Yvonne McBlain and Malcolm Wilson of Falkirk Council Service and School Improvement Team have created a new interdisciplinary learning blog. Yvonne will develop and maintain this blog as a major element of support for IDL across Falkirk Council education establishments. She is working hard to fill the blog with useful material and valuable IDL practice. Click here to visit, and contact yvonne.mcblain@falkirk.gov.uk if you have suggestions, ideas or interdisciplinary learning practice to share.
Tag: professional learning
Primary Probationer Teachers Get to Know the Teaching for Deep Learning Programme
Yvonne McBlain and Sharon Wallace of Falkirk Curriculum Support Team recently introduced the primary probationer teachers to the Falkirk Teaching for Deep Learning Programme. During this introduction, participants experienced programme session 1 “What is Understanding”. This session explores the concept of understanding and has been used by a number of teacher learning communities in Falkirk schools. Here are some of the definitions of understanding created by the probationer teachers:
Understanding is applying and transfering knowledge flexibly as well as being able to teach others.
Understanding is achieved through repetition (perhaps in different contexts).
Understanding is transferring the skill and knowledge to another context. Embedding the skill through revisiting.
– apply and transfer knowledge to other areas of the curriculum
– be able to explain to others
Click here to access Session 1 through Glow, and here to see the power point presentation from Sharon and Yvonne’s session with probationer teachers.
Visitors from Sweden to see our Storyline practice
Yesterday, Yvonne McBlain, Curriculum Support Teacher with Falkirk Council Education Services was pleased to accompany two Swedish student teachers from the University of Gothenburg on their visit to find out about Falkirk storyline practice. Catrin and Sofia are working on their final dissertations and are exploring how teachers in two different education systems employ the storyline approach to progress learning in their classrooms. At St Francis Xavier’s RC PS, they interviewed Vikki Williamson, Joanna Rowe and Margaret Priest about their piloting of Learning Unlimited “Joyning the Learning” materials. Vikki, Joanna and Margaret worked on Fairyland, The Circus and The Unsinkable Ship last session with their primary 1-3 classes, and were enthused by the levels of pupil engagement and parental involvment generated. These resources make extensive use of the Storyline approach to enrich interdisciplinary learning for pupils. The teachers have exchanged email addresses with Catrin and Sofia and supplied them with lots of really valuable reseach information. Yvonne then took our guests to Stenhousemuir PS where Laura Swan welcomed them and shared a loose timetable for their whole day visit on Thursday 21st November. Catrin and Sofia will be able to interview Laura and her primary 1 pupils, about the recent Space storyline they worked on. They will also be able to spend some time with teachers in their classrooms, and speak to the regular Thursday parent’s group. Yvonne enjoyed finding out how Swedish teachers use storyline and discovered that the Swedish curriculum has significant similarities to our Curriculum for Excellence – including a definite place for interdisciplinary learning.
New Higher Order Skills CPD
Yvonne McBlain, support teacher with Falkirk Council Curriculum Support Team delivered some new professional learning around the Higher Order Skills on 7th November. Click here to take a look at this session and contact Yvonne on yvonne.mcblain@falkirk.gov.uk for more detail about this course.
Feedback from participants in the course was very positive on the whole, and impact reported included:
I will continue to use the HOTS within the classroom and embed this within planning.
I will use the skills matching exercise as part of a professional discussion surrounding skills for learning which will take place within my establishment.
A greater understanding of the Higher Order skills and examples of how they can be used in practice.
A number of delegates suggested that the course was very comprehensive and would benefit from being run over two sessions and/or repeated, and Yvonne will be addressing this feedback.
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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Partnership working towards the Commonwealth Games
Yvonne McBlain from Falkirk Education Services curriculum support team has been finding out about some excellent partnership work instigated by Sarah Ritchie, principal teacher at Bonnybridge Primary School. Bonnybridge Primary School has formed a partnership with Spire Junior School in Uganda. Spire Junior school is located in Bwaise –Kazo Nakamiro Zone in Kampala District the major city in Uganda. The partnership aims to increase understanding and awareness of each other’s culture, tradition and life style, encourage open mindness, critical thinking and reasoning in pupils and give pupils a true sense of global citizenship. Pupils in Primary 5 have been working closely with their peers in Uganda exchanging letters and photographs. Click here to view some of these letters written by primary 2 pupils. This joint project, Through My Window, compares the impact that the environment has on the daily lives of pupils in both countries. The partnership has been hugely successful for both schools and has had a positive impact on pupils. To ensure the growth of the partnership Mrs Stocks, head teacher at Bonnybridge PS, and Mrs Ritchie secured funding from the British Council visited Uganda in October. 3 planes and 14 hours later they found themselves in the city of Kampala where they were very warmly welcomed by Peter Basoga, Principal Teacher of Spire Junior School, and Godfrey Muyodi, class teacher. Over the course of the week Jill Stocks and Sarah Ritchie met with teachers and pupils, observed lessons and took part in the daily life of the school. The arrived colleagues and left friends – look at the leaver’s assembly planned for them here. Peter Basoga and Godfrey Muyodi from Spire Junior School will visit Bonnybridge Primary School in December 2013. Click here to view the welcome received by Sarah and Jill, and here to see Bonnybridge pupils talking about the project.
Larbert Cluster Interdisciplinary Planning
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!
Update on our Teaching for Deep Learning Programme
Yvonne McBlain from Falkirk’s Curriculum Support team has now created a page for each of our Teaching for Deep Learning sessions here in Glow. Five of our secondary schools have used, or are beginning to use these sessions as content for their Teacher Learning Communities and working groups. Nineteen of our primary schools have already accessed at least one of the sessions – sometimes as a whole staff, and other times within smaller collegiate groups. We have 18 TfDL (Teaching for Deep Learning) facilitators who are being trained to deliver the sessions – some want to do this in their own schools only, whereas others are happy to make themselves available across the authority where needed. Four of our secondary schools are modelling a whole range of Donaldson Review recommendations regarding professional learning in their use of the programme. Most have recruited teachers interested in becoming facilitators within their schools, who then attend an information session (Click to view) on the programme from Yvonne. Each school is then deciding how they can enable staff to identify which sessions should be priorities for their professional learning this session. Once these decisions are made, teacher learning communities interested in the same sessions can be formed. The same model of distributed leadership (facilitators) and professional autonomy through self-evaluation is being taken forward by some of our primary schools “in house” too. Feedback from participants of sessions so far confirms the value of the programme as one of the ways in which we can move Falkirk schools from Good to Great.
Introduction to the Storyline Approach
On 12th September 2013, Yvonne McBlain of Falkirk’s Curriculum Support Team delivered introductory training on the use of the Storyline Approach. The practitioners attending the training listened to a short presentation setting out the philosophy and structure of storyline methodology, but the bulk of the twilight session was about actually “doing” storyline. This involved them creating a setting for their storyline – in this case a new community (see below) called Camelon Court . They then worked collaboratively to create 3 families for this new community. As usual in storyline, the creation of these characters was enjoyable, engaging, and the resulting verbal introductions to the families was entertaining too. Click here to see the biography format used by the groups to create these families. Already we can see potential relationships and narratives emerging! Look out for part two next week!
You may want to explore more Falkirk storyline work in our Storyline Glow group, or see what is happening nationally and internationally with the Storyline approach at http://www.storyline-scotland.com/
