Category: Second Level

Sharing the Learning with Parents and Carers at Shieldhill Primary School

 

Sharon Wallace, Curriculum Support Officer of the Curriculum Support Team has recently been working with a group of children from P2 to P4 in Shieldhill Primary School. The children were very enthusiastic and keen to be helping out at an upcoming session for parents and carers. Pupils demonstrated their knowledge of active literacy strategies and methodologies with confidence. They are very much looking forward to being ‘reciprocal teachers’ to their visitors at the active literacy workshop.

The children were able to eloquently explain about a range of strategies including: the five finger strategy, Elkonin boxes and diacritical marking.

Other activities on the agenda for the workshop are spell-er-cize, fun spelling tasks for their common/ tricky words and looking at their favourite ‘texts’.

Active Literacy for P6/7/S1 – New Online Support Materials

Sharon Wallace, Curriculum Support Officer, Curriculum Support Team, has been working on a number of new CPD training support videos for Active Literacy.

These short video sessions are aimed at Second level, however some of the materials can be adapted and applied to earlier stages.  

Sharon has recorded nine short videos for ‘Reading’ including using film trailers, critical analysis, non-fiction analysis and moving image education. There are two sessions relating to spelling and these include the new spelling section and vocabulary building which explores homophones and affixes. There is one training session called ‘Developing Writing at Second Level’ and this looks at incorporating a range of different genres, as well as the use of mixed ability writing trios and effective conferencing to improve writing skills.

 These short animation videos are part of a series of CPD online sessions which range from P1 to S1.[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/gvXEPThdi2c" width="425" height="344" allowfullscreen="true" fvars="fs=1" /]

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!

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.

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

Primary Probationers Go Outdoors!

Jane Jackson, Outdoor Learning Development Officer, Falkirk Council Curriculum Support Team, has been working with the primary probationer teachers exploring how outdoor learning can become an integral part of their planning and teaching.   

There is no better way to demonstrate the range of ways that outdoor learning can contribute to CfE than by getting out there and doing it yourself.  The probationers took part in a wide range of activities, after having got the fire going and set up our base for the day.

They all agreed that we have covered many curricular areas with some very simple, fun, exciting activities  that could readily be used for further learning back at school.

The main purpose of the session was to challenge participants thinking about outdoor learning and to raise awareness of the benefits of learnng outside the classroom.

         

  

Active Learning in Health and Wellbeing using Smart Notebook software on a Smart Board interactive whiteboard

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 primary schools in Falkirk on the use of Smart Notebook software with the Smart Board interactive whiteboard to support active learning in Health and Wellbeing.

Anne Forrest guided participants through hands-on use of a host of interactive techniques using Smart Notebook software with the Smart Board which a teacher could use to support learning and teaching in the classroom in health and wellbeing. These included different ways of using tools like the magic pen tool (to zoom in, magnify, spotlight, and fade out annotations), object animations to provide feedback, rub and reveal, move pictures to reveal, hyperlinked objects on images, pulling items to self-correct, matching images within tables, page activity recording. The variety of different gallery items from images to engaging interactive tools such as timers were illustrated in health and wellbeing activity contexts, as well as how to adapt the host of lesson activity toolkit pre-created game-type interactives to any topic. Hands-on use of the resources on the Smartboard by participants illustrated how the activities can be used to help engage pupils in their learning.

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

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).

Feedback from participants included:

“Excellent with clear explanations and practical examples.” HK – Bonnybridge Primary School

“Excellent presenter.” MS – Kinnaird Primary School

Can We Persuade You To Eat Your Sprouts?!

Sharon Wallace, Effective Teaching and Learning Teacher, Curriculum Support Team has been trialling some of the new Active Literacy materials for P6/7 with Head of Muir Primary School.

Sharon has been working with 33 P7s on the persuasive writing genre. The learning intention was to develop the pupils ability to give an opinion through a piece of writing. Using the success criteria, pupils looked at persuasive language, synonyms for ‘persuade’ before embarking on an opening paragraph.

Pupils watched this shared ‘text’ to gather evidence of persuasive language and techniques and really enjoyed this activity. Eat Your Sprouts!

Pupils in this class will persuade you, through their writing, that ‘There’s always time for a sprout!’ and they invented new characters to convince readers of the benefits of sprouts.

Here are some of their characters they designed to persuade younger audiences to eat their sprouts:

Working in writing trios, pupils worked hard  incorporating the success criteria of: changing the mind of the reader, using powerful verbs and strong adjectives and setting out main points in a paragraph.

Here are a few examples of their opening paragraphs:

‘Do you eat brussel sprouts? No? Well, you should! Eating brussel sprouts will provide you with many benefits such as making you live longer, run faster than Usain Bolt, jump higher than Captain America and be smarter than Steven Hawkin. You will increase in height and muscles galore, these are just a few of the benefits, so rush out to the shops and buy some now!’

‘Brussels Give You Muscles’

‘Why should we eat these scrumptious brussels? Well, for a start, I am going to convince you that they are God’s greatest creation yet! Can I coax you to understand that if you eat sprouts every day and night, you will become marvellously wealthy, even wealthier than Robbie Williams!’

‘Your dreams will come true with brussel sprouts! How will eating brussel sprouts make your dreams come true I hear you asking!? Well, can I coax you to understand that sprouts of the God of vegetables? I bet you will have them on your plate every night. You might even be caught washing with brussel sprout soap! Messi eats them everyday – that is why he is the best footballer in the world!’

Have they managed to persuade you yet?