Yvonne McBlain, Curriculum Support Teacher with Falkirk Council Education Services recently met with Julia Branch, THI Heritage Engagement Officer from Falkirk Community Trust. During this meeting, Julia and Yvonne explored a range of ways in which the Falkirk Townscape Heritage Initiative (THI ) http://glo.li/194nhCZ could contribute to the range of teaching and learning experienced by our pupils. The THI Team has been given permission to start, and are keen to work with interested establishments, practitioners and young people. The THI is grant giving initiative funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, Historic Scotland & other local partners. The project’s overall aim is to breathe new life into Falkirk’s historic Town Centre by improving the physical appearance of the area and enhancing the things that make Falkirk special and unique. This will include repairing and conserving important historic buildings, restoring traditional shop frontages, and improving the public realm. Alongside the physical regeneration work, Julia will be implementing a ‘Community Engagement’ programme, which will bring local history to life, offer the community and schools opportunities to learn about and promote Falkirk’s rich heritage. If you are interested in taking part in this part of the project or want more information please contact Julia via email julia.branch@falkirkcommunitytrust.org or phone 07739328530. Julia has created a really useful Pathfinder pack of classroom resources within Scran which you can access here http://glo.li/194nDtb , and more resources will follow.
Category: Senior Phase
Physical Education Conference
Morag Young and Morag Simpson, Physical Education Lead Officers for Falkirk Council Curriculum Support Team attended the inaugural conference for the Scottish Association of Physical Education Teachers (SATPE). This was held at Tulliallan Castle on Saturday 2nd November 2013. The occasion highlighted the importance of professional dialogue, the sharing of good practice and the unity of practitioners across the country. The key note speaker was Paralympian David Smith, a truly inspirational individual.
Presentations from the event will be available from the website shortly. www.SATPE.co.uk
Individuals can join SATPE for £25 or a primary school membership costs £40. For this membership you will gain access to an online journal, teaching resources, notification of relevant events and discounts from association sponsors.
The PE Lead Officers across Scotland are encouraging schools to join the association to assist their professional development in reaching the 2 hour PE target.
Denny High School Pupils film local sporting celebrities
Yvonne McBlain of Falkirk Education Services Curriculum Support team is working with 4SIG2 and their Creative Digital Media teacher Sarah Felton to create a pupil version of our education policy Learning to Achieve. The 4th year pupils in this class are in the production phase of creating a magazine-style digital presentation which we hope will bring the paper version of the policy to life for secondary pupils all over Falkirk Council. The class decided that interviewing successful people who had attended our schools could be a really inspiring part of this presentation. Following lots of research, they organised and filmed Asia Bailey, former pupil of Larbert HS, and Jack Hamilton former pupil of Denny HS. Asia is about to become a full-time Tae Kwon Do athlete, and is currently German and Dutch Open Champion. Click here for more information on her career so far. Jack has had a very successful junior football career for his club and national teams and is now a goal keeper with Hearts Football Club – click here for more information . Click here to see the design brief the pupils are working from – this includes the paper version of section 4 of the policy which was written by pupils from a range of our schools. The pupils were really grateful that Asia and Jack could give up some of their training time to be interviewed, and thrilled to meet these local sporting celebrities. One of the next jobs that these pupils have scheduled is to organise and film “Vox Pop” style interviews with pupils at all of our other secondary schools.
Satisfying the yearning for mobile learning!
Stuart Lennie and Malcolm Wilson of the Falkirk Council Education Services Curriculum Support team have been working to create a Mobile Devices in Falkirk Education Blog.
The blog is designed to support Falkirk Council education establishments in their use of mobile devices in learning and teaching.
Beginning from September 2013, this site will develop to have further materials as work develops in establishments.
Click here to visit the blog: https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/fa/mobiledevices/
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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.
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!
Cooperative Learning – Secondary SLA training
Sharon Wallace, Effective teaching and learning teacher, along with Carol Paton, both of the Curriculum Support Team delivered a Cooperative Learning academy to 80 Secondary High School Support for Learning Assistants at Grangemouth High School.
The academy examined a range of Cooperative Learning strategies and aimed to raise confidence and knowledge of how to support class teachers and lead small groups using Cooperative Learning techniques.
Newly formed ‘home’ teams developed their team identity with the design of a flag which encapsulated commonalities. One stray, three stray was used to share the learning. Colleagues also participated in ‘think, pair, share’, ‘stand and deliver’, ‘paired reading’ and group processing activities. A range of social skills were included across all of the activities.
Class builders included an ‘inside/ outside circle’, ‘corners’, ‘find someone who’ and clock partners.
The day concluded with the sharing of team poems which were delivered with confidence, enthusiasm and lots of laughter!
Next steps were examined and colleagues returned to their schools to share their new learning.
Click here to view full presentation: SLA day course revised april 2013
For more information on Cooperative and Collaborative learning, please visit: http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/learningteachingandassessment/approaches/collaboration/index.asp
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.
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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
