Yvonne McBlain of Falkirk Curriculum Support Team was thrilled to attend the first of a series of cross-sector cluster interdisciplinary planning sessions on Tuesday 17th September 2013. As chair of the Commonwealth Games Interdisciplinary Project sub-group, Linda-Anne Reid worked with colleagues to co-ordinate this collegiate planning. Early year’s practitioners and primary 1 teachers met in Stenhousemuir PS, first level teachers met in Carron PS, and second and third in Kinnaird PS. All staff were given relevant planning materials and information in advance, including the cluster plan, NAR planning flow chart, NAR planning flow chart instructions and Falkirk Community Trust/Active Schools Going for Glasgow Accreditation paper. Isobel Edmond provided early level practitioners with a very clear introductory overview of the potential benefits of this interdisciplinary learning context. Morag Carson then explained that each of the 3 hour-long planning sessions would involve same stage groups planning within 3 bundles of E & Os. This means that the Larbert cluster will generate at least 3 interdisciplinary plans per level which meet experiences and outcomes from: Social subjects & Expressive Arts, Social subjects & Technology, & Social subjects and Science. They are more than happy for these plans to be made available across the authority when complete. Once these groups were established, their first task was to identify the small bundle of E & Os they felt could be progressed by this context, for their learners. Yvonne and Linda-Anne enjoyed a whistle-stop tour of the nursery and primary 1 groups, and then nipped up to Kinnaird PS to pop into the second and third level groups. The staff involved had already made choices about their E & Os , and begun to consider learning intentions, and the best activities to develop knowledge, understanding and skills within the Commonwealth Games context. There will be 2 further planning sessions on 30th October and 21st November, but some groups have opted to do one double session instead. Although clearly linking into national events taking place in 2014, this way of working across-cluster offers potential benefits on many levels: the planning of robust interdisciplinary learning, development of understanding of skills progression, and the sharing of practice generally. All in all, a really active, purposeful form of collegiate professional learning!
Category: Larbert High School
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’.
Active Literacy in the Secondary School
Sharon Wallace, Effective Teaching and Learning Teacher, Curriculum Support Team is currently working with two Falkirk Secondary Schools on a very exciting Active Literacy transition project.
The recently published Active Literacy pack takes the Active Literacy programme into S1 and Sharon is currently team teaching with John Doherty at Larbert High School and an S1 class, and soon Graeme High School, also with an S1 class on higher order reading skills.
The P4/5 Active Literacy pack develops the higher order skills introduced at P1-3 and the P6/7/S1 pack takes these skills even further.
The S1 classes are developing the six key reading comprehension skills using the Alfred Noyes poem ‘The Highwayman’ as a ‘text’.
The initial lesson looked at Strategy 1 – prior knowledge of ‘highwaymen’ and this period in time, followed by Strategy 2 – using ‘metalinguistics’ – picking out key phrases/ interesting vocabulary. The pupils then used Strategy 3 – using visualisers to produce a mind-map which incorporated the main themes of a non-fiction text about ‘Highwaymen’.
This is a very exciting project taking the Active Literacy programme into S1 and the skills even further into real life.
The second lesson in this series was really successful and examined comprehension strategies 3 (using visualisers), 4 (inference), 5 (main ideas) and 6 (paraphrasing). In a very short timescale, S1 pupils from Larbert High were able to produce visualisers to summarise the main ideas of two stanzas from the poem. Working in cooperative groups on two different stanzas each, the pupils were able to cover the entire poem. They then went onto producing a summary/ paraphrase of those two stanzas using only 140 characters and published these live on twitter.
Some of the tweets included:
‘The highwayman knocks on the window of the inn and finds Bess #younglove x’
‘The Highwayman is a structured poem which has good describing words #shotottheface‘
‘The highwayman rides to the inn. Sings a song to the girl. Redcoats make her shoot herself. #death‘
Smart Response tools to support Assessment for Learning
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 a variety of primary and secondary schools in Falkirk on the use of Smart Response tools to support Assessment for Learning.
Anne Forrest took participants through the use of Smart Response handsets to respond to a series of questions, then showed how that information could be used by the teacher to support learning and teaching in the classroom. Then she guided everyone through the steps to set up their own teacher profile and their class lists, so that when pupils use the handsets the responses could be analysed by the teacher to provide support as required. 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).
Smart Response tools work in tandem with Smart Board interactive whiteboard software and provide a means for teachers to get feedback from all of their pupils in their class. This can be before a class starts work on a new topic in any curricular area in order to guage the prior learning of pupils, or they can be used regularly during a teaching session to let the teacher keep ensuring pupils have understood each step before proceeding to the next step (or quickly pick up where different teaching strategies might be required), or as an assessment at the end of a teaching session.
Sometimes called classroom response systems, class voting tools or clickers, these Smart Response tools are just one type of the many tools now available specifically to help gather feedback from all pupils in a class. These let teachers get a quick response at the beginning, during or end of a teaching session. This way the teacher has a wider overview of the undertsanding at any time of the whole class and not just of a few individual pupils. Used as part of an Assessment for Learning strategy a teacher can change the pace or direction of teaching to take account of responses from pupils.
There are many free pre-created templates and question sets ready to be downloaded and adapted by teachers to suit the needs of their own pupils. Click here for the online Smart Exchange site where these can be downloaded.
Click here for more information about classroom response systems.
Responses from participants included:
“Very useful session – took us through the set up step by step which was fab – learned lots – thank you! What an amazing tool.” KD – Stenhousemuir PS
“An excellent course – very informative and great, easy to follow instructions. I can’t wait to try them out. Thank you.” LD – Langlees PS
“A super session and great explanation on how to use Smart response.” JM – Bantaskin PS
School College Opportunities To Succeed
Lynne Lauder, Enterprise Co-ordinator, Falkirk Council Curriculum Support Team attended the first Joint Team planning meeting for the implementation of the new SCOTS (School College Opportunities to Succeed) programme which will be piloted as part of the Schools College Consortia in Falkirk during the 2013-14 session.
The event, planned and facilitated by Steve Dougan, Senior Phase/Opportunities for All Co-ordinator, Falkirk Council, Fiona Brown, Curriculum Manager Quality Assurance, Forth Valley College and Hazel Mackie, Principal Officer, Falkirk Council Employment and Training Unit brought together key staff from both Forth Valley College and the Schools.
Having shared an overview of the proposed pilot which detailed the importance of joint delivery and targets, staff from the varous college faculties presented their suggestions of what the college input would be. Joint teams then worked to generate ideas of how work undertaken in the schools would complement the overall delivery.
Some time was spent on the practicalities of delivery i.e. the recruitment and interview processes and on identifying next steps.
There was a real buzz in the room as the group synergy brought forth some really exciting possibilities. This is an exciting new addition to the curriculum in Falkirk which will bring rich benefits to the young people of the area.
The group meet again in early May so watch this space for updates.
CPD TV
Stuart Lennie, ICT Curriculum Development Officer in Falkirk Council Education Services Curriculum Support team, has just launched the official Falkirk Council Education Services YouTube Channel.
The channel, available HERE, will be used to provide CPD opportunities, support, and guidance for education establishments across Falkirk Council. Within the page are links to the other official YouTube channels for Falkirk schools.
The channel also works on the YouTube app for Smartphones and Tablets, giving you access to content whenever you need it.
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Make sure you subscribe to the channel to get all of our latest updates!
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Administration of Instrumental Scheme
Fiona Dyson and Elaine Hunter, Clerical Assistants, Falkirk Council Education Services, Curriculum Support Team have been administering the Falkirk Council Education Services Instrumental Scheme. This provides opportunities for pupils to learn a musical instrument. By providing the administration at the centre this in turn saves the tutor valuable time and allows them to concentrate more on teaching.
Staff booking onto CPD
Jamielee Dickson, Clerical Assistant within the Falkirk Council Education Services Curriculum Support Team deals with staff booking onto courses. Jamielee is the person at the end of the phone or sending e-mails for staff booking onto professional development.
LGBT Young Person Group FKInclude
Marian Boyle Curriculum Support Officer Health and Well Being in Falkirk Council Education Services Curriculum Support Team supported the implementation of LGBT Young Person Group FKInclude. This is the new Falkirk group for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender young people and their friends and allies aged 13-26.This group runs every Thursday. It is an inspiring, fun and great place to be! There is a programme of weekly activities, which include workshops on young people rights, sexual health, ‘coming out’, mental health, the National Youth Council, LGBT History Month and Film nights, to name but a few. Workers and volunteers are also on hand for check-ins, support, advocacy and information.If you would like to be kept up to date with information about the group and other opportunities, please go to www.lgbtyouth.org.uk/Falkirk
