Category: Interdisciplinary Learning

July 7, 2017

California PS Explore “Reflective” Floor Books

As part of their self-evaluation and school improvement, teachers at California Primary school have made various changes to their teaching practice over session 2016-17. They are exploring the use of floor books as tools for enhancing pupil understanding of their own learning. They began using A2 size sketch books and reflective activities in April 2017 to help their pupils talk about their learning and identify progress and next steps. Each teacher is doing this in a way which suits their class and their own preference. The picture above documents how Jill Walkinshaw asked her new class-to-be to set their goals for their next year together. She plans to refer to the pages in the floor book at relevant points during next session, and the book will be available to pupils so that they can look whenever they want a reminder of where they were in their learning at this point.

Jill was inspired by seeing the floor books used by nurseries. She has been working with her Primary 3/4 shared class of pupils to capture evidence of learning and progress – photos, learning intentions, notes about how children met their success criteria, how they feel about their learning, etc. Jill is now looking at exactly which areas of learning the floor book could be impacting on before considering how best to develop it as a reflective tool for her, and her pupils.

Lauren Peebles, primary 2 teacher, used her floor book as a focus tool for whole class reflection (along with circle time talk) on a Friday. Her class are getting used to having a slot on “Feedback Friday” to talk together about their learning, then do an individual reflective task about specific progress made. In the jotter extract below, you can see how pupils rate their learning/progress, then capture some details of what the learning was, how they got better, and what their next steps should be. So far, the children are responding well to these activities, and staff hope that these help pupils be more confident and articulate when talking about their learning.

On June 28th, Yvonne McBlain, curriculum support teacher, conducted interviews of a sample of children from each class to ascertain impact from the work done by staff over the session. She asked questions linked to the quality indicators from HGIOS 4 (1.1 Self-evaluation for self-improvement, & 1.2 Leadership of Learning). In response to questions, children enthusiastically spoke about their learning in general, and were easily able to highlight specific progress in at least one curricular area unprompted. At this stage, the children were not yet able to articulate how their floor books were helping their learning – it’s still early days though, so watch this space!

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.

March 24, 2017

Interdisciplinary Learning and the Cross-cutting Themes

Yvonne McBlain, curriculum support teacher, Falkirk Children’s Services, is working with colleagues from schools across our authority to build on the Interdisciplinary Learning training delivered during session 2015-16. Colleagues who took part in this training, have been invited to become part of the existing IDL networks for primary and secondary IDL . This combined group has met twice now, to identify the kind of support which would be useful to schools and establishments.

Click here and here to look at two simple pro forma which could be adapted by secondary schools wanting to track where and when their interdisciplinary learning takes place. The first document would help a school see the skills focus of their planned IDL, and to see where it addresses the other 3 contexts for learning, and the cross cutting themes. The second is a simple record of what IDL is planned for which year group – it shows the subject links being developed. Colleagues felt that these sheets could be useful in self-evaluating, auditing, and tracking how subjects and faculties connect and deepen their pupil experience through interdisciplinary learning. Or simply act as an overview of what is happening where with each year group across the faculties. Yvonne sent these materials out to the IDL network so that colleagues could share and develop these if required.

Top of the list of next steps was an exploration of how the cross cutting themes could help us identify valuable IDL practice. We identified the cross-cutting themes as useful in building progression into interdisciplinary learning, so that the IDL practice which is developing in schools doesn’t turn into little isolated islands which don’t connect to the wider curriculum. The cross cutting themes run through the whole of the curriculum – see the diagrams throughout this post.

As their name suggests, they are built into the experiences and outcomes, and are a mandatory part of our pupils’ learning entitlement. The themes are built into the GTCS Standards, and into HGIOS 4 and HGIOELCC. Click here to see Yvonne’s collation of how IDL & the cross cutting themes are illustrated in HGIOS 4. We knew that most practitioners already addressed these themes, but wanted to raise awareness that these could also be valuable contexts for interdisciplinary learning which many teachers would already be using. The themes are:

Learning for Sustainability – click here to look at the LfS Wordle which shows the many elements of this theme
Creativity – there are specific creativity skills which you can learn more about by clicking here
Enterprise /World of Work – click here to read how the Scottish Government supports enterprising learning

The group met on 15^th March to look at ways to bundle the experiences and outcomes to create interdisciplinary learning which also addressed one of the cross-cutting themes. In preparation for this meeting, Yvonne worked her way through all of the experiences and outcomes, highlighting Learning for Sustainability E & Os in green, Creativity in yellow, and Enterprise/World of Work in blue. She felt this was a useful way to demonstrate that this isn’t additional work for staff, and to show the lines of development and progression across each level.

Click here to see Yvonne’s allocation of relevant experiences and outcomes to each of the themes – she was well aware that this needed to be looked at, and adjusted through collaborative discussion and consideration by primary teachers and secondary subject specialists. The IDL group discussed these and altered them where required but it would still benefit from further input from colleagues in schools. We realised that this document could be a useful self-evaluation/planning tool in itself, and Yvonne will upload it to the cross-cutting themes One Note document she will now build in Glow.

The IDL group then began to link and bundle the experiences and outcomes which addressed the cross-cutting themes. Click here to see the second level enterprise/sustainability bundle begun by Sarah Russell, Nethermains PS, and Kerry Brown, acting principal teacher at Sacred Heart RC PS. We were all focused on searching for groups of experiences and outcomes which would help us identify opportunities for progressive IDL – bundles which worked in every level of Curriculum for Excellence. Our thinking is that this bank of “bundles” can act as a starting point for practitioners wanting to plan robust and progressive IDL, and simultaneously progress learning in one or more of the cross cutting themes. Everyone left the meeting primed to look out for existing practice in the cross-cutting themes to help us exemplify how this context for interdisciplinary learning could look in our classrooms. We will re-group in early May to work out how to share what we have found, and to create an action plan for the ongoing development of interdisciplinary learning, and the cross-cutting themes.

Please leave any comments or ideas you have below, or contact yvonne.mcblain@falkirk.gov.uk if you have classroom practice which would help us raise awareness and develop either interdisciplinary learning and/or any of the cross cutting themes.

March 24, 2017

Grangemouth High School Develops Interdisciplinary Learning

Staff at Grangemouth High School are developing interdisciplinary learning across every faculty. Ashley Wood, depute head teacher, took part in the interdisciplinary learning training delivered during session 2015-16 by Yvonne McBlain, curriculum support teacher. He developed a strategy for progressing IDL across the school – click here to see the presentation he created to document his approach. you will note that this presentation was done before the significant aspects of learning and progression frameworks were “streamlined” into the benchmarks.

Ash then recruited “IDL Champions” from each faculty. He worked with the champions to consolidate the key messages about interdisciplinary learning, and together they created an in-service experience for the entire staff. Click here to see the presentation used by the IDL champions to structure the session.

Staff in each faculty posed questions about IDL – click here to see the document used to answer and give guidance on these within the school. Click here to try the in-service day IDL challenge, and here to see the answers provided.

Once they had shared their presentation and the activities they had designed, the champions then supported their faculty in creating strong IDL bundles. Click here to see a recent IDL project experienced by S1 pupils, and here to see the “bundle” of experiences and outcomes identified for this collaboration between Kirsty Young in Admin/Business Education, and Amy Nicholl, Home Economics.

Each faculty has been asked to produce at least one IDL plan which can be taught in session 2017-18. Watch this space! 😊

March 7, 2017

Secondary Probationer Teacher Interdisciplinary Professional Learning

On 28th February and 1st March, Yvonne McBlain supported probationer teachers from Falkirk secondary schools with their exploration of interdisciplinary learning. Yvonne designed the 3 hour session as a practical and experiential engagement with the various elements of the curriculum. Click here to view the blog post which shares the power point presentation she created to refer to during the two afternoon sessions. This presentation proved useful to pop into at relevant points and enabled Yvonne to demonstrate a learner centred and responsive teaching approach. The simple learner-led planning structure which can be seen in the photo was used to help co-create the working sessions.

The “concrete preparation” or “warm up” task required NQTs to explore big questions such as:

How did you come to be a subject specialist?

Why does your subject need to be part of Scotland’s curriculum?

How does your subject contribute to the learners’ development of the 4 capacities?

Take a look at the photo below, and click here to see the creative visuals our probationer teachers used to answer these questions.

Based on the teachers’ prior knowledge of IDL, Yvonne led them through experiences which enabled them to explore:

The essential skills, knowledge and attitudes that their subject experiences and outcomes provided for pupils
An opportunity to become familiar with the essentials skills, etc which another subject provides for pupils
A chance to explore how they could group or “bundle” their subject with key learning in literacy, numeracy and health and wellbeing.
An opportunity to work closely with teachers of other subjects to find valuable interdisciplinary connections through careful analysis of the experiences and outcomes. Click here and here to see the “bundles” created by both groups of practitioners.

Yvonne referred to the power point at relevant stages to make sure that probationers had key information about the structure of the curriculum – how could their subject-specific and interdisciplinary work address each of the four contexts for learning? Were they aware of the “cross-cutting themes” which run across and through Curriculum for excellence? The diagrams pictured were used to communicate this important information, and probationer teachers had time to search for experiences and outcomes which embedded elements of Learning for Sustainability, Creativity and Enterprise/World of Work.

The professional learning session had to be staged and multi-layered in order to convey the many elements of the curriculum and teaching which are managed during the planning and teaching of interdisciplinary learning. The probationer teachers engaged very well with each task, demonstrating their understanding and their ability to combine experiences and outcomes which would give pupils added IDL value from their learning. Each group had the chance to consider how their third level bundle could or would progress into fourth level, and how this could relate to national qualifications. Some groups very skilfully described how they could manage this, and gave details of how they could accommodate the IDL they had planned into their existing timetables.

The impact of the session can be seen from the probationer teacher feedback below:

“Informative session with content which I can use to help me make a positive contribution to the planning and implementation of the upcoming S3 IDL programme.”

“This session provided guidance on how to plan and manage a successful IDL project that I will take forward when completing working group project to deliver an S3 IDL day. It was particularly useful to work in small peer groups to troubleshoot potential issues in planning an effective event.”

“I understand the benefits of IDL and can see the importance of recognising the transferable skills”

“The E&O’s exercise was difficult due to some subjects just naturally not fitting well together according to their experiences and outcomes”

“I have a better understanding of the differences between IDL, cross-curricular and trans-curricular experiences and can see how E&Os can be bundled, effectively and ineffectively, to create new IDL experiences”

“I will continue to emphasise more about transferable skills learned in my class with other subjects so pupils can use these skills in other subjects.”

Feedback on these sessions is still coming in, and suggests that not every probationer teacher perceived this as an active and engaging experience. However, the majority of comments make it clear that key messages about IDL as one of the 4 contexts of Curriculum for Excellence have been learned. There is an understanding that all planning should come from connections between the experiences and outcomes rather than only through a context, should be planned in collaboration with others around these connections and around opportunities to apply skills in an unfamiliar or new context.

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.

March 7, 2016

Head of Muir PS continues to develop their curriculum

On Friday 2nd March 2016, Fiona Anderson, head teacher, shared current developments with the curriculum framework and interdisciplinary learning at Head of Muir PS.

Fiona used extensive data from her consultation of stakeholders to shape the school rationale. Parents placed great store on literacy and numeracy, which resulted in a curriculum framework where these are seen as separate, but integrated where beneficial (see her quick visual curriculum overview above). Staff at Head of Muir therefore teach these key subjects discretely, using interdisciplinary and subject specific contexts where these are advantageous to pupils.

During previous collegiate sessions, staff defined which experiences and outcomes were naturally covered during everyday parts of school life in order to capture and build their Ethos and Life of their School as a Community. These were things like, school assemblies and performances, circle time, eco groups, etc. Many of these related to Health and Well-Being and have been grouped and bundled to help staff in their next steps with tracking progress of these.

Nursery staff worked with Fiona to do the same for the nursery setting (see pic left). As they worked, clear bundles emerged which will now shape nursery planning and help align it with early level in primary 1. This will ensure greater coherence and progression from 3 – 12.

At the latest inset day, staff used the experiences and outcomes with the significant aspects of learning and progression framework statements to define groups which they felt were more powerful taught together. They tried to do this without linking expressly to contexts such as World War II, so that teachers would have more professional autonomy, and would be better placed to respond to the prior learning and interests of their pupils. Staff at Head of Muir PS are trialling the pupil-led planning sheets originally developed by colleagues at Stirling Council. The examples pictured show how these plans are influenced by the interests of pupils, and how they develop over time.

At the end of this blog post please click the video screen to hear what Louise in primary 7 thinks of this planning.

The bundling exercise is building the contexts/aspects of interdisciplinary learning and discrete curricular areas and subjects within Head of Muir PS. Fiona and her senior manager colleagues will streamline the bundles to create progressive frameworks which ensure progression and coverage across all four contexts. She intends to work with staff to explore how skills are progressed through their bundles, to work towards ensuring that learning is progressive and challenging for every pupil. Like many other schools in our authority and across the country, these processes also aim to reduce workload and increase the efficiency of planning, tracking and monitoring processes. By working collegiately from their curriculum rationale, staff are building a shared understanding of what makes their school unique, AND basing this on reflective self-evaluation.

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.