Category: Second Level

Bo’ness Primary Schools work on Kinneil Museum Project

Yvonne McBlain, Curriculum Support teacher with Falkirk Council Education Services has helped to co-ordinate partnership work between Bo’ness primary schools and Falkirk Community Trust. The Trust has appointed Hanneke Scott van Wel and Lindsay Lennie to take forward their Kinneil Museum Engagement for the Future Project. On March 25th, Lindsay and Hanneke began working with primary 5, 6 and 7 pupils from each Bo’ness primary school to explore their links with their local heritage. The learning experience involved studying a range of old maps of Bo’ness and opened pupils’ eyes to the many changes which have taken place in their landscape over the last 400 years!

Observations from Kinneil PS p6/5 pupils included:

 “We’ve found out that Bo’ness was called something different long ago.”

“We can find Kinneil School in this one (map) and can’t in the other one.”

“They(person who made the map)  haven’t got the two potteries and they don’t have the gas works…we found a football ground but they didn’t have it.”

The pupils had brought in a picture or object from home and were asked to consider whether it connected to the places they had identified on the maps. One group said: “We found the town hall ‘cos that’s where the Fair takes place.”

Hanneke and Lindsay will ensure that each class taking part in the project has these learning experiences to prepare them for a whole cluster working day on 20th May in Bo’ness Town Hall. On that day each class from each school, will contribute/pool their expertise on their specialist aspect of Bo’ness history, and use this to co-create a historical timeline of their town. This process and its end product will form the pupils’ contribution to the wider community consultation taking place in order to ensure that the new museum displays reflect a true picture of the interests and experiences of the community they are designed for.

Raising the Bar in Physical Education

Morag Simpson and Morag Young PE Lead Officers for Falkirk Council Curriculum Support Team organised a hugely successful Raising the Bar Event for Physical Education on the inservice day on Thursday 13th February.

The day provided the opportunity for delegates to expereince  a combination of  practical workshops and presentations from both Education Scotland and HMIE. Feedback from all sessions has been extremely positive with the opportunity for Q & A sessions being greatly appreciated by all.

Morag Simpson and Morag Young are hoping to provide the same opportunity at the next inservice day on the 2nd May 2014.

Here are some examples of feedback given:

“Excellent day, informative and very useful”

” A very interesting day with lots of fun ideas and activities”

” Great having notes and resource links”

“Excellent resources to support teaching”

Braes Cluster Day of Dance

Morag Simpson and  Morag Young, PE Lead Officers and Marian Boyle, Support Officer for Health and Wellbeing,  all within Falkirk Council Curriculum Support Team organised and delivered a Day of  Sottish Dance for the Braes Cluster. Avonbridge Primary kindly agreed to host the event with Wallacestone Primary and Sheildhill Primary also attending. The day was a great success with lots of fun had by all and some fantastic dancing on display. The pupils from all schools worked well together, helping each other through the dances.

A huge thank you to Avonbridge for hosting and to all participants for performing so well on the day.

The Thinking Reader – Active Literacy

Sharon Wallace, Curriculum Support Officer, School and Service Improvement team led a CPD session on The Thinking Reader approach to active reading. 54 colleagues attended the session.

Kristina McGinley, Hallglen PS, Aimee Roan, Carron Primary School, Anita Cowan, St. Mary’s RCPS and Alison Marshall, Drumbowie PS all shared good practice in this area. Kristina had observed Sharon teaching using this approach, whilst the other three ladies had attended the course in November. All four teachers explained how using this approach to reading had led to noticeable increased attainment in reading skills.

Colleagues then participated in a Thinking Reader lesson before considering how they could use it in their own establishments. They all engaged in professional dialogue considering how this approach could be used to develop the six reading comprehension skills across a range of texts from a range of genres.

Schools Library Service also contributed to the session by providing a wide range of resources which support this reading approach.

All resources produced so far for the Thinking Reader can be found on the Active Literacy Resource section on GLOW.

Monitoring for Improvement in Active Methodologies

 

Sharon Wallace, Curriculum Support Officer of the Service and School Improvement Team, delivered a session to 25 Principal Teachers as part of their network programme. The course asked participants to consider how the use of active learning methodologies raises attainment across the curriculum.

Colleagues began the session using a placemat activity to examine questions, challenges, successes and barriers to monitoring active methodologies.

Sharon then provided an overview of the active literacy programme from Nursery to S1 which included: spelling and phonics, reading and writing. The principal teachers were provided with a range of materials to support effective monitoring in this area. They then watched a range of good practice videos highlighting active literacy strategies and methodologies in action in Falkirk schools.

Sharon then provided an overview of effective teaching strategies within cooperative learning and what to look out for in a ‘cooperative learning’ environment. Again, colleagues were able to watch a short series of videos highlighting the five basic elements of a cooperative learning lesson. Discussions were stimulated around the use of effective questioning and use of Assessment for Learning techniques.

The session concluded with participants stating next steps to further development effective monitoring in active methodologies.

For further information, please contact Sharon Wallace – sharon.wallace@falkirk.gov.uk

Feedback was positive with colleagues expressing thanks for the opportunity to see the whole programme across all stages.

Active Approaches to Numeracy

 

Sharon Wallace, Curriculum Support Officer of the Service and School Improvement Team recently organised a professional learning opportunity entitled ‘Active Approaches to Numeracy’. 57 colleagues from Primary, Secondary and the Curriculum Support team (including QIO) spent the day examining a range of active strategies to improve attainment in mental mathematics.

 Helen MacKinven, from Big Maths provided an overview of strategies including: jigsaw numbers, CLIC and partitioning. Colleagues were also treated to the experience of a ‘Beat That’ mental maths quiz.

Clusters then worked together to look at ways forward to improve attainment in mental maths. Feedback from this day has been extremely positive.

A number of colleagues have put their names forward to be part of the Numeracy Mobilisation Team. This work will inform the update of Falkirk Council’s numeracy strategy. The first meeting for this group is being held on 12th February. For further information on this, please contact Sharon Wallace at sharon.wallace@falkirk.gov.uk

Interactive tools for supporting teaching Modern Languages in the Primary School

Malcolm Wilson, ICT Curriculum Development Officer in the Curriculum Support Team of Falkirk Council Education Services, led a guided hands on exploration session with primary class teachers on interactive tools for supporting teaching Modern Languages in the Primary School.

Most of the resources explored can be used in many contexts and this session looked at how they can be adapted to supporting teaching modern languages in the primary school.

Resources

Audacity – free downloadable software which lets you record and edit audio – pupils can record their spoken voice, reading words, phrases or sentences. And they can take words and re-order them to create listening activities for each other  (e.g. cutting individual words or phrases and pasting them out of sequence in the audio for other pupils to correctly re-sequence the words). Any audio files created in Audacity can also be turned into mp3 files so that they can be shared online, such as on a school website or class blog: http://glo.li/gJxmOi

Little Bird Tales – free online tool which lets pupils create stories combining voice, text and images. The teacher creates an account and provides pupils with a login code for that class – work of pupils can be seen by teacher but only made public if & when pupil feels it’s ready and teacher chooses to make it public. Other safety features include having the PC microphone enabled, but not webcam, so only audio is recorded. Pupils can upload images, or can use Little Bird Tales art editor online tool to draw own images on screen to illustrate a story or sequence of vocabulary or phrases. Pupils can create pages, building up sequence of pages, all of which can be saved at any time for future editing – and can be embedded online elsewhere – and the teacher can make content visible to the public on the Little Bird Tales website. http://glo.li/rsrAzz for description, guide and video of use.

Photostory 3 – free downloadable software which lets pupils sequence a series of photographs (adding panning and other effects as desired) to engage with texs and demonstrate their understanding of the text. Pupils can create videos to illustrate vocabulary, phrases, poems or songs.  https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/fa/ICTFalkirkPrimaries/2011/03/09/photostory-3/

Hello Mylo – free online tool incorporating games-based learning with badges to recognise progress. French, German, Spanish and Chinese available. The learner has choice of games, vocabulary tools and challenges – each provides visual, textual as well as audio feedback, with nugget-sized tasks providing scores on achievement. It can be used without any need to register but registered schools can set tasks for pupils (in groups or as a class) and get feedback on the progress of their pupils. Collaborative work can be seen only by the class, until the teacher chooses to publish it after reviewing it with the learners (if desired to be made public). http://glo.li/RqNj0r

Create word-cloud images for wall display, blog, or website. Pupils could create a word cloud of vocabulary on specific topics. Or they could connect foreign word and English word in Wordle by adding a tilde (~) between the words, or omit the connection and use as lesson starter for pupils to connect each word and translation with a pen on an interactive whiteboard http://glo.li/f2Ifx9

Interactive Whiteboard activities – using resources created with Smart Notebook inbuilt Lesson Activity Toolkit interactive tools, and browsing, downloading and adapting resources created by other eductors worldwide from the Smart Exchange website. http://glo.li/rQ3eRl

Comic Creation Tools – pupils sequence stories in chosen language, or annotate conversations with images and speech bubbles for visual story-telling. Free online Comic-creation tools and resources here: http://glo.li/eEkUjo

Google Translate – Use Google Translate to translate any text by copying and pasting words/phrases, paragraphs or a whole document or website. Use the speech feature to hear the text spoken with the accent of the chosen language. Translate class blog or school website. http://translate.google.com/

Lingro – Highlight words on any website in chosen language, Listen to the words spoken, Translate, then play flashcard games with all words chosen – all within the Lingro toolbar along the top of any website you choose. http://glo.li/hNnhFk

Song Videos with Lyrics – Online videos with printed lyrics to follow http://chansons-fr.com/ – may provide inspiration for pupils to create own videos http://glo.li/gTmdzS (for resources about using Flipcam-type video cameras). Lyrics-gap Songs on video with choice of level of missing words for pupils to select from words while listening http://www.lyricsgaps.com/

Classtools: Online class gaming tools already created for French or German. Easily add own arcade-type games with own questions/answers http://www.classtools.net

Quiz-creation tools – create self-correcting quizzes, provide feedback on what has been learned by pupils, pupils creating quizzes motivates & helps embed learning. One of many tools described is Zondle which lets the teacher detrmine the content to be learned by pupils, and the pupil chooses the game which then draws in the teacher-chosen content and presents it in the pupil-chosen game format.  http://glo.li/g73CnR

Further Online Links

Teaching Ideas – a series of crowd-sourced ideas shared by teachers http://www.teachingideas.co.uk/foreignlanguages/contents.htm

Cybrary Man links to resources by category http://cybraryman.com/foreign.html

Education Scotland MLPS resources – vocabulary and phrases for several languages with support materials to support teaching modern languages in the primary school.

Interactive tools for teaching primary numeracy and maths at second level

Malcolm Wilson, ICT Curriculum Development Officer in the Curriculum Support team of Falkirk Council Education Services, presented a session to teaching staff giving a hands-on opportunity to explore a range of interactive software and online tools to support teaching numeracy and maths at second level.

Resources explored in this session included:

RoamerWorld – a simulated programmable on-screen robot. It is a graphical version of Logo. It provides concrete implementation of shape, position and movement abstract concepts. It has 16 in-built curricular-related activities.

Number Magic – spreadsheets to help with a series of calculations that need to be repeated often. Once they are set up they can be used to explore the effect of changing one number on the others. The data can also be displayed very easily as a graph or chart. Number Magic has a number of in-built curricular examples – in Blue level exercises folder.

National Numeracy Strategy Resources – Interactive flash resources to support mathematics available on every Falkirk primary school network PC in shared documents. Each has an associated set of instructions. These Flash files can be dragged into an open SMART Notebook page (or just used in an Internet browser). These included tell-the-time, thermometer, shape-sorting, symmetry, fractions and angle resources.

SMART Notebook resources – there are many tools and mathematics-specific resources in the SMART Notebook Gallery Essentials for Educators, and there is a huge number of pre-created SMART Notebook resources in the shared documents folders of every Falkirk primary networked PC.

Manga High – free online games-based maths teaching resource aimed at 7-16 year-olds. This combines development of maths skills with video game format games. The teacher selects specific maths/numeracy areas and level within the Curriculum for Excellence which assigns pupils teaching activities and game. The teacher can get reports on progress of individual pupils.

Other online resources included:

Primary Games Arena – a wide range of free online games matched to developing different numeracy and mathematics skills. 

Math is Fun – inlcudes games and a dictionary of mathematcis concepts for pupils.

Maths in the City – providing ideas for taking learning in mathematics and numeracy outside

Sumdog  – numeracy actvities where pupils can compete with others in a safe environment

Wolfram Alpha – described as a computational search engine!

Using Media to Support Literacy Skills

Sharon Wallace, Curriculum Support Officer of the Curriculum Support Team and John Doherty, Principal Teacher of English and Literacy at Larbert High School this week delivered a CPD opportunity to staff from the Braes Cluster.

The aims for this session were:

•To provide an overview of ways to use ‘cultural tools’ to support pupils to learn and express their ideas

•To explore ways pupils can read with understanding, communicate effectively face to face, in writing and through an increased range of media

Sharon began with an overview of the six reading comprehension skills and outlining the range of media resources available to support the development of these skills.

John began by outlining the key differences between a ‘book’ as text and ‘film’ as text:

John then identified the different types of camera angles: close-up, extreme close-up, high/ how angle shot, long shot, point of view shot, zoom and tracking. John showed different stills from a range of films and the teachers identified each shot.  The teachers were then asked to use their mobile devices to produce a camera shot from this list.

John then went onto analysing the use of music in film and we learned that music in film is known as the soundtrack. It  can be divided into two categories –

   a. Diegetic music (in the film – characters can hear)

  b. Non-diegetic music (music that characters cannot hear – not part of the film’s ‘reality’)

We then analysed a scene from Jurassic Park identifying examples of diagetic and non-diagetic music.

The final part of the course looked at the effect of lighting in film. We analysed a range of stills taken from recent films and examined the effect the lighting had on the meaning of the text.

At the end of the session, colleagues put all of their newly learned knowledge and skills to the test by analysing the film trailer for War Horse.

Feedback from this session was very positive and the course will be running again at Camelon Education Centre on March 5th from 4 til 5.30pm. (Course Code SW008). We are also hoping the Film Club will be attending this session too to share how Falkirk establishments can sign up to the fabulous range of resources on offer to support the development of literacy skills using film as text.

For more information about this and other literacy courses, please contact Sharon Wallace.