Month: February 2015

February 27, 2015

Bonnybridge PS Primary 3 Global Storyline Assembly

On Friday 27th February Yvonne McBlain was delighted to be invited along to see primary 3 at Bonnybridge PS celebrate their global storyline interdisciplinary learning. With the support of their teacher, Holly Keenan, the pupils had carefully planned how they could share all of the stages of their global storyline with their audience of parents, grandparents, and other guests.

We discovered that they became characters in the farming community of Rocky Road and worked really hard to grow their crop. The community used “boingos” as their money and worked out how much they needed to sell their crop for in order to live a good, healthy life.

The children performed their raps, jingles and dances to show us how they persuaded the buyers to purchase their crops on market day. It sounded as though they grew a truly wonderful crop which could be made into honey cakes, perfume, medicine and anti-wrinkle cream!

The community was devastated when they received a letter from the buyer offering them a lot less for their crop. They had to make a democratic decision on whether to accept this offer. The audience saw that almost 3/4 of the villagers voted to accept.

After the assembly Yvonne told primary 3 how impressed she was with the way they had organised their assembly. She admired their costumes and the way they managed to tell all of the important facts in an entertaining way for their audience. Yvonne asked primary 3 two important questions, take a look below to see the answers some of the pupils gave:

What is the most important thing that you’ve learned during your storyline?

Rory – That when we buy Fair Trade, people all over the world would get more money

Dylan – Buy Fair Trade because people get more money – sometimes they get hardly any money and they can’t live.

Adam – I learned to speak about all the different fruit and foods that are Fair Trade

Jessica – about the fruits that are Fair Trade

Zaak – if more children go to school, it’s fair. If farmers don’t get paid more, it’s not fair.

Ellie – if you choose Fair Trade, more children can get to school (because their families have enough money to pay for school.)

What part of your learning did you enjoy the most?

Finlay – Learning about Fair Trade things – especially our tasting day!

Lucy – Learning about the Fair Trade oranges – I didn’t know you got Fair Trade oranges.

(we had a chat about which shops you could and couldn’t buy Fair Trade oranges in)

Some of the villagers singing their Fair Trade song at the end of the assembly. P3 were looking forward to the rest of their storyline celebration back in their classroom.

February 9, 2015

Grand Space Library opening at Wallacestone PS!

Primary 5E and Primary 5D at Wallacestone PS have been working together to develop their enterprising learning. On Friday 6th February the children and their teachers Mrs Davidson and Miss Eaglestone were delighted to welcome a great turn out of guests. Click on the photo on the left to watch the eagerly awaited moment when guest of honour, Yvonne Manning, officially cut the ribbon and declared the primary 5 Space themed library open.

This event celebrated interdisciplinary learning which the pupils and teachers of both classes have developed since last October. Cameron, 5E said “We wanted to learn new stories and have a greater imagination of books to read…We wanted to turn the room between our classrooms into a library. We all came up with ideas then voted for a space theme – it was a tie between a jungle and space but space won by a point!”

Cameron liked making the bookmarks for the books – he enjoyed being able to “design it however you liked”. Megan, Zoe and Leoni from 5D enjoyed doing the drawings for the library – they liked choosing whether “to do a space man or a rocket”

The children began their project by considering how they could use their quiet room – thinking about how to create the right atmosphere to encourage good reading and use of imagination. Click here to see all of the stages involved in creating the library.

Take a tour of the project display by browsing the photos below and watch the impromptu video of their library made by the children during the event.

Mrs Davidson and Miss Eaglestone carefully structured this learning so that pupils led as much of the learning as possible during this project. The enterprising skills across learning pupils progressed include: working with others, problem-solving, managing self and others, literacy – talking, listening, reading and writing, numeracy. Pupils also developed their creativity in a whole range of ways – most noticeably through their art, design and technology work in the library itself.

February 3, 2015

Deanburn Celebrates Global Citizenship Learning

Pupils, parents and staff from primary 2, 3, 4 and 6 at Deanburn Primary School celebrated more successful learning on Thursday 29th January.

Liz Stephens, class teacher, and Laura Beattie, principal teacher have been part of Global Storyline training delivered by partners from WOSDEC in collaboration with Falkirk Education Services. Last session they developed their use of the storyline approach and drama to deepen pupil understanding of global citizenship issues. This session they have continued this process and supported primary colleagues in delivering their own global storyline – The Farming Community. As these photos show, each class created their own crop and farming community then experienced the ups and downs of market fluctiations and the impact these have on rural economies.

Yvonne McBlain, support officer with Falkirk Education Services enjoyed listening to pupils from each class sharing their learning. In primary 4B “The Scott Family” looked forward to sharing their market stalls and video jingles with the guests. Claire and Holly liked pretending to be part of the Johnstone family. “I really liked doing Josh. I got angry because the buyer said she wouldn’t pay all the money.” “I got confused, like I didn’t know what to do.” Other primary 4 pupils enjoyed making their characters and learning about Fair trade – “Because it helps farmers all over the world and I didn’t know that” said Rebecca Smith.

In primary 3M, a character called James Bond! made a stall to show that their crop “Magic Tree” could be made into perfume.

In primary 2G the village was called Treetop and the crop was called the Spectacular Seeing and Healing tree. Reece and Robbie gave Yvonne a great tour of their storyline diary. Their drawings clearly show how they felt about the price the buyer’s origninally offered for their crop, AND the new price when the market “fell”. The boys enjoyed painting the scarecrow “to scare the birds away cos they might eat our crops.” They also liked making the harvesting machine with their bodies “we got to make a big machine what harvested our crops.

In each class it was clear that the pupils understood how unfair global trading could be to small, rural communities. They used a variety of activities to help their parents and guests understand this too. Some children manned the Fair Trade activity, and told the story of how crops like tea and bananas get from the field to our shops.

At second level in primary 6, pupils took their exploration of global trading a step further when their storyline community was subjected to a “land grab” by a multi-national company. Pupils shared their understanding of the complex issues which enable this to happen, but staging their own land grab and protest during the afternoon.

There was a great turn out of guests sharing in the learning of their children. Laura, Liz and colleagues gave their pupils’ another opportunity to present and share their learning by inviting other classes in the school to come and visit the global storyline classes the following day.

Staff at Deanburn PS are effectively using collaborative planning and professional dialogue to develop their interdisciplinary learning through the cross-cutting theme of Learning for Sustainability. They are making excellent use of their training to improve the learning experiences for their pupils.