Tag: primary IDL

Deanburn Celebrates Global Citizenship Learning

IMG_4652Pupils, 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.   IMG_4651

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.

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 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.    IMG_4666IMG_4665                                                   

 

 

 

 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.

SAM_6273At 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.

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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.

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Primary 5H Use Music to Improve their Writing

Emma Holmes (probationer teacher at Carron PS) and her primary 5 pupils have been using music to help them develop their reading and writing skills. They listened to Mussorgsky’s Night on the Bare Mountain (click to listen) and used their reading strategies to explore the music like a text. First they discussed the title and what it could mean, then they created word banks to describe what they heard as they listened. The next steps were to storyboard their interpretation of the music and, finally, to create their own piece of writing. 

Working in this way had a very positive effect on the writing the pupils produced. They found it easy to use their imagination when writing, and were able to write more than usual. The pupils created structured stories which were interesting and creative. By exploring what they felt was inferred by the music of Mussorgsky, they were able to produce longer, more detailed and stimulating stories.

Mrs Holmes was pleased  that the pupils were able to transfer elements of their learning to another context. This happened when pupils attended a performance of The Wizard of Oz in school. By chance, part of Mussorgsky’s Night on the Bare Mountain was used during the performance. Primary 5 pupils reacted immediately when they heard it and were able to say that it was used  for dramatic effect and to explain its specific purpose at that point in the performance.

Interdisciplinary Learning at Falkirk High school

Yvonne McBlain was pleased to be able to meet with teachers from Falkirk HS to explore how they have been developing interdisciplinary learning across the school. James Thomson, Head of Language faculty and his colleagues Amanda Gouther and Melanie, shared two collaborations taken forward this session.

The first involved English, Social Studies, PSE and Pupil Support staff, and took place over 2 weeks for S2. Staff in all of these departments recognised a need to develop pupil ability to speak confidently and well in public. They had observed that many pupils lost confidence between S1 and S2 in their ability to apply their skills to structure and deliver a verbal presentation. Consequently, staff worked together to plan a series of tasks which used social studies content as a focus for the pupils’ final presentations, which were delivered in English. In this way, staff were able to co-ordinate their course content with minimal change or disruption to their unit plans and normal timetables. The experience built into a cross-year competition which raised the profile of these skills for learning, and allowed pupils to appreciate their own, and others’ progression.

The second IDL development also involved S2 and was a collaboration between Modern Languages and HE. Each subject planned activities which were delivered within their usual timetable. In the early stages, most took place discretely, but then culminated in more obviousl integration of subject learning when pupils opened and ran their French Cafe. Pupils developed their knowledge of French vocabulary by using this in Home economics. They tried samples of traditional French food and used role play to deal with currency conversion between Euros and Sterling. Teachers used co-operative learning strategies to ensure that pupil groups had specific responsibilities for setting up and running the cafe. The pupils had real customers and were able to apply their conversational use of the French language and money-handling skills as well as the obvious and valuable social interaction. Staff built assessment of agreed criteria into the learning experience via a pupil quiz, and this learning experience proved very motivating and engaging for the pupils involved.

James also shared a planned IDL activity for December 2014 linked to the famous football game truce which took place in No Man’s Land 100 years ago between British and German troops. This will be called Joyeux Noel and will involve S3 modern languages and history pupils. He hopes that pupils can attend a special film screening and use associated resources to develop their knowledge and understanding of the conflict, as well as offering an opportunity to develop and use language skills.

Deanburn Primary 6F learn about the Jacobites

On Friday 12th December, Yvonne McBlain visited primary 6F at Deanburn PS to find out about their Jacobites interdisciplinary learning. Robyn, Findlay, Cara, and Aiden volunteered to write the rest of this blog post to show everyone how much they have learned.

 We started learning about the British Royal family tree. We discovered that this went down and down to James II of England and VII of Scotland. He got exiled to France and was the grandad of Charles Edward Stewart – also known as Bonnie Prince Charlie (the young pretender). 6F made up a Jacobite character called Angus Ferguson (see our photo of Angus with the prince).

 Angus, our made up character was good friends with the Macdonalds, and went to the massacre of Glencoe.

Findlay and Aiden got to become Angus – they got asked questions by the rest of the class and had to think on their feet to answer the questions. Robyn really liked it when Aiden was pretending to be Angus and described how he fought back. We all liked it when we got to pretend to be talking in Gaelic as Angus. He had 3 children and a wife. Cara learned “Angus was in danger because he kept some Jacobites in his house with his wife and his kids so he might have got caught.

 We have also learned the Robert Burns song “Ye Jacobites by Name” which we think is an anti-war song. We think Robert Burns sympathised with the Jacobites but thought that they should stop fighting. 

We learned that the final battle on British soil was the battle of Culloden and after this Bonnie Prince Charlie left Scotland forever.   We made targes, Highland sheep and pictures of Highland cows.” The Jacobites was a great topic because we got to learn about wars in history and we got to make targes, highland sheep and Highland cows pictures in art.”

Findlay “I feel I learned that the Jacobites were intelligent at some points – not all points.”

Aiden “The Earl of Mar wasn’t very bright – he tried to get inside a castle but the ropes he brought were too short!”

Robyn liked when we learned about the old and young pretender trying to come back to Scotland – the old pretender got no support but the young pretender’s army grew from 7 men to thousands. And I really liked how it was the last battle and he was like we can do it again but he didn’t. I liked making the targes too.”

 

Yvonne McBlain was impressed by the pupils’ knowledge of these important Scottish historical events, and was bowled over by their enthusiasm for their learning. It is clear that their teacher  made powerful use of Angus the storyline character to deepen the children’s understanding of the impact of these events on real people at the time. By using drama conventions and building in skill development in technology and expressive arts, learning has obviously been very engaging for these primary 6 pupils.

Titanic Disaster at Deanburn PS

On Friday 12th December, Yvonne McBlain visited Deanburn PS to hear all about the Titanic storyline topic which primary 6/5C have been working on. Hollie, Miah and Iona were kind enough to give her a tour of their classroom and wrote the rest of this blog post.

We received secret missions with information about what we had to do for our topic. One Monday morning, we were told we had to wear old clothes – it was the 16th of October. On that morning, we were told we were going to be doing arts and crafts and that we had to build a 2D model of the Titanic. We didn’t know much about the ship, but worked in four groups and there was a funnel group, a deck and promenade group, a hull and under-hull group, and a sea group. Our teacher Mrs Crawford showed us lots of pictures and we searched Google images for more. It took us two days, but in the end we managed to finish our ginormous picture of the Titanic.

 Hollie took a photo of the first class cabin, Iona took one of the second class cabin and Miah took the ones of the crew cabin. 

The girls felt that this topic helped them to understand how things have changed since those days and nowadays. It also helped them respect other people more because “when we were reading the novel about the Titanic, the book says “life’s too short for arguing”.  So now we think it’s a good thing to teach people that, and you should make sure you make the most of life.” Iona said “When we worked in the groups there was a lot of arguing and I think this topic helped us with problem-solving and we HAD TO solve the problem together.”

Miah looked through the evaluations written by others in the class and picked out Sophie’s which said “I really enjoyed my character and completing the missions. It was a very interesting topic.” Jamie’s said “I liked building the Titanic because it was super fun and we got to work together in teams.”

Hollie picked out some comments from the parents of people in our class. One parent said “Thought it was excellent and was really impressed with the effort they had all made, dressing up, etc.” another parent said  “I was most impressed by the amount of research that was carried out. The children obviously worked very hard and it showed.”

It is very clear that these pupils have gained a great deal of knowledge and understanding from Mrs Crawford’s use of the storyline approach with this topic. Yvonne McBlain also noticed the real changes in attitude pupils had developed through taking on roles as characters on the ship, and really enjoyed sharing in the girls’ obvious enthusiasm for their learning.

Our Crop, our Land Storyline at Wallacestone PS

All four Primary 1 classes at Wallacestone Primary School shared and celebrated their Our crop, Our land storyline at the end of November 2014.

The photo on the left shows the farming community frieze created by the children during their global citizenship storyline. Each child took on the role of a villager in the farming community. 

They helped create a new crop called the Super Berry plant and learned all about the processes and stages involved in growing, harvesting and selling it. Even at early level, class teacher Jennifer Main and her colleagues have noticed the impact of this project on pupil understanding of fair trade and global commerce.

The children shared their learning with the many parents and guests who came along to their open afternoon. Jennifer is one of the teachers from Falkirk schools who are making excellent use of their Global Citizenship Storyline training delivered in partnership with WOSDEC over sessions 2013/14 and 2014/15. 

So far everyone involved has been very positive about the impact of this interdisciplinary work. The combination of the drama, social studies, science/HWB and literacy seems particularly engaging for pupils when taught through the storyline approach.

Daily 5 and Cafe at Wallacestone Primary School.

On Wednesday 26th November Yvonne McBlain visited primary 7D at Wallacestone PS to hear what the pupils think of using Daily 5 and Cafe to develop their literacy skills.

First pupils shared their thoughts with their shoulder partner, then Zander Thomson wrote these on the board, and Mia Beveridge typed up the summary below:

Café and Daily 5 is a different way of doing literacy.  It helps us to learn independently and will be helpful in the future.  Read to Self and Work on Writing is more enjoyable and we are reading more books than we used to.

While this was happening, Gregor Fullerton and Jacob Campbell took the photos you see in this post which they felt would show how Daily 5 and Cafe worked in their classroom. You can see how organised their books and literacy tools are, and how the pupils identify and share their skill development and progress.                               

Mrs McBlain loved hearing  how enthusiastic pupils were about the difference this way of learning is making for them. She was also very impressed by how well they could explain their thoughts and opinions and use their literacy skills in other parts of their learning.

Inference the Interdisciplinary Way!

Ewan Shanks, P7 class teacher at Carron PS has been developing his pupils’ understanding of inference by linking literacy and art.

Ewan explored and built on existing pupil understanding  by asking them to analyse images of Scottish inventors (their class topic as context).  

Ewan found that his pupils could say and write their thoughts. (see one group’s example on the right.) However, they found it difficult to say how they were able to make these statements. Ewan used  questioning to increase pupil awareness of how they were picking up on the clues around the people in their picture, its composition, the objects which were visible, etc.

Pupils were then asked to create a self-portrait using a simple interior composition (see left). At first, the children were too obvious with the clues they added to their pictures. Through careful questioning and discussion though, they were soon able to be infer information about their likes/dislikes, character traits, etc in a more subtle way.

To broaden and challenge pupil understanding even more, Ewan then played his primary 7 pupils various pieces of music to explore the ideas and images this suggested to them. He used various listening exercises and a staged process (see storyboard on the left) to build up to a creative writing text which demonstrated that pupils could use inference themselves. Click here to read one of the children’s stories. (You will also see the success criteria rubric Ewan and his class use as part of their assessment of and for learning)

As you might imagine, the children were very engaged by this whole process, and were able to demonstrate their understanding in a range of ways, as can be seen above. This is a great example of deep and creative learning in literacy of course, but it is also a very clever use of type 1 interdisciplinary learning. By showing pupils the natural overlaps and common features in written, drawn/photographed and musical texts, Ewan helped develop deep understanding of inference, AND higher order skills transferable across literacy and the expressive arts.

Bonnybridge PS Commonwealth Games Legacy runners up

Sarah Ritchie and colleagues from Bonnybridge PS worked with pupils to create a range of learning experiences linked to the Commonwealth Games and building on their Olympic Games legacy. Their plan helped children learn about citizenship at a local and global level, and resulted in the school being nominated for the Legacy Award at the Scottish Education Awards. Although they did not win, everyone involved was proud of the difference this interdisciplinary learning has made to pupils this session, as this extract from their Facebook page explains:

So, we never won the Legacy Award but we had a brilliant time at the ceremony!! We were the only primary school to make the final so that’s a massive achievement and a big well done to our pupils, staff and parents. We got a nice £250 voucher and other goodies to take away.

For a more detailed understanding of the learning involved, click  http://t.co/wGfHrzXBbD

British Council IDL Resources and Competition

The British Council have a range of education resources which may be useful sources of ideas for interdisciplinary learning linked to sustainable and international education. Here http://schoolsonline.britishcouncil.org/classroom-resources is a link to the resource section of their website.

Click here to take a look at the Rivers of the World resource pack. It has learning experiences for various age groups linked to bundles of social subject, science, art & design and maths learning. These include field work skills to support taking learning out of the classroom.

You may have time to use any comparative river study work already done with your primary 5 & 6 pupils in this http://glo.li/1kx9OMY competition run by the British Council – see details below:

Win a trip to Totally Thames with Rivers of the World  
     
 
 
Enter your primary school into our ‘Design a River Creature’ competition
 
The prize We will pay for the winning team to take part in the Totally Thames season of events and enjoy lots of fun activities including a student workshop at the British Council and a visit to the Tower Bridge Experience.
What do I need to do?

Using the Rivers of the World education pack as a resource, ask students to work in groups of five to create an art work and an accompanying piece of creative writing. It can be based on a real or imaginary creature from an overseas country and river ecosystem.

Who can enter?

Primary Schools Years 4 & 5 (5 and 6 in Scotland)