Category: Community Posts

Blog post header graphic for OneDrive English shared resources

Spotlight on: Claire McVittie, Teacher of English from St Kentigern’s Academy in West Lothian, Forth Valley and West Lothian.

In this Guest blog post, Claire McVittie, Teacher of English from St Kentigern’s Academy in West Lothian, Forth Valley and West Lothian shares on how she has created a OneDrive page for English specialists to share resources and ideas.
As a Teacher of English, it’s safe to say that my skill set does not rest in technology. However, I am always keen to learn how to use it both inside and outside of the classroom in order to best support pupils and colleagues. I’ve been fortunate enough to work with staff who are always willing to share resources. I am a big believer in working together in order to learn about different teaching styles and different approaches. This said, given that there was only twelve of us in the department, our resource bank was somewhat limited. 
I was becoming increasingly interested in how much time Teachers of English could save, if only we worked together from a shared bank or resources.  On Sunday 11th September, I decided to do something about this, and created my OneDrive page (which I recently synced up with Teams).  The OneDrive page/Teams page is a safe place where people can share ideas, resources and expertise.  I need to add people through their Glow email address – feel free to get in touch if you’d like me to add you.

Currently, the page has 1,398 members; teachers ask to join daily and, most importantly, it gets people sharing resources. I am always impressed with the different resources I find on it and I am very grateful to everyone who has taken the time to upload their own work – we all know how long it takes to produces high-quality resources! 

Given the current climate, teachers are working harder than ever to ensure that our young people are receiving the best possible support in so many different areas. I am delighted to see that my OneDrive page is being utilised and is supporting people during these unprecedented times and can’t wait to watch it grow. 

Claire McVittie 

Twitter: @missmcvittie 

Email: claire.mcvittie@westlothian.org.uk

Instagram: @st_kents_english            

Spotlight on: Supporting our Families, Young Children and Staff Digitally.

Bathgate Early Years Centre, West Lothian, has always demonstrated a strong supportive ethos for our families, young children and staff. We have aimed to continue this during this uncertain time. One of the essential focuses has been mental wellness; we created this Mental Health Awareness Sway as a reference point for anyone who may need ideas to help regulate emotions and feelings for themselves or children and access helplines or websites for support. This is continually being updated each week.

We communicate regularly with parents/carers through the Online Learning Journal message feature where we provide the opportunity for a chat and suggest try at-home activities to help keep the children busy and active.  Staff members regularly film themselves reading their favourite stories to the children ensuring the children are still seeing our familiar faces and hearing our voices. We then document these activities through our Glow blog and Twitter account @WLBEYC.

Our young children have always been co-creators of the learning in our Early Learning and Childcare Setting and during this time it has been no different. Following learning from home we currently have a Planting & Growing Project Sway and The Very Hungry Caterpillar Sway. These are filled with activities set from staff members and also include lots of fantastic input from our families.

Bathgate Early Years Centre was awarded a Digital Schools Award a few years ago now, and our digital journey is constantly adapting and changing.  During this time our staff team have really supported one another to adapt to working from home. We discuss and communicate every day using Microsoft teams and have weekly meetings using the video call feature. Digital Technology really has brought us all together and we are continually working together to support every staff member develop their digital thinking and skills.

West Lothian Digital Learning Team are always on hand to support us and regularly share practice using their Twitter account @wldigilearn,  and via Yammer and the WL Digi Learn SharePoint.

Email: tayloranne.kelly@westlothian.org.uk

twitter: @Taylor_BEYC

Spotlight on: Supporting our Families, Young Children and Staff Digitally.

Bathgate Early Years Centre, West Lothian, has always demonstrated a strong supportive ethos for our families, young children and staff. We have aimed to continue this during this uncertain time. One of the essential focuses has been mental wellness; we created this Mental Health Awareness Sway as a reference point for anyone who may need ideas to help regulate emotions and feelings for themselves or children and access helplines or websites for support. This is continually being updated each week.

We communicate regularly with parents/carers through the Online Learning Journal message feature where we provide the opportunity for a chat and suggest try at-home activities to help keep the children busy and active.  Staff members regularly film themselves reading their favourite stories to the children ensuring the children are still seeing our familiar faces and hearing our voices. We then document these activities through our Glow blog and Twitter account @WLBEYC.

Our young children have always been co-creators of the learning in our Early Learning and Childcare Setting and during this time it has been no different. Following learning from home we currently have a Planting & Growing Project Sway and The Very Hungry Caterpillar Sway. These are filled with activities set from staff members and also include lots of fantastic input from our families.

Bathgate Early Years Centre was awarded a Digital Schools Award a few years ago now, and our digital journey is constantly adapting and changing.  During this time our staff team have really supported one another to adapt to working from home. We discuss and communicate every day using Microsoft teams and have weekly meetings using the video call feature. Digital Technology really has brought us all together and we are continually working together to support every staff member develop their digital thinking and skills.

West Lothian Digital Learning Team are always on hand to support us and regularly share practice using their Twitter account @wldigilearn,  and via Yammer and the WL Digi Learn SharePoint.

Email: tayloranne.kelly@westlothian.org.uk

twitter: @Taylor_BEYC

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Self Portraits on Purple Mash from Cargenbridge Primary in Dumfries and Galloway

by Louise Campbell – Class Teacher, Cargenbridge Primary

Our learners have been creating digital artworks of themselves using a graphical paint app. We started working on this after I received a newsletter from our school’s STEM ambassador, who helped to setup the Purple Mash app for my class.  

Our digital portraits linked well to previous learning at school. It was a fun, short, achievable task; which the children enjoyed creating, and handing in, with Purple Mash. I was then able to share their portraits on our class Teams page and the children enjoyed liking and commenting on each other’s work. This task encouraged interaction between the children, which has been much-needed at this time.  

Purple Mash contains a wide range of resources that the pupils can explore independently from home as well as completing teacher directed tasks.  I have been using the 2Dos section to set tasks in a range of curricular areas including music, art maths and science. My favourite feature of the site is the hand-in function which allows the pupils to leave me comments about their work and receive immediate feedback. The site is child-friendly and I would definitely recommend it for Early and First Level pupils.  

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Adapting to Teaching Online – Gillian Gillen, All Saints Secondary School, Glasgow

 

Since lockdown kicked in my main concern as a teacher has been – how do we reach our learners? Pupils had all been given their Glow logins and passwords before the school closed, so we all created Glow groups and started sending tasks online. People rose to the challenge, sending fun, modern meaningful lessons with variety and structure.  

Then the reality of Digital Literacy kicked in – many young people struggled to access their work and for those who did see the emails and reply, attaching a document was not straightforward. It is often taken for granted, Digital Literacy. There is a general expectation amongst adults that young people are ‘whizz kids’ with technology. In my experience, across a number of schools, that is not the case.

 

Our Council is providing iPads to learners – this plan was in place well before Covid19. It is a staggered rollout, so some schools already have their devices, and some are still scheduled to receive theirs over the coming months. Being an active member of the Digital Working Group, I had already started preparing. I have a Student Digital Leaders of Learning group and they were creating resources for use across the school. We had iPad training events where we promoted the use of OneDrive so that lessons were readily accessible on staff iPads. I started a Digital Newsletter to smooth the transition to Apple: 

 When staff were issued iPads earlier than planned it looked like we were all going to have ample time to prepare ourselves to support learners with their iPads. But now we aren’t in school. Collaboration and development opportunities have been lost and our priorities have swung towards doing the best we can with what we have, and adapting rapidly to the ever-changing needs of our learners. 

Most of our learners have a device of some sort at home (some don’t, and they’ve been sent Home Learning Packs). I did a short video on how to access Glow, showing learners how to add to their Launch Pad and which Apps they would need. As my first wave of lessons went out, I quickly realised that pupils who would normally embrace the tasks weren’t responding to the emails. The Glow groups default meant that emails to the Group weren’t going to their Inboxes and instead could only be viewed if the pupil went into their group. If you access Glow from a browser like Safari or Chrome on a mobile, you can’t even see the Groups menu. I filmed a short video on how to access Glow Groups from a mobile, and I changed the defaults on my groups. We put it on the school’s Facebook feed and waited. Gradually, there were more responses coming in, but still not as many as we’d like. 

I had screen recorded some of my lessons, doing a voiceover and taking my virtual learners through PowerPoints. I also downloaded my class novel and audiobook, and screen recorded my Kindle as it read the first chapter of the book. I sent these out and settled into some semblance of a routine. My younger learners really enjoyed the videos and were taking photos of their work and sending it in. I used Mark Up and my Apple Pencil to correct and offer feedback, drawing sparkly stars on their work and sending it back. It was when I was chatting to teacher friends on WhatsApp that I discovered that this, too, wasn’t common practice. I recorded a short video showing how I Screen Record a PowerPoint lesson, then sent it to my WhatsApp group. The questions then came back thick and fast – but where is my screen record button, how did you get Kindle to read the story etc. I responded, adapted my videos and sent more. I then started to drop them onto a YouTube channel so that they would be easier to find. I’ve improved them a bit, using iMovie to edit out passwords and adding a little background music to the ones for learners. I’ve since added clips on sending Word documents, logging onto Glow in Word, and using the dictate and Immersive Reader on Word. I have plans for more. 

These have all been in response to questions sent to me, both from pupils and colleagues. I’ve had some lovely stories sent by pupils since, all carefully typed into Word then shared links on Glow. Still not as many as I’d like.  I’m hoping that once we are all back at school I’ll gradually be able to show my other learners face to face how to do these things, so that they can continue to build on their digital literacy skills and really make the most of all the fantastic resources available to them online. If learners have the technical ability to access and respond to the lessons, it will improve their blended learning experiences. We are now gradually introducing Teams to learners, and using it for lessons; I think this will be where the fun really begins! 

Gillian Gillen 

 

 

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Fintry Primary School – Engaging with Learners and Parents

 

 

At Fintry Primary School, we understand the challenges of teaching through an online platform and have explored a variety of options to ensure that our ‘classrooms’ are as welcoming and engaging as they would be in person for our pupils.

Within the infant department, we have focused on setting up online tasks using Education City and Sumdog which are supplemented by our learning grids that we have sent home.

For our middle and upper students, each class has their own Team through Microsoft Teams where assignments are set, feedback is given and there is an opportunity for a general chat as well. This is also supplemented by learning grids and the websites mentioned above. For our children who require further support in Literacy and Numeracy, we encourage them to access the online support resources that we use at school.

All our children can engage with their teachers via the school twitter feed – where we love seeing what they are getting up to!

Some teachers have faced their fears of being in front of the camera and shared videos of themselves setting challenges which have been STEM and HWB related, and even doing the challenges they set, to motivate and engage students further.

Through the tools available on the websites and Teams we can gather information about who is accessing these and for those who are not we can perhaps put some support in place.

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Frances Wright Nursery – Digital Engagement with Learners and Families

 

 

 

At Frances Wright Nursery we have used our nursery Twitter page to engage, not just with the parents, but also with the children too. Our nursery is unique in Dundee as we have 74 fulltime children from the local catchment area and 56 fulltime children with Additional Support Needs from across the city.

 

We have encouraged all families to log-in to our Twitter page, which they can do so simply through a Google search if they don’t feel ready to “join” Twitter yet, and , since Lockdown, we use our Twitter page to upload daily ideas for simple learning activities based around play and also helpful advice, tips and information about mental wellbeing, community and local information.

 

Following parents’ feedback after making a staff video to say “Hello and Stay Safe” we have started uploading videos of familiar staff reading stories, singing songs and rhymes and showing how to do activities.  Parents have been sharing photos with us showing us what their children have been doing at home, which we love to share but we also emphasise that there is no pressure to share photos or to complete any of the activities that we offer.

 

We have done Twitter polls to see which story the children would like to have read by video message. We have shared links to websites and apps that may be of interest. Parents shared that their children were missing seeing their friends, so we shared some throwback photos from nursery, and we are in the process of making a video to share using the photos that parents have shared with us of their child’s learning during Lockdown.

 

The emphasis of our nursery Twitter page is to connect with families and emphasise the importance of learning through play. We do not want to put extra pressure on families at this tough time, but provide them with positive messages, for the whole family’s mental and physical health, with easy to follow tips and ideas that have relevance to all our families, so everyone feels included, supported and connected.

We ensure that our Twitter page includes information and tips which are easily adaptable for all ages and stages, to suit children with ASN and older and younger siblings.

Frances Wright Nursery Twitter Feed 

 

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