Category: Regional Improvement Collaborative

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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Learning at Home with Troqueer Primary School, Dumfries and Galloway

by Cathy Mackenzie, Acting Depute Head Teacher and P6/7 Class Teacher

This video demonstrates Troqueer Primary School’s approach to using Microsoft Teams to support learning at home. Troqueer Primary School have used Microsoft Teams alongside other communication methods, such as our school website and the ‘ConnectUs’ school app, to support children to learn at home. A sustainable model was developed in which the school, which has 10 classes and a Nursery class, was split into 3 large cohort teams with groups of teachers supporting learners. The Nursery staff support learners through their Learning Journals app.

 

Every week staff work together to create a weekly learning grid for each cohort Teams group across P1-P3, P4-P5 and P6-P7. This has enabled collaborative working across the school whilst also taking account of the varied roles staff are undertaking, including supporting childcare in hubs. We have made use of other Office365features, including Microsoft Forms, within some of the learning grids. The weekly learning grids encourage children to take part in activities that support wellbeing, life-skills and independence alongside their curricular tasks. A group of staff have collaborated to create whole school interdisciplinary learning activities that are progressive and engaging, linked to a theme of habitats, followed by food. A whole-school learning context was adopted to help families that might have children learning at home across different age groups to learn together. These grids are posted on the school app, website and Microsoft Teams. Children are encouraged to share their learning or ask questions about their work on the weekly learning grid channel on Microsoft Teams.

Wellbeing and supporting interaction between learners and staff has been a major focus of our approach. We have created a range of welcome videos which are frequently shared on our school app and Microsoft Teams. We have also developed other videos to enable learners to see their teachers, such as story videos for younger learners and a series of ‘Around the World’ videos for P4-P7. The playground blether channel enables learners to chat online in a safe environment which is monitored by staff. There are several live chats each week and we are starting to include the use of audio features for these. Children can come along to these to take part in fun discussion tasks, quizzes and other activities with their teachers and peers.

 

 

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Our Lady’s RC Primary School – Engaging Parents and Learners

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Our Lady’s R.C. Primary School in Dundee, the prospect of delivering remote learning was a little frightening for some of us, but with a positive mindset and some sharing of skills and knowledge, our staff have risen to the challenge!

Most class teachers have opted to set up a Microsoft Team which allows them to have daily contact with their learners through chat and the uploading of files/tasks/activities for the day. Teams also allows the children to share what they have been working on with their teacher and the rest of their classmates, as well as receiving some feedback on their efforts from all participants.

Within teams, some teachers have set up instructional videos to help their learners navigate through the different sections of Teams, whilst others have contained their learners to using just the files and general sections. One of our teachers has even set up a ‘Playground’ channel where the children can chat and have fun with each other!

Other teachers have chosen to set up Twitter accounts specifically for their classes onto which they upload tasks and activities each day. This is a super platform for the children to share their learning and experiences. We can also retweet this to our whole school account, which allows our whole school family to share the learning and achievements.

Two teachers have opted to use a GLOW Group which the children are loving. They can share their tasks and fun things they have been doing throughout the day, as well as chatting with their classmates.

Regardless of the platform chosen, the big message is that the children are receiving some form of learning via their teacher and contact is being maintained. Children are being challenged daily with Literacy, Numeracy and H&WB tasks being uploaded, including links to a range of website and videos. There has also been a big emphasis on personal and research- based projects which the children are enjoying.

One very important message that Our Lady’s is trying to convey is that of family learning; exploring things together, completing tasks together, completing research together.

As well as our class platforms, we have enhanced our use of Twitter through our school account to connect with our families. Through this, we have been able to direct parents to resources/sources of support. This has tied in nicely with our efforts to create small resources ‘banks’ within our community, where we are providing jotters, pencils and other learning materials to support our learners during this time. Connecting via social media has allowed us to receive updates on demand and respond to this by replenishing when required.

In addition, we have updated and developed our school website to keep our current and future families informed and up to date on all aspects of our school and community. In particular, we have developed a support hub on the website, with Covid updates, support channels and materials / resources to support home learning. The learning resources / links area has been designed particularly for families looking for extra activities above the set learning. Our families have found it useful to find all this information in one place. We Tweet when we add updates / new information to the website.

It is our hope that digital learning methods and platforms will allow us to continue with maintaining contact and some form of learning with our families until we can all be together again.

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