Remote Learning, Strathburn School, Aberdeenshire

Literacy – reading

I am currently supporting a probationer and we are continuing our observations and meetings As part of her GTC profile. She has been using seesaw to create a fantastic online learning platform for her class however as part of this is also using TEAMS to meet groups of her children to teach Numeracy concepts to small groups or carry out Literacy Tasks.

Today I was invited to participate in a Microsoft TEAM meeting as an observer and was blown away by seven and eight year olds in a TEAM meet. The teacher was sharing her screen so all children had access to a shared text which they could read, discuss, and answer questions on. The children were safe, comfortable within the learning environment that the teacher has established and responded well to their teacher using technology effectively as they muted and turned on the microphone as required when it was their turn to read. I have been an advocate of Glow for many years and am delighted to finally witnessing it being used to its full potential!

May 21, 2020

Thoughts on the Additional Teaching Qualification in Computing, Jonathan Henderson and Emma Hedges

Jonathan Henderson, Lasswade Primary School, Midlothian, @MrHenderson321
Emma Hedges, Victoria Primary School, Falkirk, @MissHedgesVPS

We are delighted to be part of the first cohort of a new program of CLPL aimed at up-levelling primary teachers’ skills in delivering the Technologies curriculum. This online program leverages some of the UHI’s existing courses for cross-qualifying existing secondary teachers into Computer Science but provides primary teachers with the expertise necessary to deliver the computing curriculum up to SCQF Level 3. This course has been designed and supported by the British Computer Society, Microsoft, Education Scotland and the Scottish Government.

Currently, we are in Week 4 of the first 12 week module on Databases and Computer Systems, with a second module planned to start in September which will focus on Coding and Web Technologies. So far we have learned about Software, Hardware, Numbering Systems and Logic Gates, and we will soon be moving onto learning about databases and SQL. The work for each week is split up into sections which has contributed to making the course manageable to fit in around a full time teaching job. Each week has involved gaining new knowledge via videos and Sways. There have also been interactive elements such as mini quizzes and using what we have learned to complete tasks such as calculations involving binary numbers. There has been a feeling of satisfaction when we have been able to use our new found knowledge, or from learning from our mistakes, to complete these tasks.

We have also been given the opportunity to complete an additional entry-level Cisco course about Linux which many participants have signed up to complete.

So far, it has been fascinating to go further into subjects which are beyond the normal scope of the primary curriculum and refresh and update our understanding of computing. Through being provided with this opportunity we are once again in the role of the learner. This has been an interesting experience and has made us consider the different ways in which we can share what we are learning to the wide range of needs of our learners, as well as with our colleagues.

We are also enjoying the opportunity to network with colleagues from across Scotland as well as across primary and secondary education. It has been interesting to learn about the different backgrounds of our colleagues who are also enrolled on the course and to be able to interact with them online either on the UHI learning space or on Twitter. With the submission date of our first assessment approaching, we’re very much focussed on doing our best in order to get the most out of the course both for ourselves and for our pupils.

Find out more about the qualification here

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May 21, 2020

Distance Learning: Examples of Practice from Falkirk

Practitioners from across Falkirk have collated examples of how they are using digital tools for distance learning. The document contains examples from primary and secondary educators and the tools and strategies that they are using to engage learners.

Victoria Primary School
Westquarter Primary School
Maddiston Primary School
Drumbowie Primary School
Carmuirs Primary School
St Marys Primary School
Kinneil Primary School
Dunipace Primary School
Bantaskin Primary School
Larbert Village Primary School
Deanburn Primary School
Carrongrange High School
Falkirk High School
Graeme High School
Grangemouth High School
Larbert High School
St Mungo’s High School [read more]
Denny High School

Distance Learning Examples of Practice from Falkirk

May 21, 2020

What distance learning looks like at St Mungos High School, Falkirk

St Mungo’s High School in Falkirk have produced a Sway illustrating what distance learning looks like in the school.

“We have shifted the emphasis during this period to digital applications that can be accessed and engaged with easily using a smart phone or tablet. We have also moved more towards creating videos as a way of communicating with our pupils and sharing content.”

The Sway has a number of short video examples from across the school faculties including Creative, Modern Languages, Health and Well Being, Science, Technologies and Pastoral.

Practitioners from across Falkirk have also contributed to a document illustrating what distance learning looks like in the authority. Find out more here.

https://sway.office.com/s/cKyrnndWhzvw7F3V/embed

Sway Link

May 20, 2020

Robotics- Learning New Digital Skills In Context

This year we received an Education Scotland CLPL grant to train staff in digital skills; for part of the project we have been learning computer science and technology to do with robotics. A grant from the DigitalXtra fund has also allowed us to purchase robotics equipment from early years up for the cluster, and has …

Continue reading "Robotics- Learning New Digital Skills In Context"

May 20, 2020

Robotics- Learning New Digital Skills In Context

Continue reading "Robotics- Learning New Digital Skills In Context"

May 20, 2020

Problem Solving at Neilston Primary School, East Renfrewshire

Problem Solving Challenges and Tutorials

At Neilston Primary, we are creating instructional videos to set daily problem solving questions for our primary six and primary seven pupils.

Using existing resources, we prepare a PowerPoint to set the question and a separate PowerPoint explaining the solution. Principal Teacher, Andrew Howie, then uses online recording tool – Loom, to video himself explaining the problems and the solutions. Loom places a recording of Mr Howie in a small circle directly on top of the PowerPoint image, allowing him to be seen and not just heard and as these videos are relatively short, it is easy to record in one take meaning no editing is required.

We then post the videos on to Google Classroom and Twitter. These post are scheduled (using TweetDeck for Twitter) to appear at the correct time – 9am for the problem, and 3pm for the solution. By posting the videos on Twitter we have also found younger pupils engage with them and share their answers.

Moving ahead, we hope to record and schedule a whole week’s worth of posts in advance. This will help streamline the process, and we also hope this means the videos can be shared in advance with other schools in the authority who may find them useful.

The videos can be viewed on Twitter @neilston_madras

May 20, 2020

Pupil and Parental Engagement at St Mark’s Primary School, East Renfrewshire

Increasing Pupil and Parental Engagement at St Mark’s with Twitter

Tweets by StMarksPrimary1

In St. Mark’s, we have been working hard to increase parental engagement and maintain relationships with our families during school closure. Twitter has been a great tool for us to celebrate the achievements of our pupils and stay connected to our families.

Teachers have shared examples of good work that has been submitted on Google Classroom and we have tweeted them from our school account to celebrate their success. Mr Hutcheson used examples of tweets from parents in his virtual assembly to highlight the excellent work that was taking place at home to all pupils.

PE, STEM and art challenges set by teachers on Google Classroom have been some of our most popular tweets, the creativity and enthusiasm of our pupils has been exceptional. We have also set a variety of challenges for our pupils and families and have observed a noticeable increase in engagement with these over time. The most recent Getty Museum Challenge has been fantastic and has again highlighted how creative our pupils and staff are:

Feedback from parents/carers regarding the use of Twitter to stay connected with our learners has been extremely positive and, in some cases, has helped to increase engagement with Google Classroom. Sharing examples of their learning in this way has helped to motivate pupils to attempt more activities and has had a positive impact on their confidence and enthusiasm for learning.

May 20, 2020

30 Days of Creativity

Glasgow Education Services CREATE was set up in 2016 to raise the profile of expressive arts and creativity as a means to raise attainment and achievement across the curriculum. Our focus is on supporting schools to think differently and creatively in order to equip children and young people with the knowledge, skills and attributes they need to thrive in our interconnected, digital and ever-changing world.

30 Days of Creativity is a partnership between Glasgow CREATE, Glasgow City Council’s digital learning project; ‘Connected Learning,’ and Apple. This project encourages children and young people to use technology as a platform not simply to consume digital content, but also to promote creativity in learning.

Apple launched a ‘30 Days of Creativity’ challenge worldwide a number of weeks ago and have now partnered with us to deliver a short creative challenge each day for 30 days which is fun for children, young people and their families to complete. New challenges go live at 1pm each day on the Glasgow CREATE Youtube channel, https://bit.ly/2YA4seP, where you will find video demonstrations for all our challenges so far.

The project was launched on 4 May and will run until 18 Jun, however, the challenges can be done in any order or revisited at any time.

We have seen a tremendous uptake so far from children, young people, families and teachers across Glasgow who are taking this opportunity to develop their digital literacy and creativity skills!

You can see what others have been doing during Glasgow’s 30 Days of Creativity by searching on Twitter for #CreativityForKids #GetGlasgowCreating and #GCCKeepsSafeKeepLearning.

May 20, 2020

Digital Registers at Mearns Primary, East Renfrewshire

Digital Registers at Mearns Primary

Our class teachers set a question on the assignment tab asking if the pupil is present or not. This allows the SMT team to easily see who has engaged with the learning that day and who has not.

They followed this guide made up by one of our teachers:

Members of SMT take this information and complete this Google Sheet for each classroom.

This form is set up to provide an overview of the school statistics and percentages of pupils completing the digital registers. We then use this information to contact pupils who have not been engaging and see if there is any reason for this and if we can provide support.

Google Forms for Hub Provision

We have been using Google Forms to allow parents & carers to communicate what pupils require provision in the hub and for which days they require this. We use that information to populate a Google Sheet which we use for our daily register. It provides our office staff with the information they require for FileMaker.

Similar to the digital registers, our hub daily register generates statistics which we use for our records.