Author Archives: Miss Mckay

Equality Game

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The Equality game

Learn to play ‘The Equality Game’ and organise a game with other members of the wider MA programme.   Consider how you could use this in the classroom to promote fairness and build relationships.  You will find more information about the game via the weblink below.  Reflect on the appropriateness of this activity and decide how it links to HWB.

http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2015/jan/28/teach-students-equality-smarties

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvGfbEt9Fec&feature=youtu.be

This was our attempt at the equality game, however this is a short extract from our discussion.

We felt that this activity could be used in a lesson built around the following experiences and outcomes from health and wellbeing:

Through contributing my views, time and talents, I play a part in bringing about positive change in my school and wider community. HWB 0-13a / HWB 1-13a / HWB 2-13a / HWB 3-13a / HWB 4-13a

As I explore the rights to which I and others are entitled, I am able to exercise these rights appropriately and accept the responsibilities that go with them. I show respect for the rights of others. HWB 0-09a / HWB 1-09a / HWB 2-09a / HWB 3-09a / HWB 4-09a

 

I think this game would be really interesting in a classroom setting to find out how the discussion would progress. It would be interesting to find out the different views of pupils and see how they would distribute the smarties. This could then lead on to the discussion that if people worked hard for the sweetie then they are more deserving and how do you then measure hard work as this may be different depending on the person.

I think this would be an enjoyable exercise in the classroom and could be an introduction to debating, having different sides, ensuring you listen to what others have to say.

Music and HWB

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Music and HWB

Choose a piece of music and consider how you could use this in a HWB lesson about mental health.

I think using music and health and wellbeing can be a good way of using cross curricular links within the classroom. I think  that this task could have been completed in a variety of ways depending on what aspect of HWB and music you were looking at.

The lesson examples can be found in the word documents

Music task

music task lesson idea 

I also think it would be a good idea to get pupils to think about what kind of music makes them happy? Why they like a piece of music? What do they like about it and why? How does it make them feel?

Here is one song that always seems to put a smile on my face!

Restorative Approaches

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Restorative Approaches (1.5 hours)

Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJWgayvuWXw

Evidence : Create a PowerPoint that can be used to explain Restorative Approaches to a Primary 7 class and the role that they can play in supporting a whole school approach.

Restorative Approaches Powerpoint

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Restorative approaches (2 hours)

Plan: A series of three linked lessons to explore the concept of conflict and conflict resolution with a Primary 2 class.

Evidence – Write up a curriculum plan and identify learning intentions, success criteria, assessment, activities and resources.

Curriculum Plan for restorative practice

When we went to the SACRO visit day the Youth Justice team talked about restorative practice and how they find this an effective method for individuals and prevents them from re-offending. It is time consuming therefore I do not think it could be used all the time in schools, however it is a good way for individuals to learn how to listen to other points of view and negotiate to come to an agreement.

 

Learning to make bread

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Learn to make bread. (1 hour)

Have a go at learning to make bread (from scratch).  You will find recipes online.

Making bread was a lot easier than I originally thought it was going to be. We thought that we would make soup to go with our wholemeal bread to have a healthy, home-made,  nutritious lunch.

Recipe- Bread 

Ingredients

  • 500g granary, strong wholewheat or white bread flour (I used granary)
  • 7g sachet fast-action dried yeast
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 1 tbsp clear honey

Method

  1. Tip the flour, yeast and salt into a large bowl and mix together with your hands. Stir 300ml hand-hot  water with the oil and honey, then stir into the dry ingredients to make a soft dough.
  2. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 5 mins, until the dough no longer feels sticky, sprinkling with a little more flour if you need it.
  3. Oil the loaf tin and put the dough in the tin, pressing it in evenly. Put in a large plastic food bag and leave to rise for 1 hr, until the dough has risen to fill the tin and it no longer springs back when you press it with your finger.
  4. Heat oven to 200C/fan 180C/gas 6. Make several slashes across the top of the loaf with a sharp knife, then bake for 30-35 mins until the loaf is risen and golden. Tip it out onto a cooling rack and tap the base of the bread to check it is cooked. It should sound hollow. Leave to cool.

Taken from BBC good food website:

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/10121/bread-in-four-easy-steps

Recipe- soup

I have made soup before, however I had never made this recipe before but I will certainly be making it again as it was delicious and so easy!

Method

Melt butter into a pan.

Chop onions and pancetta and put in the pan to cook until onions are soft.

Add the stock cubes, lentils and hot water.

Let cook on medium heat for half an hour.

I will definitely be making soup while I am on placement as it is a great way to get in lots of vegetables and is really filling.

Top tip: you can freeze soup if you do not want to eat it all within a couple of days as long as it is thoroughly defrosted before heating it up again.

 

We did this task before we went to Madras college as we were unaware we were going to be making bread there.

Here are some pictures from out experience in Madras High School

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Video of Harry Burns

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Watch video of Harry Burns – write a reflection (1 hour)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEh3JG74C6s

Evidence: Write a reflection about your thoughts on wellness and wellbeing in children. 

What causes wellness?

Burns suggested that we are trained to think in terms how to treat things and we are always looking at the causes of things. He talked about this in relation to doctors and how they treat patients which I felt was a really good description to use.

From my reading it was suggested by Scottish Government (2009) that we need to be able to focus on promoting good mental wellbeing and try to monitor and reduce negative wellbeing. I think for many people would find this quite challenging an it would take quite a bit of time to change this mindset that we have been following for so long.

Burns continues to talk about the different wellbeing theories such

  • Resilience – to achieve resilience we need to have support from secure family member, peers and community
  • A sense of  meaning and purpose in some form
  • The ability to flourish-  be optimistic, positive, form
  • good relationships

Link between psychology and biology? Wellness will be not be improved unless we learn about the world around us and have a sense of control in the world around us.  This made me consider the way that we learn and the pedagogy that we use in school, for example experiential learning (Dewey) and how we promote this in school. This suggests that we are moving in the right direction however other factors will also contribute the inequalities.

I believe Burns is accurate when he says that we are living in a cycle and if young children are isolated or alienated at the early stages then this will continue unless something is done about it to break them out of the cycle.

What I got from this talk was that the relationships that we have play a key role in improving our wellness. If we have secure attachments at the beginning of our life, this is likely to continue and this will contribute to having a supporting family network. The relationships that we build as we grow up are part of our learning communities which enable us to stay connected. If we are connected to our peers and communities we are more likely to have confidence, higher self esteem ad be able to help others which then created a sense of meaning and purpose. If we are able to help and connect with people that feel excluded from society then this will help them get back into the community as they will begin to feel more accepted.

Scottish Government (2009) Towards a mentally flourishing Scotland Policy and Action Plan. Available at: http://www.gov.scot/resource/doc/271822/0081031.pdf (Accessed: 2 November 2015).

 

Journal Article

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Read an Academic Journal

Read and Share an academic paper around the area of child development with a peer

Evidence: Add a reference for the academic paper and write a reflection of the key findings (2 hours)

Geddes, R. Frank, J. and Haw, S. (2011) ‘A rapid review of the key strategies to improve the cognitive and social development of children in Scotland’, Health Policy, 101(1), pp. 20-28.

This article highlighted the importance of early childhood development as it is strongly influenced by:

  1. Wellbeing
  2. Mental health
  3. Competency in literacy and numeracy
  4. Social participation
  5. Obesity
  6. Heart disease
  7. Criminality
  8. Economic productivity

They stated that Britain ranked last in child wellbeing out of 21 developed countries which suggests that we need to improve the health and wellbeing of children in our society.

They looked at using early intervention schemes as a way of reducing the health inequalities and found that they can reduce lifelong disadvantage. They suggested that significant improvements were made in all domains of child development.

Home and centre based programmes focusing on developing the needs of children and parents appear to be effective. This article also suggests that the assessment of community and home programmes can be evaluated when the children reach school age as schools will be to notice a difference in the level of support pupils are getting outside of school and whether or not this is making a difference to their development.

Reflections

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I have really enjoyed the HWB module and I am really glad I chose this as my last elective. I think my views on how health and wellbeing should be experienced in school have completely changed since I first started the module. I am now more aware of how I would like HWB to be incorporated in the curriculum. I think with CfE the “responsibility for all” is completely accurate for me. I think that HWB should not just be taught as targeted lessons but should be a way of life in a school.

I think I have tried to reflect throughout this blog and I have managed to complete the 30 hours of TDT work for the portfolio. However I completely underestimated how long it would take me to upload everything on to this blog so if I was to change anything if I took the module again, it would be to set up a blog earlier so as I could complete the tasks and upload them straight away!

I think after taking this module I feel more ready to go into schools and feel more confident if I was to do any activities related to health and wellbeing. I feel as if I have more knowledge on where I can go to get  access to information and resources for HWB but I am sure when I am in my own class I will be able to keep and build up the resources more of my own resources.

Restorative practice

I felt as if this input was really informative and gave us lots to think about however we were given a lot of information in that one lecture so I think it might even be more beneficial to have this over two lectures. I think even if we were to have a look at what restorative practice was before the input in our own time and then the lecture was then used to discuss what we have found out and then anything else can be added throughout the lecture.

I think I will definitely use restorative practice in my own class as I think it could be a really effective approach to help behaviour management. I know it is time consuming but this approach gets individuals to think about other perspectives and people can develop empathy towards others.

Relationships, Sexual Health and Parenthood

I really enjoyed this input, I think that it is always good to have a visitor coming in to talk to us about what they do as it gives us a little more insight into the other services that we could potentially be working alongside in the future. I think that it was really beneficial for us to see some of the resources that can be used to deliver this aspect within HWB as I think it is an area that many teachers try to avoid and this should not be the case. In fact, because we live in such a such a sexualised society I think it is more important for us, as teachers to respond to this and ensure that our children are aware of how to stay safe and protected. I definitely feel a more confident about teaching this aspect of HWB.

Outdoor Learning

I think we forget how much enjoyment we get from being outdoors. I think we were outside for less than two minutes and before we were about to start the activities a lot of us were laughing and smiling. I think that it is important to offer pupils experiences that they are going to find challenging but also enjoy themselves during the process.

Team building activites and energisers were a really good way to build up relationships and have fun with each other.

 

Attainment Gap Poster

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Design a poster (3 hrs)

Design a poster on closing the attainment gap and how HWB can contribute to this. This poster should be of a high quality with typed print and pictures on A 3 sized paper.  Posters will be shared with the class.  For the portfolio, take a picture of the poster and include a bibliography.

This poster is about bridging the attainment gap. It is quite difficult to read but all around the poster is the different initiatives, policies and programmes in place to try and improve the inequalities that exist in our society.

There are lots of different policies and initiatives that are being implemented in school, however there needs to be more research carried out in schools to find out whether or not they effective or how they can reflect on their practice and continue to improve.

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References

Education Scotland (undated) Professional Learning. Available at: http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/professionallearning/ (Accessed: 17 October 2015)

Education Scotland (undated) The Curriculum in Scotland. Available at: http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/learningandteaching/thecurriculum/index.asp(Accessed: 12 October 2015)

HM Inspectorate of Education (2009) Learning Together: Improving teaching, improving learning. Available at: http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/inspectionandreview/Images/ltcfe_tcm4-712914.pdf (Accessed 24 October 2015)

Kirk, G. (2000) Policy and Practice in Education. Edinburgh: Dunedin Academic Press

Lachausse, R, G. Clark, K, R., and Chapple, S. (2014) ‘Beyond Teacher Training: The Critical Role of Professional Development in Maintaining Curriculum Fidelity’. Journal of Adolescent Health, 54, pp. 53-58.

Learning and Teaching in Scotland (2006) Focusing on inclusion and the Education (Additional Support and Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004. Available at: http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/images/FocusingOnInclusion_tcm4-342924.pdf (Accessed: 17 October 2015)

Scottish Government (2015) Attainment Gap Challenge. Available at: http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Education/Schools/Raisingeducationalattainment (Accessed: 2 October 2015)

Scottish Government (undated) Supporting learners – from early years to positive, sustained destinations. Available at: http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/images/SupportingLearnersLeaflet_tcm4-679044.pdf  (Accessed 30 October 2015)

Scottish Government (2014) Growing up in Scotland: Family and school influences on children’s social and emotional wellbeing. Available at: http://www.gov.scot/Resource/0045/00452565.pdf(Accessed: 29 October 2015)

Scottish Government (2011) The vital importance of getting it right for every child and young person. Available at: http://www.gov.scot/resource/doc/337339/0110683.pdf (Accessed: 18 October 2015)