Design A GlowLogo Competition

The Glow development team has set up a wee on-going competition to design a logo that will periodically replace the “Glow” in “Glow powered by Office 365″ you see on the top LHS of each Glow O365 page.

You may have noticed the poppy there during Remembrance Week and the competition follows on from a small trial for St Andrew’s Day for which the Glow logo was replaced by a pupils design from a similar competition.

This month’s competition is “Design a Christmas Glow Logo”. It is hoped that this competition will evolve into a series of “monthly” events to generate some further user input into glow. It would be great if you could publicise this competition with schools in your area. Further info on the competition can be found at – http://bit.ly/designaglowlogo (Glow login details required).

Santa on Glow TV

Yes it’s that time of year again when we welcome Santa back to Glow TV! Santa will be taking a break from making all the toys at the North Pole to come to a school in Scotland to answer all the questions that you might have about Christmas and Santa. He will be with us at 10am on Thursday 18th December.

How does he make all the toys? How does he deliver them all on time? What does he feed his reindeer? How does Rudolph help him with his red nose?

These and many many more questions will be answered in this very special Glow TV event.
Sign up and join us in Glow TV.

K’Nex Cluster Challenge 2015

Glasgow Science Festival is pleased to announce the K’Nex Cluster Challenge for 2015. This annual competition is a chance for primary 5 and 6 pupils to apply their creativity and construction skills to various engineering based challenges, competing at three levels; classroom, cluster and area to become their area champion.

The Cluster Challenge involves primary schools working together with their cluster secondary school through each level of the competition. Pupils will work in teams of two to demonstrate their imagination, creativity and ingenuity by designing and making a model, using K’Nex, which solves a set engineering based challenge.
 
Each level has different fun challenges set by Glasgow Science Festival with judging criteria including the following categories: communication, design, problem solving and visual appeal. The overall winning team at each level will compete in the next level of the competition until a winning team for each area in the west of Scotland is found.
 
Full details of the competition and how your cluster can get involved can be found on the Glasgow Science Festival website.
 
Applications must be made by Friday 30th January 2015.
 
 
 

Developing a rationale for the West Barns Curriculum 1- Back to basics

Over the past year at West Barns we have been developing a clearer rationale for our curriculum. From the outset it was evident that in order to move this forward we needed to work closely with our pupils and their families, staff and the wider community to define what kind of school we wanted at West Barns.
We felt it was important that the vision, value and aims reflected the views of our staff, pupils and families and defined the unique features of our school and its environment. We also wanted the whole school community to have a shared understanding of what we are trying to achieve.

Why ‘Team’ West Barns?
Over the past year we have been working closely with the whole school community to help us improve our school and provide a high quality education for all our learners. Developing a team spirit with pupils, staff, families and the local community has been an important underlying theme, and through this we have been able to move forward the learning and teaching as well as the life and ethos of the school.
This has included:
• Introducing cooperative learning to help pupils develop their group working and independent learning skills.
• Using school and house challenges and team sports to help build the school community.
• Providing all pupils and staff with more meaningful opportunities to develop the life and work of the school through School Committees.
• Working with outside organisations to ensure that our pupils have all the support that they need to do their best in school.
• Using Learning Journeys to help our pupils reflect on their learning and share their achievements with their families.
• Including parents and families in the work and life of the school through Parent Council, West Barns Helping Hands and other volunteering opportunities.
• Working closely with parents and families to keep them informed and find out their views on how we can develop our school.
• Finding more opportunities for the school to work with the local community.
• Working with local organisations to learn about and protect our local environment.
• Providing staff with opportunities to work together to help share good practice in learning and teaching.
• Developing closer working relationships with other schools through sharing good practice, joint professional learning opportunities, moderation and self-evaluation visits.
• Working collaboratively with other Head Teachers on curriculum development, professional learning and self-evaluation.
Using this as a starting point we began to develop a new vision, values and aims for West Barns that would support every child towards reaching their full potential and help them to develop the skills and confidence to face the challenges of the 21st Century.
From this starting point we have begun to evaluate our curriculum rationale, reflecting on our strengths and identifying those areas we now need to develop.

Coming soon – Developing a rationale for the West Barns Curriculum 2 – Pulling the pieces together.

Twig on Glow: Animal Kingdom

Twig on Glow’s new Biology module, Animal Kingdom, has over 60 stunning films for you and your learners to explore.

 Mapped to Biodiversity and Interdependence within Curriculum for Excellence, these captivating short films give learners an insight into the lives of some of the planet’s most unusual and exciting species.

  • Find out how reptiles evolved from early amphibians, and the adaptations that allowed them to thrive on dry land.
  • ​Watch an introduction to the duck-billed platypus – one of the world’s few egg-laying mammals. Find out what it looks like, where it lives, and what it eats.
  •  Find out more about the poison arrow frog which lays its eggs on the ground and must climb high into the rainforest canopy to transport its young to a watery nursery.

Teachers why not try the Weird and Wonderful Animal Kingdom Quiz with your class? Submit your class’s answers via the online form and you could win £100 of Amazon vouchers for your school!

 All you require is your glow log in   https://www.twigonglow.com/

#primaryscience