Category: Professional Learning

Falkirk Opens Doors to Play Conference

Play is the Way Conference for Falkirk’s Practitioners – Saturday, 2 June

It was fantastic to see so many dedicated practitoners demonstrating their passion for developing play pedagogy across Falkirk.

The conference was planned to support practitioners in taking forward a developmentally appropriate approach with children at the early stages of their learning by offering insight into current thinking exemplifying emerging practice in high quality play -based learning.

Those who attended, heard from a range of inspirational speakers from both within and outwith the aurthority.

Use your Falkirk Glow account to access confernce presentations and infomation using the link below.

Conference presentations

Early Learning Leadership Forum – February 2018

The second Early Learning Leadership Forum was held in Camelon Education Centre on February 5th 2018.

A number of guest speakers from within and outwith the authority presented on a range of positive approaches to supporting themes 3 and 4 of QI2.3 from HGIELCC.  Thanks again to all those who came to share their good practice.

Falkirk Council staff and employees from our private partners can now access some of the presentations on our early years Glow page http://tinyurl.com/y7yr939f (Please note, you will need your Glow login details to access these materials).

Loose Parts Play

The Early Years Curriculum team are aware that many of Falkirk’s EYC settings have been or currently are focusing on developing their use loose parts as part of their provision. Inspiring Scotland have produced a toolkit which we would encourage practitioners within these settings to use to reflect on their provision of loose parts play. The Loose Parts Play toolkit was produced to support people working with children and young people across all age ranges and settings. It aims:
• To raise awareness of the value of loose parts to children’s play
• To provide practical guidance about loose parts play to those who work with children and young people of all ages
• To advocate the use of loose parts as an approach to developing play opportunities at home, school and in the community.

 

https://www.inspiringscotland.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Loose-Parts-Play-web.pdf

Our Creative Journey – New Resource

The Care Inspectorate has launched a new resource showing how the expressive arts can be used effectively in Early Learning and Childcare (ELC) settings.

Our Creative Journey is aimed at promoting good practice in all types of ELC settings.  The resource employs the GIRFEC wellbeing indicators to provide high quality, real-life examples of how settings’ creative use of the expressive arts have had positive results.  We in Falkirk will use this resource in our own ELC settings to look outwards and then reflect on how well our own expressive arts provision impacts children and young people’s lives.

Our Creative Journey

Moderation Hub launched

 

A new resource, the ‘Moderation Hub’, has been launched on Glow to provide practitioners at every level, from every sector, regardless of role and remit, with a package of support for all aspects of the moderation cycle. It is a virtual learning environment providing:

  • Professional learning on moderation (in the form of presentations and discussion/workshop tasks)
  •  An in-depth look at each step of the moderation cycle
  •  A one-stop shop for key documentation (including quality assurance and moderation documents and self-evaluation proformas)

The moderation cycle, which replaces the NAR flowchart, outlines each stage of the moderation process and enables practitioners to develop a shared understanding of standards and expectations in the broad general education.

In Falkirk, we would expect all of our practitioners to engage in this moderation process to support them to arrive at valid and reliable decisions on learners’ progress within the levels of a Curriculum for excellence.

 

Moderation Hub

My World Outdoors

In Falkirk, we recognise that spending time outdoors and particularly in natural environments is good for all of us and especially for children. The Care Inspectorate have produced My World Outdoors with the aim of making a positive contribution to the further development of outdoor play as part of all early learning and childcare in Scotland.  Falkirk Council expect all it’s early years and childcare centres and practitioners to be providing high quality experiences in the outdoors and to be using this resource to understand Care Inspectorate expectations regarding risk-benefit assessment processes.  This resource should also be used to look outwards at the examples of good practice provided in this resource and to use these as a basis of reflection on the quality of outdoor play experiences practitioners provide in their own setting.

My World Outdoors

 

Children and Young People Improvement Collaborative

What is it?

The Children and Young People Improvement Collaborative (CYPIC) encompasses the EYC (Early Years Collaborative) and RAfA (Raising Attainment for All) programmes. It will remain closely aligned with the work of MCQIC (Maternal and Children Quality Improvement Collaborative) where the focus is on maternity, neonatal and paediatric healthcare settings.

Following the learning session in November 2016, Scottish Government have released new stretch aims for the CYPIC. Falkirk will address these aims through the Integrated Children’s Services Plan and through individual service plans.

For early years this service plan is currently the Early Years Workforce Development and Quality Strategy 2017-2020.  We would expect management teams in our ELC settings, to familiarise themselves with both of these Falkirk Council documents and to use these along with the 3 step improvement framework  to inform and support the improvement planning in their own setting.

Building the Ambition

All Falkirk Council early years practitioners should have a working knowledge of the Building the Ambition national practice guidance document; which was published by Scottish Government in August 2014 to set the context for high quality ELCC.  Setting management teams should ensure that they and their staff use the “putting the guidance into practice” questions and the guidance about what babies, toddlers and young children need in ELCC settings, for training, professional dialogue and reflection, monitoring and self-evaluation purposes, thus ensuring their practice creates “caring and nurturing settings that allow wellbeing, communication, curiosity, inquiry and creativity to flourish.”

A copy of Building the Ambition can be found here or through the links section.

  BtA National Improvement Hub

Care Inspectorate Hub

Care Inspectorate have created an on-line support tool called The Hub.

The Hub provides ‘one-stop-shop’ access to a range of resources aimed at supporting improvement in the social care and social work sectors through the use and sharing of intelligence and research-led practice.

Accessible to all, the Hub provides a central point of access to a wide range of features, including:

  • A library of good practice guidance
  • Information on the latest developments in policy and legislation
  • Video based examples of innovative practice
  • Guidance to help users carry out their own research
  • Toolkits and resources aimed at supporting improvement

The Hub also supports a number of the Care Inspectorate’s purposes, including:

  • Acting as a catalyst for change and innovation
  • Supporting improvement and signposting good practice

Click here for the link to The Hub