Category: Curriculum Level

Edinburgh International Book Festival Outreach Programme

Edinburgh International Book Festival

Yvonne Manning, Principal Librarian, Curriculum Support Team, Falkirk Council Education Services has arranged for author Pippa Goodhart and James Carter to visit Falkirk Council in August 2013 as part of the Edinburgh International Book Festival Outreach Programme. Pippa Goodhart has written many wonderful picture books, including ‘Just Imagine’ and ‘You Choose’. She is also the author of the very popular books ‘Winnie the Witch’, written under the name Laura Owen. James Carter is a poet and brings his poems alive with music at his appearances in nurseries and schools. His books include ‘Hey Little Bug, Poems for Little Creatures’. Yvonne is working in partnership with Community Learning and Development and Pippa will be leading a session with young families from adult learning groups, while James will be visiting Denny Nursery.

Glenbervie Kindergarden Outdoor Learning

Glenbervie Kindergarden are the latest nursery to embark on Outdoor Learning for their children.  Karen Thomson, Senior Early Years Officer, falkirk Council Curriculum Support Team held a training session for staff on 12th June at Larbert Woods NHS Site.

This session gave staff the opportunity to take part in practical activities as well as discuss any logistic issues they will face in getting the children out to access this exciting space. 

Watch this space for details of their first visit.

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.

Learning Journey Visits

Karen Thomson, Senior Early Years Officer, Falkirk Council Curriculum Support Team has been visiting a number of establishments over the last few months to look at Learning Journeys.

The purpose of these visits have been to ascertain how each nursery establishment have implemented Learning Journeys into their practice.  Karen has also been looking at how the evidence in the Journeys link to the planned learning intentions and also how the children’s journeys are having an impact on the planning process. 

There are still some establishments that have not been visited and these will be arranged as soon after the summer holidays as possible.

There will be further training in session 2013/2014 as follows:

Learning Journeys: An introduction  – for newly qualified or appointed staff or teaching staff who have recently taken over the Nursery remit.

Monday 2nd September 2013 – 9am-11am, 1pm-3pm or 4pm-6pm

Learning Journeys: A Year On – Surgeries for all practitioners to discuss the implementation of Learning Journeys in their establishment.

Wednesday 11th September, Wednesday 18th September and Wednesday 9th October – 4pm-6pm

These session will be held at Camelon Education Centre – further details will be issued to CPD Co-ordinators shortly.

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.

Good Grammar = Good Manners – your thoughts?

Sharon Wallace, Curriculum Support Officer, Falkirk Council has been examining the area of grammar in relation to developing literacy attainment in Falkirk Schools.

Sharon started this project off by talking to pupils fro P5, P6 and P7 at Stenhousemuir and Laurieston Primary Schools. Here is a collection of their thoughts:

The pupils then went on to explore a wide range of grammar resources which included: books, games, websites, grammar literacy maps, CD containing grammar songs and grammar dictionaries.

 They really enjoyed the grammar games and websites and thought they would be most effective to support with their learning of grammar.

The pupils were really enthusiastic about the resources and developing a blog to support other learners.

Here are a few of the websites we looked at:

http://www.dreaded-apostrophe.com/

http://www.apostrophe.org.uk/page2.html

http://www.spellingsociety.org/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/ks2/

Watch this space for further developments! Thanks to the pupils from Stenhousemuir and Laurieston for their active involvement in this exciting project!

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.