Cluster Group Involvement

Digital Schools Award Equitable Creative Coding Award

I have been involved in some partnership work with Digital Schools Award, Education Scotland and The Scratch Foundation to create and develop a framework for a new Computing Science Award (ECCA – Equitable Creative Coding Award) that will sit alongside the Digital Schools Award Scotland.

I have brought on board 13 primary schools and 1 ASN establishment, from across North Lanarkshire, who will pilot this award and help provide vital feedback to ensure this award become a success. I am providing a basic introduction to computing science for those school within my local authority to ensure they have the best start.

Following on from the Education Scotland live code-alongs and reflecting on the participation and engagement of young people, we wanted to build on this momentum and give learners in North Lanarkshire an opportunity to code along with their peers and dive further in to Computing Science. Knowing this needed to be fun and memorable to engage young people and staff, we planned for a space theme.

Pedagogy is at the heart of North Lanarkshire’s Digital School, and therefore the Code-Alongs, also needed to be planned in line with Curriculum for Excellence, providing learners, and teachers, with a taster session of what computing science could look like in the classroom. We know that Computing Science can be perceived as a challenging area to teach, with staff unsure where to start in planning and skills development. We issued a Microsoft Forms survey to staff in North Lanarkshire, to evaluate how confident they were teaching Computing Science. 15% of teachers in North Lanarkshire who responded indicated that they were confident teaching Computing Science and over 90% of teachers were interested in taking part in a North Lanarkshire code-along.

We planned live sessions for First and Second level, with a further session for those who are confident at Second level to ensure all learners from P4 to P7 had the chance to join. A key consideration was making sure that everyone who wanted to take part, could take part. We chose to use Scratch during the code-alongs as it is easily accessible, and learners are not required to have a login to code. To support continued access and any technical issues all Code- Along sessions were recorded. A Teacher Support Pack was created to prepare staff to support learners with step-by-step instructions and images to ensure everyone was able to complete their project. The Support Pack also contained suggested next steps to inspire teachers to continue their Computing Science journey.

There was tremendous enthusiasm and feedback to the code-alongs. We asked teachers to complete a post code-along survey and found that 40% of teachers were now confident to teach Computing Science. NL Presents Live Code-alongs has been going for a few years now and the evolution of it is exceptional. Now we create pre-recorded content from Early to Third level with live session for First and Second also! We always ensure the teacher support pack is ready in advance for teachers to brush up on their coding and create an ASN friendly pack to ensure inclusion for all pupils, no matter their ability.

We’d like to thank everyone who helped us plan, promote and deliver the code-alongs and of course, the learners and teachers who took part. We thoroughly enjoyed coding along with learners across North Lanarkshire and look forward to seeing how North Lanarkshire schools continue on their coding journey.

French Thursday – Digital Classroom

Colleagues and I have created an innovative way to approach transitions from Primary to Secondary through the Modern Languages department at a local secondary school.

We use the Digital Classroom in 4–6 week teaching blocks, delivering weekly lessons to classes across the Bellshill cluster. Through this the learners of the classes receive high quality learning and teaching from a subject specific teacher from the Academy ,while their teacher assists them during the tasks in the classroom.

This method of delivery supports the learners in their language skills and transition to high school, as well as assisting the teacher in class on delivering a high-quality lesson in a specialised area of the curriculum. We have on average 300 pupils logged in each week to the French Thursday sessions and using the digital classroom provides a huge benefit to all taking part.