Exciting CPD from new partnership!

Yvonne McBlain from Falkirk Curriculum Support Team met with Ray McFadyen, Education Officer from the Museum of Scottish Railways on 12th November. Ray shared the new museum education support pack (click to view) which he has just completed, and described the themed artefact handling boxes he has created (click to view).  Yvonne and Ray talked about the range of steam and diesel-driven machinery and artefacts which could stimulate ideas for teachers of technology. Consequently, they will collaborate to create and organise a CPD Manager course offering secondary DET teachers the opportunity to visit the museum collection after hours. A visit to the museum and railway station next to Bo’ness harbour offers a whole range of creative teaching possibilities (click to explore how a visit could look). Yvonne and Ray will work with Sharon Wallace, Primary Curriculum Support Officer to plan and deliver an innovative series of CPD sessions which will include a site visit. These sessions will allow teachers to explore how the museum collection and location could be used to progress literacy skills across learning, in an active, engaging and creative way – within and outwith the classroom! Keep your eye on CPD Manager – we hope to upload these descriptors soon.

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Claudia Flynn joins the Curriculum Support Team

Claudia Flynn, Trainee Management Information Systems Assistant with the Curriculum Support Team of Falkirk Council Education Services has been employed under Falkirk Council’s graduate recruitment program. The program lasts 30 weeks and is intended for graduates to gain valuable work experience and to support their transition into full time employment.

Claudia will be supporting the development of CPD Manager to encompass online management of employee review and development. She is part of the mobilisation team responsible for putting the new ERD system into action for Education Services support staff.

To see Claudia’s full remit, please click HERE.

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.

A Saturday Morning spent thinking about Employee Review and Development!

Last Saturday morning Anne Pearson, Curriculum Support Manager, headed down to the Falkirk Football Stadium  to team up with Colin Finlay who was hosting the event in his new role as Falkirk EIS Learning Representative. Over 80 teachers from Falkirk, Clackmannanshire, Stirling and North Lanarkshire came along and whilst  football was not on the agenda, we engaged in continuous professional development all about Professional Update  and  Employee Review and Development (ERD) supported by delicious bacon rolls and lots of hot drinks. Ken Muir,the Chief Executive of the General Teaching Council Scotland and Larry Flannagan the EIS General Secretary shared their thinking on the importance of high quality CPD, how this links with Professional Update and is a key factor in school improvement. To quote McKinsey, “The quality of an educational system  cannot outperform the quality of its teachers. The only way to improve outcomes is to improve learning and teaching.”     These national and international perspectives have informed the  rationale for Falkirk Education Service’s ERD systems and processes. Anne Pearson focussed on 4 key elements of effective ERD and shared exemplar Work Profiles, explaining how these were developed and link  to the revised national standards that went live in August this year. The morning ended with a Question and Answer session, the panel being made up of Ken Muir, Larry Flannagan, Anne Pearson and the local EIS Secretary Margaret Smith. The presence of such a large group of committed teachers on a weekend illustrates there is a high level of interest in Professional Update and review and development. Good teachers wanting to know how to be even better! Education Services look forward to continuing our partnership with our professional associations.

 

 

Physical Education in Early Years

Morag Young and Morag Simpson, PE Lead Officers with Falkirk Council Curriculum Support Team delivered a twilight session at St. Andrew’s Primary School for Early Years Practitioners.  This course demonstrated a variety of activities to develop the childrens’ ability to move well, using ideas from the Better Movers, Better Thinkers programme. Practitioners were also shown how to use PE activities to support the development of Numeracy and Literacy and shared ideas on developing the use of themed activity trails to support topic work. There was an opportunity for everyone to discuss resources and share ideas. This was a very practical course and the presenters would like to thank everyone for their enthusiatic participation.

Initial feedback from the session was extremely positive and a selection of comments are shown below:

“Clearly presented, interactive and helpful”

“Excellent workshop, lots of good ideas, enjoyed topic work”

“Really liked the ideas on how to link PE ideas with numeracy and literacy”

“Great course, fab instructions, I really enjoyed this course”

Effective Teaching – Uganda style

 

Yvonne McBlain, from Falkirk Council curriculum support team was fascinated to hear about the parallels observed by Sarah Ritchie and Jill Stocks during their recent visit to Uganda. Sarah  embarked upon this visit expecting to focus on the differences between Scottish teaching and that delivered in Uganda. However, instead she has been struck by the similarities of the fundamental elements of teaching in Kampala and Bonnybridge!  One of her first observations was the sharing of learning objectives with pupils – in Kampala classrooms these are very effectively shared with pupils – despite the differences in resourcing levels there. Teachers in Uganda are challenged by very large classes, small classrooms and limited resources – a chalk board and a piece of chalk basically. In spite of these limitations these teachers are making extremely effective use of what we would call formative assessment. Other aspects of practice familiar to Scottish teachers commonly used were: pupils teaching pupils, active strategies used to gauge understanding, regular peer feedback, a very natural and integrated use of outdoor learning, and a very creative range of randomising techniques. Teachers at every stage ensured that pupils had a clear understanding of success criteria for their tasks. The ethos and life of this Kampala school was overwhelmingly positive and affirmative and achievement and learning was truly and enthusiastically celebrated. Click here to view a page of teacher planning Uganda style, and click on the pictures at the start of this post to see short video clips taken by Sarah during her visit.

Summary Result from Questions of Quality Survey

The Questions of Quality Mobilistation Team based at Camelon Education Centre which included Lynne Lauder, Stuart Lennie, Marian Boyle and Christine Snedden issued the Questions of Quality survey for 2012-13 in June 2013.  

The survey asked people to respond to questions based on the Curriculum Support Team profile and provided valuable feedback on successes and areas for development.  We have found this very useful in past years as it supports  and informs the  development of our RACI improvement plan. 

Thank you for taking the time to complete the survey.  A summary of the response is attached for your information.

Questions of Quality summary report 2013

Gymnastics

Morag Young and Morag Simpson, Physical Education Lead Officers from Falkirk Council Curriculum Support Team organised a Gymnastics twilight for primary class teachers and specialists. This course was led by Anne Murphy,  from Education Scotland. Anne demonstrated how to provide a progressive Gymnastics programme focussing on the Significant Aspects of Learning in PE from Early Level through to Second Level. This was a practical course and participants were very impressed by the way in which the course was delivered in an extremely inclusive manner. Course participants were able to identify that this method of teaching Gymnastics  would ensure a positive learning experience for all.

Examples of the very positive feedback are shown below.

“Better quality lessons and learning experience for the children”

“I think my learners will have a more positive and richer learning experience”

“more valuable experience for all the children especially those who are not so confident in this area”