Category: Antonine Primary School

October 2, 2019

Developing Pupil Voice and Participation at Shieldhill Primary School

In May 2019, Robyn Wisbey, head teacher at Shieldhill PS & Yvonne McBlain, curriculum support officer, met to discuss recent developments and ideas around How Good is Our School part 2 (2018). Robyn had been developing children’s involvement in her schools’ self-evaluation processes and was interested to hear how the HGIOURS toolkit Yvonne created had been adapted and used by colleagues at Avonbridge PS.

In order to develop pupil voice and participation, Yvonne, Robyn, and Belinda Tomasik, depute head teacher, agreed that primary 6 pupils at Shieldhill could be offered the opportunity to start and lead this new self-evaluation process in their school. If this worked well, in session 2019-20, these pupils would be ready and able primary 7 leaders for school self-evaluation alongside more traditional routine processes.

Yvonne, Belinda and colleagues in school used the HGIOURS toolkit with primary 6 pupils to gather their evaluation and displayed pupil analysis of the 5 themes. The adults explained the purpose of HGIOURS part 2 and how it was co-created with Scottish children and young people. Pupils were asked to consider how they could lead a process in their school which would enable every child to share what they thought their school was good at or needed to do better. Click here to view their initial ideas.

At that point, Jan Archibald took over as primary 6 class teacher and supported the children in developing and taking their ideas forward. She encouraged their creativity and problem solving as well as the digital and literacy skills they used to create pupil-friendly versions of their questions and video explanations for younger pupils. Pupils were encouraged to solve any problems which occurred with as little adult intervention as possible. At each stage in this process all adults took care to make explicit the skills being developed and applied by pupils. These included: working with others, time management, digital skills, drafting and paraphrasing. Pupils needed support with their organisation and planning skills , and Yvonne prompted their thinking by asking questions to help them identify and sequence the tasks required to bring their ideas to fruition. Yvonne, Jan and Belinda observed that not all pupils were equally engaged with or interested in leading the involvement of their fellow pupils or managing their self-evaluation process. In consultation with Robyn, it was agreed that pupils could decide whether they wanted to continue with their HGIOURS role. By the time pupils moved into primary 7 and Isla Dyer took over as their teacher, a team of 14 children had volunteered to drive this work forward.

At an early stage in the process Belinda and Yvonne set up and populated a Microsoft Teams area for our HGIOURS group to ease communication and to store files so that everyone could see and work on these. The pupils used this platform very effectively, and Yvonne and Belinda found it really valuable for collaborative working. Yvonne in particular was able to stay in touch with developments remotely from her base in Camelon Education Centre – offering feedback and praise for the preparations pupils were making.

High praise was due to the pupils when they scripted, prepared and led a school assembly to share their self-evaluation task/purpose and alert fellow pupils to their upcoming visits. (Pupil presentation slides provided above & right) They have interpreted HGIOURS Features of Effective Practice for younger pupils and adapted and prepared a Microsoft Forms survey version for use across certain school stages.

Pupils have consulted with nursery staff to explore how best to involve the youngest children in their school. In addition, on 23rd September, a team of 4 pupils were invited by pupil council members at Laurieston PS to share their progress so far. Nathan, Eilidh, Ella and Hannah seriously impressed Laurieston pupils and staff with their confidence, their knowledge and their ability to share and explain their process with such clarity. Watch this space for further developments…

October 2, 2019

Supporting pupil voice & participation using How Good is OUR School

Pupils in Falkirk Children’s Services schools are beginning to use How Good is OUR School (Education Scotland 2018) to contribute to the self-evaluation and improvement of their schools. Senior leaders and practitioners are using the Features of Effective Practice (see example below) to support children and young people in their consideration of what their school does well, or needs to do better.

In February 2019, Yvonne McBlain, curriculum support officer, worked with colleagues in Avonbridge PS to create a pupil toolkit using elements of HGIOURS. They designed tools and a process which would enable every child in their school to add their voice to a collective self-evaluation/review process. The picture below shows the pro forma developed, and readers can click here to see the Features of Effective practice for theme 1 – Our Relationships. These are parts of a toolkit created to enable pupils to engage meaningfully in school self-evaluation, so that they can play a genuine role in identifying and shaping the school improvement agenda alongside staff, parents and partners. Click here to view the Power Point presentation used to help pupils at Avonbridge PS understand and take part in this opportunity to make their voices heard.

Jacqueline McLaughlin, head teacher at Antonine PS then used the HGIOURS toolkit with pupils in her school to inform and shape school improvement. In September 2019 her pupil council used the kit to help them prepare for and involve their parent council too. Jonathan Crawford, acting depute headteacher is also making use of the kit with pupil council members at Wallacestone PS. In each case, the kit is acting as a mediation tool to make the process accessible and meaningful to the pupils involved.

In May 2019 Robyn Wisbey, head teacher at Shieldhill PS and her depute Belinda Tomasik asked Yvonne to work with their primary 6 pupils and their teacher to explore how the toolkit could develop genuine and sustainable pupil-led self-evaluation and improvement processes across their school and community. Read about how this work is developing by clicking here.

In August 2019, Beverley Keith, head teacher at Laurieston PS and her staff began their refresh and review of their curriculum with Yvonne during their August inset day. Click here to read how Claire Thompson, class teacher and Laura Gavin, senior early years officer are supporting their pupil council in using HGIOURS to ensure that pupil voice also informs their curriculum.

All of these developments naturally support schools and pupils with HGIOS 4 Leadership and Management – particularly QI 1.1 Self-evaluation for self-improvement and QI 1.2 Leadership of Learning – children and young people leading learning. As a result of the leadership opportunities provided through their engagement with HGIOURS school at these schools, pupil participation has very obviously impacted on pupil skills for learning life and work, and on their confidence, leadership and self-esteem. They have an increased sense of their own capacity to make a difference in their school and are totally committed to ensuring other pupils in their school have their voices heard too.

In addition, this work helps these schools address Aspects for improvement from the Thematic Inspection of Empowerment for Parent and Pupil Participation (Education Scotland 2019) :

Continue to increase children’s and young people’s opportunities to lead their own learning and contribute to school improvement.
Involve pupils, parents and partners more in curriculum design and evaluating the impact of curriculum change.

February 5, 2015

Developing an online collaborative classroom with Microsoft Office 365 in Glow

Malcolm Wilson, ICT Curriculum Development Officer within the Curriculum Support team of Service and School Improvement, Falkirk Council Education Services led sessions with all teaching staff at Nethermains Primary School, Antonine Primary School, Carmuirs Primary School, Bonnybridge Primary School, Shieldhill Primary School, Denny Primary School, St Joseph’s Primary School and St Patrick’s Primary School on developing an online collaborative classroom with Microsoft Office 365 in Glow.

Office 365 in Glow

These sessions led staff through an exploration of various features within Office 365, including class sites created within SharePoint as part of Microsoft Office 365 (which is accessed via their Glow username), as well as the Falkirk Council local authority site and a site within the national site which provided exemplars of pupil engagement activities.

Task Workflow – easy, secure sharing of pupil work with their teacher

Each Glow user (pupils and staff) has an Outlook email account as part of the Microsoft Office 365 account included in Glow where each user has 50GB storage, and each email can have attachments up to 25MB, and their own secure cloud storage (each user has unlimited storage in this OneDrive). So staff were shown (and carried out this themselves) how a task can be set by a teacher (perhaps using the discussion webpart in their class site) and each individual pupil can then create their response in their own OneDrive using Word Online (so Word does not need installed on any device), and then they can share it with their teacher (just by clicking on “Share” within the document, adding the teacher’s Glow username and clicking “share” to automatically both send it by email to the teacher, and making it available in the “Documents shared with me” part of the teacher’s OneDrive for easy access).

The teacher, with whom the pupil’s document has been shared, can then either edit the document in Word Online or simply click on “Insert” in the edit menu to add comments at appropriate parts in the pupil’s document, to provide feedback, encouragement and suggestions for change. All of this is able to be seen by the pupil instantly the changes or comments have been added.

Collaborative Document

Staff were shown how they could open a Word Online document in Office 365 in Glow to be editable by as many users as they chose, opening the possibility for groups of pupils to collaborate on the same document online all at the same time from their own computers, or mobile devices – staff trying this out could see that they could all view the same document being edited in front of their eyes with different coloured flags appearing on screen to show who was editing the different parts of the document.

Class Shared Resources

All classes have their own online space within Office 365 in Glow. A class space includes, by default, a discussion app (which provides the facility for pupils sharing their work with the teacher who has set the task, and for asking questions in a controlled class environment, peer to peer or teacher-pupil in the confines of a private class area); weblink sharing; a document store (where documents were created using Microsoft Word Online as part of Office 365, meaning that the document can be created online without need for the software to be installed on the PC or mobile device); and a picture gallery. Further apps can be added to these class spaces (so some include a class calendar, or media-specific gallery for uploading videos or audio recordings), and each page is easily editable by the class teacher. In most cases class sites are set up so that pupils can only add to the discussion area (though this can be changed by staff should they so wish), whereas staff can add and edit throughout the class site.

Collaboration via Video-Conferencing

Staff were shown that Glow includes two options for staff to use video-conferencing between classes or between schools.

These are the Office 365 Lync tool (which works like Skype, with which many are already familiar), set up as simply as adding an entry in the online calendar, inviting collaborators by adding their username, ticking the box to add an online meeting, and then clicking the share button to send an invitation via email to all invited to take part in the video-conferencing meeting. Currently this is only available to staff users.

The second option is Adobe Connect which provides more options for varying access permissions for different users, so that some may be able to present a Powerpoint presentation, others may be able to talk via microphone, or some may only be able to view the content and video (interacting via chat text messaging).

Access via Mobile Device

All parts of Glow can be accessed via a mobile device either via the mobile device browser or via different apps for each tool, including Office Mobile (in order to be able to edit Word or Powerpoint for example) and OneDrive for Business (the ordinary OneDrive app is for the likes of a personal Hotmail account).

Setting alerts for changes

Staff were shown how to set an alert in their class site so that they get sent a message whenever anything gets added or changed in their site. They were shown how to click onto their own MySite in Office 365 to access a page where they can see all of the sites they want to get to quickly (both within and outwith Glow), the contacts in Glow, the documents they store in their OneDrive and more.

Online Pupil Engagement Activities

They also had a look at the national Glow Winter Challenges site in which pupils have a host of activities which they can complete in order to gain points and online badges – which can be used right away with pupils, or provide ideas for teachers to adapt for use in their own class sites.

Glow provide access to hosts of resources with just one username and password

Glow provides access to many online resources which are provided with their Glow account, including, for example, TigTag Science videos and teaching materials matched to Curriculum for Excellence Science at all levels, Scran (enormous digital archive of videos and images with associated information), film archives and several other subject-specific and cross-curricular resources.

Resources to support Staff in Using Glow

Staff can click on the following link to access support material for using Glow: http://tinyurl.com/l5zmeqw (Glow login required – access restricted to staff); as well as at the national Glow Connect site: http://connect.glowscotland.org.uk/

October 24, 2014

Falkirk Teaching for Deep Learning Facilitators

On 9th October members of the initial cohort of facilitators for the Falkirk Teaching for Deep Learning programme had their first network meeting for session 2014/15. The main agenda item for this meeting was a general catch up on how each facilitator was using the programme to facilitate professional learning for colleagues.

The whole Falkirk Teaching for Deep Learning programme is available in Glow (click to visit) and is being used in a variety of ways by teachers and schools across the authority to impact on teaching and learning. Here is a brief outline of what the facilitators are doing now that their initial training is complete.

As a result of using session 6 Using Higher Order Taxonomies as part of Teaching for Deep Learning (click to view power point) Iain Farrington and colleagues at Antonine PS have developed this (click to view) High Order Skills poster for their classrooms. Staff will use the chart to help them explicitly plan HOS for one curriculum area per term. Their eventual aim is for pupils to be able to identify the higher order skills they are developing and applying. Iain’s TLC is a voluntary one which he and colleagues choose to attend.
Sharon Welsby at Stenhousemuir PS also facilitated session 6 for colleagues and will deliver session 7 Planning Higher Order Skills into Teaching for Deep Learning (click to view) next. Teachers at Stenhousemuir are trialling and sharing how they are building HOS into their practice and are also aiming to build pupil awareness and understanding of which skills they are using when.
Charlaine Simpson is very interested in session 3 – Effective Questioning as part of Teaching for Deep Learning. A new Learning and Teaching policy for Grangemouth HS has been launched which gives opportunities to integrate many elements of the TfDL programme.
Kim Davidson and colleagues at Bo’ness Public PS particularly enjoyed session 6 in early October and have used all of their sessions so far to engage in really valuable professional dialogue. Kim is skillfully adapting the session materials to tailor them for her TLC and feedback from her colleagues is very positive.
Susan Macleod at Bankier PS also had very positive feedback from colleagues following her facilitation of sessions last year. She and colleagues want to take more time over fewer sessions from the programme this year in order to delve deeper into specific areas of classroom practice. Their chosen sessions are built into their SBNC and linked to the school improvement plan.
Fiona Caygill facilitated 2 sessions in Bowhouse/Victoria PS last year and will also be using session 6 this year to support development of classroom practice around HOS.
Pamela Webster intends to work with her colleague Rosemary McGaw to offer voluntary TLC sessions (1 per term over this session) using the programme. They will consult colleagues in Larbert Village PS about which sessions from the programme would be the most valuable.

Yvonne McBlain is the curriculum support officer with accountability for the ongoing development of the programme. She will add further posts sharing detail and evidence of impact of the programme, and the next facilitator network meeting will take place on 5th February 2015.

June 13, 2014

11th Enterprise in Education & Enterprise Champions Awards

Lynne Lauder, Enterprise Co-ordinator, oversaw the 11th Enterprise in Education Awards at Grangemouth High School on Thursday 12th June.
10 Schools attended the event to receive their certificates presented by Nigel Fletcher, Acting Director of Education.
The Awards, which started in 2006, recognise excellence in the delivery of Enterprise in Education in schools. Awards are presented at Bronze, Silver and Gold level. Schools who have managed to sustain Gold level for three years have the opportunity to go for Platinum.

The schools recognised at Gold Year 2 or Year 3 at the event were, Antonine PS, Bantaskin PS, Grange PS, Kinneil PS, Deanburn PS, Larbert Village PS & St Margaret’s PS. Four schools achieved Platinum status, Drumbowie PS, Maddiston PS, Carrongrange School, Larbert HS. We now have 21 Platinum Enterprise schools in Falkirk.Schools also have the opportunity to nominate partners as Enterprise Champions and to date we have 461 individuals who have received recognition for their work in inspiring and motivating young people to be more enterprising.
The event was a great success as is demonstrated by these smiling faces .

April 4, 2014

Teaching for Deep Learning Facilitators Review Their Impact So Far

On Thursday 3rd April 2014 Falkirk Teaching for Deep Learning programme facilitators reviewed the impact of the programme with Yvonne McBlain, Curriculum Support Teacher. Falkirk’s team of facilitators noted that the sessions they have delivered in their schools so far have had the following impact:

Learners are more aware of intended learning and children are now becoming more skilled in generating SC.

We are more aware of the HOTS vocabulary and using them in our LI & SC.

The children are more familiar with the terminology.

Staff are more creative with embedding HOTS in the learning.

More opportunities for sharing good practice.

More opportunities for doing peer visits.

Teachers have been made aware of the importance of professional dialogue.

Staff are valuing the opportunities for professional dialogue.

We now have solution-focused meetings.

Teachers decide on an action from the session to focus on.

Teachers are learning from each other – practice/dialogue

Programme has developed devolved leadership in schools and has developed facilitators’ presentation skills/confidence/professional knowledge of own craft.

General practice of dedicated professional – skilled in delivery of sessions & building capacity.

Distributive leadership opportunity through delivery of sessions.

While making these assertions about the impact of the programme, the group identified the following sources of evidence:

Gateway feedback/evaluations

Teachers created their own action plan linked to the session.

5 teachers will have observed other teachers by the end of the session. This has never happened before!

Start of session staff feedback on previous actions & impacts – share in pairs/lollipop sticks/graffiti board – “post its” kept by facilitators as evidence.

Limited – barriers of school culture/workload

Lack of understanding of the possible impact but hopefully will develop through ERD process.

Traffic lighting – daily plans, QA feedback for LI & SC

Feedback, monitoring visits, evaluations, child’s learning, child’s awareness of HOTS.

In addition, facilitators are also beginning to compile specific evidence of impact on their colleagues and pupils within their establishments. Mary Jalland facilitated Session 6 – Using Higher Order Skills Taxonomies as part of Teaching for Deep Learning (Click to view), and Session 14 – Creating a Positive Learning Environment which Supports Teaching for Deep Learning (Click to view). Click here to read how Mary and her colleagues at Westquarter PS noted their impact.

Iain Farrington facilitated Session 6 and Session 3 – Effective Questioning as part of Teaching for Deep Learning (3 Questioning click to view). As a result of these, Iain and his colleagues are trialling the use of a higher orders skills planning sheet as part of their planning processes (Click to view). Together they have integrated a range of changes to their practice in order to deepen pupil understanding of the skills they are developing. In the longer term, this will support pupils in recognising and recording their own progression and achievement, and help them maintain a strong learning log and/or profile.

March 12, 2014

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.

January 24, 2014

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

September 20, 2013

Active Literacy – P6/7 Training

Sharon Wallace, Curriculum Support Officer of the Curriculum Support Team has carried out Active Literacy training over the past two weeks with 54 teachers. The two three hour sessions examined the writing programme incorporating spelling and the reading programme.

Session one looked at how teachers can support pupils in becoming independent spellers. Pupils are taught strategies to use their previously learned knowledge of phonemes and spelling rules to more complex, polysyllabic words.

The course examined the programme for spelling strategy work, alongside the new addition of ‘vocabulary building’, homophones and common confusions. Trials of the programme so far indicate that pupils are really enjoying the investigation element of prefixes and suffixes and how these affect the meaning of words.

The session also examined the writing genres covered at second level looking at incorporating writing trios, chunking, use of genre success criteria and next steps.

Session two focused on the development of the six key comprehension strategies across a range of texts. These strategies are:
1. Prior knowledge and prediction
2. Metalinguistics
3. Visualisation
4. Inference
5. Main ideas
6. Summarising and paraphrasing.

Sharon demonstrated how to develop these skills using a traditional ‘novel’ text, moving image (film trailer) and a poem. The course also looked at using online tools such as Powtoon, go animate and twixster to develop reading skills.

Colleagues were given a ‘Stories Allways’ resource containing a range of Scottish myths and legends as well as two CDs. This is a great resource as it provides pupils with a range of challenging questions, tasks and a synopsis of each tale.

Colleagues enthusiastically participated in a range of Active Literacy activities across the course of the two sessions and feedback so far has been really positive.

“The course was delivered extremely well by Sharon Wallace and the resources provided were very useful.”

“The course was presented over 2 days in which it provided an overview of the key methodologies and strategies as outlined in North Lanarkshire’s Active Literacy 6/7 programme. I thought all aspects of the course were useful and it enhanced my knowledge and understanding of the 6/7 programme which I will now be able to confidently implement in the classroom.”

“I am new to teaching as well as the Active Literacy programme. I had very little knowledge and understanding prior to the course however I now feel I can confidently implement active literacy in the classroom.”

“Sharon is a very enthusiastic presenter and it is clear that she wholly believes in the Active Literacy Programme. Her passionate delivery and ideas instil in you, the confidence to have a go in your own classroom.”