Responsibility of All, Teaching Pedagogy, Uncategorized, Vision and Leadership

Pets in the classroom

May 22, 2012 Mr Varty 1 Comment

Andy Wilson (TLC Dept), Maddy Quinn (TLC Dept) and Keith Varty (Biology/Science Department)

After watching a Horizon programme which focused on the theory that dogs evolved the way that they did in order to appeal to man and also studies linking the release of oxytocin in humans with working with dogs, Miss Wilson and Miss Quinn chose to do some professional reading of research describing the benefits of using pets in the classroom. Some of this research claimed that school pets have been found to:

motivate pupils to think and to learn, as children have a high level of natural interest, enthusiasm and enjoyment of animals
encourage a respect and reverence for life in pupils and thereby improve their relationships with other pupils, parents and teachers
foster a sense of responsibility in children
teach children to nurture and respect life
improve academic achievement

Further research showing that teachers have also found therapeutic benefits for children with special needs and how pets in schools also have social benefits for the school community can be accessed here and here.

This professional reading led to Mrs Wilson and Mrs Quinn organising a day where Mr Varty would bring his well trained, placid dog Laika to the TLC to deliver a lesson focusing on the responsibilities of having a dog. This lesson provided pupils with the opportunity to ask questions observe and participate in obedience training whilst continually interacting with Laika.

After reflection pupils made the following quotes about having a dog in the TLC for the day:

“It was very well trained and it was a very good feeling to have a dog in the class because she was very friendly.”

“It was a cool dog and it made me happy.”

” If we had a dog regularly in class it would make us more motivated”

” if we had a dog regularly in class it would make us more peaceful”

Responsibility of All, Self-Reflection, Vision and Leadership

Health and wellbeing – Themes Workshop

May 14, 2012 Mr Varty Leave a comment

David Downham and Nick Torsney, P.E. Department

This workshop aspired to raise the issue of a whole school responsibility for health and wellbeing and looked at identifying a hot topic, theme or issue that affects the school. As a group we selected one of the building blocks of health and well being that would help us focus on and try to raise awareness of or tackle the issue. We then broke up into smaller groups to discuss strategies that individuals, departments and the whole school could adopt to help with this.

The building block identified was Respect which falls under the title of Relationships and Friendships. This would cover a range of issues including inappropriate uniform, litter, eating habits, correct use of equipment/areas and punctuality.

After the workshop we will work towards bring together all the information and report it back to the staff before putting some of the strategies in place as well as identifying all experiences and outcomes covered. The feedback from the staff was very positive and suggested that more time would have been useful in the workshop. The accompanying PowerPoint for this workshop can be located here.

Responsibility of All, Self-Reflection, Teaching Pedagogy, This is our Faith, Vision and Leadership

Health and wellbeing – Values Workshop

May 14, 2012 Mr Varty Leave a comment

Frank Quinn – Principal Teacher R.E. Department

This workshop combined several areas for development within the school: continuing work started by the Chaplaincy team on the school mission statement, highlighting some key values stressed in “This is our Faith” and the Experiences and Outcomes of Health & Wellbeing.

We wanted to raise awareness of the key values which lie at the heart of our School Mission Statement and which emanate through all areas of the school, especially the relationships between staff and the young people and between colleagues. The first part of the workshop, the scenario, was set up to encourage discussion over professional methods and the values which staff demonstrate. The second part of the workshop raised the awareness for all staff of the values expected of them as part of the St Margaret’s community.

The PowerPoint used in this workshop can be accessed here whilst the Mission Statement of St. Margaret’s Academy can be accessed here.

Responsibility of All, Self-Reflection, Teaching Pedagogy, This is our Faith, Uncategorized, Vision and Leadership

Using Positive Rewards and Praise Workshop

May 12, 2012 Mr Varty Leave a comment

Karyn Reilly and Sonia Ryan (English Department) delivered a workshop on Using Positive Rewards and Praise which aimed to share the wide range of systems and strategies that departments and faculties within St Margaret’s Academy use to celebrate success and reward pupils. This workshop provided staff with an opportunity to collate ideas of ongoing practice in individual classrooms whilst allowing staff to reflect through discourse surrounding the idea of ‘praise’ and ‘reward’ and its impact on pupils. The Powerpoint used in this workshop can be located here.

This workshop stemmed from Karyn and Sonia’s working group which aspires to further develop the positive reward system in the school. Karyn describes their work as

“We are trying to come up with a whole school approach to reward all pupils. We went round most departments to see what they were doing and what individual teachers were doing; we aim to use some of their good practice in the whole school system. We now need to collate all the thoughts and information we collected on Tuesday and use it to help us develop it.”

The image gallery below shows the responses that staff produced to set questions after a period of time discussing these questions. Larger images can be obtained by clicking on each image.

Teaching Pedagogy, Uncategorized

Active Learning using Tarsia cards in Science

May 12, 2012 Mr Varty 2 Comments

Mr Varty’s S2 Science class have recently been learning about plastics as part of the Chemistry Compounds unit that they have been completing. One of the learning intentions from this lesson was that pupils should be able to identify the name of a plastic when provided with the name of the monomer. Pupils were formatively assessed using Tarsia cards that required pupils to work collaboratively with their peers to match the correct monomer to the polymer that it could form. If successful each side of every triangle would have a correct match. The following video shows two groups working on this activity.

Here is an example of one groups cards that were about to be formatively assessed.

Tarsia cards for any subject or activity can be made using the software from the following website that can be accessed by clicking here.

Responsibility of All, Vision and Leadership

Rights Respecting Schools Staff Workshop

May 9, 2012 Mr Varty 1 Comment

Gerry Burns, Physics/Science Department

This workshop aimed to generate discussion of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) with staff to raise awareness of what it means. This also allowed staff the CPD opportunity to gain an insight into the forthcoming RRSA project. In addition, this was used to test this activity before it is used with pupils.

From a selected number of articles printed on card from the UNCRC, staff were asked to pick the three most important articles relating to pupils within the school. They were asked to discuss each and provide an insight into why they thought their selection was important. The Specific instructions for these tasks can be found on the powerpoint located here. The responses from this were collated from a plenary session at the end of the workshop.

On the whole, staff commented that they enjoyed this task and thought it was an effective way to generate discussion of the needs of the pupils within the school and also in a wider context for young people around the world. For the most part, groups in each workshop picked different articles which again led to discussion of the thinking behind the selection. Staff commented that they believed that this would be an effective tool to use with pupils to raise awareness of UNCRC and RRSA.

In the future pupils will undertake the same task in PSE or during a dedicated period. This will also be used as a survey and the results collated to gauge the overall opinion of the pupils within the school. An additional task will be undertaken whereby pupils will use the same articles to place them into the categories of rights (survival, protection, development and participation)

Interdisciplinary learning, Responsibility of All, Self-Reflection, Teaching Pedagogy, This is our Faith, Vision and Leadership

Welcome to the Professional Learning Blog

May 3, 2012 Mr Varty Leave a comment

This blog is an area where all members of staff in St Margaret’s Academy can contribute and share a variety of information about their professional growth. For example:

Professional reading
Curriculum Developments
CPD opportunities
Useful resources/weblinks/etc
Tips for teachers
Good practice

By choosing suitable categories for posts and tagging them appropriately, it should be easier to find out what professional growth is happening across our schools and how our young people benefit from this. It is easy to provide a link from a post to a Glow Group or website.

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30	31