she starts P.1
  • It was good to get to see what kind of activities go on in schools in Falkirk council
  • I have a much better understanding of literacy and thought it was very intelligent of the children how they explained it

‘Which ideas or advice will you use to support your child?’

  • I will use the recipe checking together and the list making for shopping and packing bags
  • I will read more to my children even they are older
  • Very informative, especially diacritical marking #
  • I will try and make up stories in the car with my son
  • I loved it
  • I will get them to think of unusual ways to learn tricky words (e.g. mnemonics or words within words)

Parents took way Active Literacy leaflets which contain a glossary of terms, useful websites and lots of great ideas to support literacy activities at home.

The Tireless work towards Wireless

 

Stuart Lennie, ICT Curriculum Development Officer in Falkirk Council Education Services Curriculum Support team, has been working with ICT Corporate Services to implement Wireless Technology into Education Services establishments. The installations follow many months of work to research and evaluate the best solution, with small scale pilots being undertaken in both Primary and Secondary schools.

The chosen solution, using Cisco Wireless Access points, provides fast and reliable Internet connectivity throughout the school. This means that Council ICT mobile devices, such as laptops, can be used at the point of learning, rather than the pupils moving around the school to access ICT. At the moment the solution is being deployed across all Secondary establishments, but by the new session work will have begun to progress installations in Primary schools too.

One added benefit of the solution is the additional provision of guest access for personal devices- which could be a laptop, tablet, phone, or media player. This access, often referred to as BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) or BYOT (Bring Your Own Technology) allows staff and pupils to connect to the wireless network using their existing username and password, providing them with filtered and secure Internet access in the school building.

Currently a small scale pilot is underway in Denny High school to allow pupils in two Senior Phase classes to receive this access on their personal devices. This work will allow for the development of policies and guidance documentation, as well as starting to build good practice in safe mobile device use in schools.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/JCB_Q3gZOf4" width="425" height="344" allowfullscreen="true" fvars="fs=1" /]

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/LkiRWTJYPS0" width="425" height="344" allowfullscreen="true" fvars="fs=1" /]

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

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" /]

LGBT Young Person Group FKInclude

Marian Boyle Curriculum Support Officer Health and Well Being in Falkirk Council Education Services Curriculum Support Team supported the implementation of LGBT Young Person Group FKInclude. This is the new Falkirk group for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender young people and their friends and allies aged 13-26.This group runs every Thursday.  It  is an inspiring, fun and great place to be! There is a programme of weekly activities, which include workshops on young people rights, sexual health, ‘coming out’, mental health, the National Youth Council, LGBT History Month and Film nights, to name but a few. Workers and volunteers are also on hand for check-ins, support, advocacy and information.If you would like to be kept up to date with information about the group and other opportunities, please go to  www.lgbtyouth.org.uk/Falkirk