Category: Ideas & Inspiration

August 28, 2026

Grange PS Explore Bo’ness Fair Heritage through the Storyline Approach

During the summer term of 2026 in Grange Primary School all staff and children experienced learning about their local heritage through storyline methodology. Storyline is a pedagogical approach which is naturally interdisciplinary and/or cross-curricular. It is known for its engagement of learners’ interests, creativity, agency and even their emotions! This project was initiated by Yvonne Jamison, class teacher, Ruth Duncan, principal teacher and their senior leadership team, as Grange prepared to provide the Bo’ness Fair Queen and her retinue. Yvonne had previously attended Storyline pedagogy professional learning provided by Yvonne McBlain and recognised how this approach could help increase the knowledge of Grange children and their families about this aspect of their local heritage.

All staff used two collegiate meeting times to plan their whole school storyline with the “Yvonnes”. These resulted in collaborative plans for all stages using the Bo’ness Fair context and Yvonne J then supported colleagues throughout the term.

Storyline episode 1 included learning about community in general and the Bo’ness community in particular. Each class invented a new, imaginary Bo’ness street & each group within each class created a new home within the street.

Storyline episode 2 each group in each class created the family who lived in their home. The children drew/played/spoke and wrote about their imaginary characters. Teachers differentiated these activities.

Storyline episode 3 each group received a letter informing them that a child in their imaginary family had been picked as a character in the Fair Queen’s retinue. This initiated research and learning about the history of the Bo’ness Fair as an important local tradition and occasion.

Storyline episode 4 the imaginary families prepared for their child’s big day within the Fair retinue. This included decorating the front of their imaginary family’s home or building a “Fair arch”. After much creative cutting, building and decorating to the class friezes, you can imagine the children’s dismay when they received the news that storm Zebedee was about to blow through Bo’ness threatening all of their work!

Storyline episode 5 all groups had to demonstrate their resilience by repairing the storm damage to their streets, homes and arches. They reviewed their learning from their storyline and prepared to share this with their guests during an open afternoon just before the real Bo’ness Fair.

The Impact of this whole school collaboration included:

An engaging learning context which united the school as, and with, its community
A learning context which was relevant, cohesive and productive during this busy summer term
The learning context enabled better understanding of real life retinue participation
The adoption of a new pedagogical approach for staff and children
Children enjoyed their learning (see quotes below)
Children and staff were creative, responsive, playful and solved problems together
Staff relished the purposeful and exciting “buzz” of collaboration through storyline
Practitioners observed that children’s collaboration and social skills improved
Practitioners also noted increased engagement in learning

Children’s Feedback (sample gathered during the celebration event for the community)

T – Primary 3:

Learning like that – it’s fun, I liked it until it got rained!
My favourite bit was making the house.
It’s valuable when children have fun and like doing stuff.

H – Primary 3:

I think it was kind of fun but hard to build (my house) – the bricks and the roof were hard.
I was Liam in my family – I was 50 years old and it wasn’t that bad!
There was a storm in our village, our house was in danger – it was a tornado and I was scared!
I learned that it’s really fun and helpful to help people when they get into trouble.

Three children in Primary 6 were asked what they thought of learning like this:

R – I thought it was really good…it helped us to take part of our imaginations and part of real life and put them together. Makes it really fun.
P – I think it’s quite interesting… we looked at different street names. I didn’t know about street names in Bo’ness. We used Google maps to explore our streets. It was fun researching.
Ru – I thought it was really fun making up characters with your imagination…and making houses for them. It was difficult at times but good. When I was putting up the bunting beads kept falling off and I didn’t know what to use to make them stick. It was hard but I liked the challenge.

What was your favourite part?

R – building the arch was the best part
P & Ru – We were excited to build it – happy and proud of ourselves – yes.

Is it a good idea for your school to learn this way at this time?

R – Yes – our school, it’s good to copy up our theme …Mardi Gras…and we have the queen.
Ru – Some of us are in the real retinue. We researched what the retinue do so it was really useful.

May 22, 2026

Moray Primary 7 children explore local social issues (through their storyline)

Miss Bowers and her primary 7 children at Moray Primary School took part in a global storyline research project between September 2025 and March 2026. This educational experience was part of the wider Global Storyline and Theatre of the Oppressed/Active Inquiry (TO/AI) project designed by TO, The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (RCS), and the West of Scotland Development in Education Centre(WOSDEC). Carolyn from WOSDEC and Emily from AI worked directly with Miss Bowers and her class to help them build their own storyline. The purpose of this research project was to explore how drama and the storyline approach could help children to:

overcome barriers to learning
capture issues they care about in their community
develop their real world learning
develop their skills and values of active global citizenship

Miss Bowers and a representative group of her learners were interviewed by Neil from RCS to gather their thoughts on this learning and will share their experience with a wider audience at the University of Strathclyde on 29th May 2026. Here are the learners’ descriptions of what was done when, and who was involved:

We designed characters and family groups and they were an important part of the storyline
We faced nine problems that were related to real problems in our community of Grangemouth
We made families called Campbell, Smith, Kenny and Greggor
They all lived in our imaginary town of Rivergrove
Rivergrove didn’t look its best because of anti-social behaviour (littering and offensive graffiti)
Rivergrove was in competition for an important award with a nearby town called Greenville
We did this storyline to learn more about our community
It made us think about things in a different way – like not judging people because of how they look

The highlights of this learning for primary 7 were:

Learning about local landmarks
Making their frieze of Rivergrove
Going into the story and having fun acting out their characters
Exploring options for their community through drama conventions such as Conscience Alley
Making our raps and songs

Miss Bowers valued how the class worked with others during the project – including people they’d never worked with before. She liked how they cared about their new town of Rivergrove and became passionate about the social issues experienced by their characters. Even though these issues were complicated, she valued her learners’ mature and sensitive engagement. The children showed their developing understanding of misconceptions, stereotyping, and misplaced blame. They appeared to grow their capacity to empathise and see the perspectives of others.

Although the project ran over busy times of the academic year, its value and impact were evident. All storylines combine elements of interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary learning – usually offering powerful opportunities to develop expressive arts and literacy knowledge and skills. In addition, this storyline developed pupil understanding of global citizenship (social studies and health and wellbeing) and application of life skills such as collaboration, integrity, initiative, communicating and critical thinking.

June 30, 2017

Real Life IDL at Langlees Primary School

Between 1^st and 29^th June 2017, primary 5 pupils at Langlees Primary School worked with their teacher Ashley Turnbull & Yvonne McBlain, curriculum support teacher, Falkirk Children’s Services to try to solve a real-life problem. Some members of the class had previously worked with Jane Jackson, curriculum support teacher & with Grounds for Learning to have part of their playground landscaped. They launched their wonderful new outdoor play area in spring 2017, but could not then use it because of their local cats!

As you can see from the photo below, the cats were using the gorgeous new sand pit as their toilet! This meant that pupils at Langlees couldn’t use their fantastic new play area. Dylan and Iona from primary 5 have written the following blog post about how the class tried to solve this problem – Jane and staff at the school had previously tried various solutions, and wanted to offer the children themselves the chance to explore possible options.

First we figured out what the problem was and then we had a look at the sand pit. We estimated how long the sand pit was in metres, then we made a decision about how we thought we should solve the problem. We tried to count how many cat droppings there were – about 42 we thought!

We worked in pairs to decide what we thought was the best solution – replacing the sand, making a cage, etc.

Then we made little models of what we thought might help solve the problem. We made these out of pipe cleaners and damp sand.

We also researched and found out about cat sensors and alarms. Then we researched about toxoplasmosis – this is a disease you can get from the cat poo. 4 of us did more detailed research and gave a power point presentation to the class.

Next we had a closer look at the 3 best cat alarms and the class voted for the one they felt was most effective – Alarm A. We also thought about getting a cover for the sand pit. We were worried that the cat alarm wouldn’t stop the cats from doing the toilet – it might take a while to work. So we thought we should get both to help the cat sensor to take its time to work.

We knew our estimated measurements weren’t good enough for ordering our cover. We took a metre stick and some cones outside so that we could measure the sand pit properly. We needed to know how big the sand pit was for our cover and to check how much distance the alarm sensor could cover. We took the measurements back into class and talked about a long jump cover which Mrs McBlain had found online here http://longjumprunway.co.uk/sand-pit-cover/

Then we felt we were ready to go and see our head teacher and the other adults in school who would have to help us look after our sand pit. We planned what to say to them, and chose 3 people to be the voice of the whole class. (Kai, Gregor & Amy).

On the 28/6/17 the meeting happened in the Mrs McGlynn’s office. The next day Mrs McBlain came back to hear what the outcome of the meeting was. Kai, Gregor & Aimee did a speech and told us that the outcome of the meeting was to replace the sandpit with rubber tiles.

We all showed how we felt about the outcome using our thumbs –

Up = 6 Middle = 6 Down = 2

Then we had a think about what we learned throughout the journey of solving our Sandpit Problem. Take a Look below

As can be seen from the Smart doc image above, pupils felt they had progressed well with the project success criteria they set. Ashley and Yvonne had a very brief opportunity to review the impact of this work on the pupils. They agreed that the children had risen to the challenge of working with others as part of a team – enabling the class to listen more effectively to others while they focused on the job in hand. This project linked experiences and outcomes in Health and Wellbeing, as well as developing key listening, talking and reading skills in Literacy across learning. During the project pupils had a chance to apply other skills they had learned in Technology and Numeracy.

June 7, 2016

1 + 2 Languages & the Storyline Approach

Paula O Hare and Caroline Cane teach primary 1 at Nethermains PS in Denny. They are both developing 1 + 2 languages with their pupils – French and Spanish. They made effective use of Storyline methodology to engage their pupils in developing their language skills. Click here to see the plan they used to structure their storyline. You can also click here to see the learning plan they created with their pupils.

Kerry Girdwood teaches primary 1 at Carron Primary School and has also been putting her languages and storyline professional learning to good use in her classroom. Click here to see the imaginative way that Kerry structured her storyline plan for her pupils. Click here, and here to see her Postcode Lottery “initiating events”. Kerry used these to guide her storyline so that pupils learned about the culture of European countries, as well as developing their language skills.

Paula, Kerry and Caroline have all used the storyline approach to “bundle” or connect learning and make it more relevant and coherent for their pupils. They integrated their teaching of languages 1 and 2 within interdisciplinary learning to make it more meaningful, active and engaging. They also made good use of professional dialogue to share and develop their teaching and learning ideas. Hopefully this blog post will continue this process and support others in their teaching of languages within relevant contexts.

Click on the links below to see some of the resources created and used by Kerry, Paula and Caroline:

Travelling to France presentation

Travelling to Spain presentation

Pupil certificates Spain and France

France/Paris presentation

Spain/Barcelona presentation

Smart board document for Madrid

Learning about volcanoes

March 22, 2016

The Oxgang Primary Infinitree Crop

On Friday 18th March, Bartek and Scott in primary 5 at Oxgang School, told Mrs McBlain all about the imaginary Infinitree crop which they invented. This is a very special crop which is a blend of chocolate cane and a tree. The tree has leaves which can be crushed to give chocolate oil and then the leftover leaves can be made into chocolate paper, AND the chocolate canes can be crushed to make chocolate powder!!

The Infinitree crop is grown in the town of Little Market by very special characters. These include:

Rocko Bartson who is the harvester for the village farm. He is 18 years old and gets up at 6 o clock to harvest the Infinitree crop.

Bella Flower checks the fences and she drives the trucks which take the crop to market.

Declan Donald has 5 children, and he has to get up at 1am every morning to start watering the crop. He has to water 5000 plants, 5 times a day!

Miranda Rubber plants the seeds, she has one child and she works five days a week and does housework on the other 2 days. She gets up at 5 in the morning.

Bartek and Scott helped to write this blog post and were very good at explaining how their harvesting machines worked – they chose to make these from Knex instead of making them with their bodies during drama.

As you can see from the photos above and below, Bartek and Scott have had to think hard about farming, farmers and the crops they grow. We hope you enjoy reading about the valuable learning the boys have done with their teacher Mrs Stephen. They would be delighted to read any comments would like to write in the space below.

December 2, 2015

The Water Source Storyline Develops at Head of Muir PS

Pupils and teachers in primary 6 & 7 at Head of Muir PS are enjoying their developing Water Source storylines. The Water Source is a global storyline created by the West of Scotland Development in Education Centre (WOSDEC) and University of Strathclyde, which you can learn more about by clicking here.

Kirsty Bruce is working on the storyline with her primary 7 class as part of her second year of global storyline training. She is also supporting her colleagues in primary 6 and 7, with their delivery of the storyline, including Nicola Harding, a probationer teacher for primary 6. Nicola has very effectively documented what she has done so far, and how it has impacted on her pupils – see a short extract below, and click here for Nicola’s full documentation:

We started our topic by creating a strong foundation of community. Following initial research into what the term means, we set about creating our own fictional community to become our ‘home’ for the next 8 weeks. Learners were fully engaged with the process from the beginning, largely because they had full ownership of the village and sense of community. We discussed the careers and responsibilities needed to support a village and created characters/families based on these ‘needs’.

Here is our village display. We brought in a selection of junk items and were free to create our buildings in our own way using our own ideas for design and materials. We all worked together to create the river, road and houses.

Since we created our ‘families’, they have become very important to us and we do a lot of things together. We update our character diaries on a weekly basis detailing each new and exciting thing we have been involved in.

Global storylines are strong interdisciplinary learning which help practitioners develop skills, knowledge, attitudes and values in a powerful, but naturally connected way for their pupils.

Kirsty explained that: “Initially we got together to plan how we would approach the storyline and I shared information I have gathered from the Global Storyline course. I have been very impressed with how Nicola has taken this on in her class and it is great to hear about how involved the children are.

We have mainly collaborated on ideas for the classroom displays and resources that we have each created. However, frequent discussions about how things are going have been very useful for sharing ideas and talking through the plans and how best to approach the learning at each point.”

For more information about global storyline training in Falkirk schools, contact yvonne.mcblain@falkirk.gov.uk .

November 17, 2015

Primary 4 learn about Law & Order at Bantaskin PS

Yvonne McBlain visited Primary 4 at Bantaskin PS on 16th November, to hear about their Green Street and Friendship Street Storyline work. Mrs Russell’s class helped Yvonne write this blog post, and took some of the photos too. Mr Davidson’s P4D class held their court hearing during the visit – they were all desperate to hear the verdict! 4R will visit Falkirk Sheriff Court on 17th November and then stage their court proceedings back in class.

We have been busy creating a street of houses in our classrooms. Each group in our class created a “typical” Falkirk 8 year old character, then made up a whole family to live with them.

Our families needed houses, so we designed homes which were just right for them. We got letters asking us to do different jobs. When an elderly couple from Malawi moved into the empty house on Friendship Street, 4D had to come up with ways to make them feel welcome in their new country. Another letter said that the council had given us a piece of land near our street, and that we had to design and make a community garden on it. Primary 4 used their tiling skills to create a tiled centre-piece for the garden using squared paper. The gardens had to be Eco-friendly – Olivia said that eco-friendly is “putting everything in the right bins”, Caitlin said “eco means don’t waste anything”. We learned how to tile a hexagon shape, and when our gardens were finished, we displayed them and organised a Grand Opening tea party to celebrate. The next day we were “outraged” to discover that our community gardens had been vandalised! Who would do this terrible damage? Why would they do it? The pupils discovered clues – a bottle of black paint, some fingerprints, and apples with bites taken out of them.

Children in both classes learned about Law and Order in our country by investigating the crimes of vandalism which took place in their community gardens (SOC 1-20a). Their storyline included a visit to the local Sherriff Court, and the storyline letters they received, highlighted skills and knowledge they would develop during this interdisciplinary work. The letters helped to engage the children in their learning and made it accessible to them. The pupils also developed their understanding of the impact of vandalism on real people because they experienced it through their make-believe storyline. Storyline is often valuable for this reason in helping children to develop sound values and attitudes which contribute to their development of the four capacities.

Click here to see a version of this storyline plan which was developed by Yvonne and primary 5 teachers at Ladeside Primary School a few years ago. It has proven to be a valuable way to link or bundle, specific Social Studies and Health and Well Being experiences and outcomes with elements of Learning for Sustainability.

November 6, 2015

Professional Learning Linked to the Antonine Wall

We are delighted to be able to offer practitioners in Falkirk schools and establishments some new professional learning linked to the Antonine Wall World Heritage Site. Patricia Weeks, Antonine Wall World Heritage Site Co-ordinator, Heritage Environment Scotland will lead this session and prepared the following information:

Find out more about how the Antonine Wall can help deliver outcomes and develop the capacities of Curriculum for Excellence in your classroom. The session approach will be cross-curricular, and will focus on what physical and digital resources are available to help you prepare and deliver a range of topics. It will cover: a short history of, and introduction to, the Antonine Wall; real and replica handling materials and how to use them; the new Antonine Wall website and how to make the most of the wealth of primary and secondary evidence it showcases; and how to use and access new digital resources in development such as a game and forthcoming site-based app.

By the end of the session, participants will be able to:

Share information about the Antonine Wall with colleagues and pupils
Say how learning about the Antonine Wall could help them deliver elements of CfE
Create learning experiences based around the resources and support materials available

Participants will also receive a support pack on the day, with copies of teaching resources and promotional material to support future development of your own lessons.

The training takes place on 3rd March 2016, between 4-6pm, and is coded YMc26 in CPD Manager.

October 23, 2015

Let’s Build Deep & Progressive Interdisciplinary Learning

44 practitioners from establishments all over Falkirk are developing their interdisciplinary learning during 5 twilight sessions as part of our authority development of Interdisciplinary Learning. Session 3 took place on 21st October, and involved practical and collaborative planning of IDL which progresses skills, knowledge and understanding from related Experiences and Outcomes across the curriculum. Staff in schools all over Scotland are going through similar processes to create the interdisciplinary part of their curriculum framework. This process is often referred to as “bundling”, and involves finding the strong and natural connections/overlap between curricular areas & E & Os, then planning how these could be taught in an integrated way. Many schools have, or are giving a huge amount of their professional learning time to this process, so Falkirk Children’s Services are supporting a whole authority experience to help accelerate progress and improve practitioner confidence, understanding and skill.

Cathy Quinn, curriculum support manager, Yvonne McBlain, curriculum support officer, Marianne Savage, acting head teacher at St Bernadette’s RC PS, and Andrew Watson, DHT at Bonnybridge worked together to plan the first 3 of these IDL sessions. Click on the documents below to get an insight into how this highly complex process is evolving. Click here to view one of the example plans created to model the planning process for participants. Watch this space for the results of practitioner planning coming soon!

1. Extracts from 2015-16 Inspection Briefing Paper relating to IDL

2. Education Scotland definitions of what good IDL looks like – and common misconceptions

3. The blank pro forma practitioners are using to capture their “bundles”

Practitioner evaluation of the IDL project so far is very positive, with most people saying their confidence is growing, and they feel as though they now understand what “true” IDL actually is. Most people taking part are sharing their experience and the materials used with colleagues in their schools – usually as part of a Raci school improvement task. Consequently, our service is finding sustainable ways to build our capacity to design deep, progressive and engaging learning for our pupils.

September 21, 2015

Interdisciplinary Learning Update

Interdisciplinary Learning in Falkirk – a Quick Update

Yvonne McBlain, is working with colleagues across our authority to review and develop our Interdisciplinary Learning. As part of this work, she will be taking forward the task “Build guidance and support for interdisciplinary learning through Glow and Glow blogs”. The Falkirk IDL Glow group has now been updated to act as a “one stop shop” for practitioners looking for guidance, and can be reached using this link http://glo.li/103OdF4.

Yvonne has built in a Frequently Asked Questions section which has comprehensive answers and supporting resources for the most common queries. In addition, people can respond and contribute to this section as a discussion board. The group links to national guidance from Education Scotland, and to other national and international research and ideas about connecting learning across the curriculum. Yvonne will continue to add to and develop the Glow group – please send any suggestions you have to yvonne.mcblain@falkirk.gov.uk.

This blog complements the Glow group, and is open to all without the use of a Glow password, http://glo.li/1ftOaIZ . Its purpose is to share good interdisciplinary learning from all sectors and all establishments across our authority. When you deliver strong IDL which makes a real difference to your pupils’ understanding and skills, please email Yvonne so she can help you celebrate and share your effective teaching.