Tag: learning intentions

Monitoring for Improvement in Active Methodologies

 

Sharon Wallace, Curriculum Support Officer of the Service and School Improvement Team, delivered a session to 25 Principal Teachers as part of their network programme. The course asked participants to consider how the use of active learning methodologies raises attainment across the curriculum.

Colleagues began the session using a placemat activity to examine questions, challenges, successes and barriers to monitoring active methodologies.

Sharon then provided an overview of the active literacy programme from Nursery to S1 which included: spelling and phonics, reading and writing. The principal teachers were provided with a range of materials to support effective monitoring in this area. They then watched a range of good practice videos highlighting active literacy strategies and methodologies in action in Falkirk schools.

Sharon then provided an overview of effective teaching strategies within cooperative learning and what to look out for in a ‘cooperative learning’ environment. Again, colleagues were able to watch a short series of videos highlighting the five basic elements of a cooperative learning lesson. Discussions were stimulated around the use of effective questioning and use of Assessment for Learning techniques.

The session concluded with participants stating next steps to further development effective monitoring in active methodologies.

For further information, please contact Sharon Wallace – sharon.wallace@falkirk.gov.uk

Feedback was positive with colleagues expressing thanks for the opportunity to see the whole programme across all stages.

Exploring elements of planning with Denny Early Years Cluster

On Tuesday 16th April Yvonne McBlain from the Curriculum Support Team worked with 27 early years practitioners from the Denny cluster. She facilitated a workshop which explored how practitioners were integrating essential elements of assessment into their planning of interdisciplinary learning. The workshop gave these practitoners an opportunity to work with their establishment colleagues on 2 “challenges”. These challenges were designed to enable collaborative and individual self-evaluation of planning effective connected learning. They also supported identification of the most relevant next steps for partricipants. The session was designed to generate questions as well as providing access and guidance on next steps. Participants said that the session was “useful” “informative” “made you think” and was “well-designed and enjoyable”. Here is a selection of next steps identified by participants:

Further conversations with colleagues around planning

Think more about what our success criteria will be while planning – which should make evidence and assessment more relevant

Develop team’s ability to identify appropriate learning intentions and success criteria

Review approach to planning

Share with other staff (higher classes in school)

Using Active Approaches to Reading Using Moving Image as ‘Text’

Sharon Wallace, Effective Teaching and Learning Teacher, Curriculum Support Team, has been working with a number of schools on active approaches to reading.

Sharon has been working on the development of skills which address ENG 1/2-17a – ‘To show my understanding, I can respond to different kinds of questions and can create different kinds of questions of my own.’

Working with ‘Lost and Found’ moving image as a text, Sharon has been working alongside class teachers to use Blooms question fans to support generating, and indeed, answering their own higher order questions.

Using a ‘book detective’ approach, pupils have been given specific tasks to find evidence within the ‘text’ to support themes/ characterisation/ setting/ plot and structure.

Incorporating co-operative learning strategies such as ‘corners’ (literal, evaluative and inferential questions) and ‘two stay/ two stray’, pupils have generated their own questions and model answers for other pupils to solve.

In their co-operative learning roles of question master, clarifier, recorder and summariser, pupils initially answered prediction questions about the text, followed by generating their own questions to ask others.

Pupils were highly engaged and motivated during the whole of the sessions. These sessions culminated in pupils taking on the role of teacher (Reciprocal Teaching) where they devised their own lessons for younger pupils using the same moving image as ‘text’. Pupils incorporated Assessment is for Learning strategies into their own lessons and shared learning intentions and success criteria.