Category Archives: Uncategorized

Skills, Teaching Pedagogy, Uncategorized, Vision and Leadership

Ukulele in the Classroom

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Siobhan Cardow – Music Teacher

2.1  Learners’ Experiences

5.1 The Curriculum and 5.9 Improvement Through Self-Evaluation

With changes in SQA, the ukulele is now an approved instrument at National level.  This is a new and exciting instrument which pupils enjoy playing and was introduced into schools across Scotland in August 2013.  In the last year, I have attended a ukulele workshop at the Fringe Festival and expanded on my knowledge of SQA requirements whilst building upon my skills on this instrument at Scottish Association for Mucis Education (SAME) conferences and other CPD events, in order to effectively teach this instrument.  The music department ordered a class set as part of the S1 and S2 Music courses and this has led to pupils performing on the ukulele at National 4/5 levels.  It has become so popular in the department that the ukulele club is also running for the second year in a row.  It provides pupils with the challenge and enjoyment of learning an instrument as well as the opportunity to become a further part of the school, meet young people from various year groups and work with others.

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Bloom´s Revised Taxonomy verbs for critical thinking and posters.

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Mr Varty – Biology/Science

Another article that I have found useful, which I again discovered through Edmodo’s Professional Learning Community is: 249 Bloom’s Taxonomy Verbs For Critical Thinking.  Obviously these verbs are extremely useful when designing assessments and differentiating learning but I find them to be most helpful in planning the learning in my classroom and creating learning intentions and success criteria.

Bloom's Taxonomy Visuals Continue reading Bloom´s Revised Taxonomy verbs for critical thinking and posters. →

Numeracy, Responsibility of All, Self-Reflection, Skills, Teaching Pedagogy, Uncategorized

The Mathematical Association Secondary Education Mathematics Conference

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Bronagh  McKeown – Mathematics Teacher

On Saturday 14th September four members of the maths department attended ‘The Mathematical Association Secondary Education Mathematics Conference’ held in Stirling University (www.m-a.org.uk).  The day consisted of a keynote address by Peter Ransom and then the opportunity to visit four different workshops of our own choice.    Below is a summary of the workshops I attended:

Workshop 1

This workshop was entitled ‘A Square Meal’ by Adam McBride and it was both informative and entertaining (bonus!).  The focus was on investigating Magic Squares (a square in which every row, column and diagonal have the same total).  He showed lots of cool tricks that can be investigated by pupils and the algebra behind it all which could be investigated and discussed with high ability pupils.  I found it very interesting and hope to be able to find a way to incorporate some of it into my lessons. Continue reading The Mathematical Association Secondary Education Mathematics Conference →

Skills, Uncategorized

Science Cluster CPD – Working Together to Better Science Learning Part 2

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Laura Watson, Collette MacAllister, Scott Wood, Louise McAdam, Catherine Kerr and Keith Varty – Science Department

On Friday 20th September members of the St Margaret’s Academy Science department ran a workshop which provided our primary colleagues with a variety of practical experiments which they could take back and introduce into some of their science work. There were three different practical stations set up during the workshop one for Chemistry, Biology and Physics. These stations lasted for approximately 20 minutes and provided ideas for work that could be used to cover 3 of the 2nd level science E’s and O’s. These stations also showed how the pupils develop in this area when they carry out their 3rd level work at St Margaret’s Academy. Continue reading Science Cluster CPD – Working Together to Better Science Learning Part 2 →

Literacy, Responsibility of All, Skills, Uncategorized, Vision and Leadership

Literacy Development and Debating

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Lauren McMahon – Faculty of Language and Communication

For the last four years, I have been working as a Literacy Development Officer within West Lothian Council. This has provided me with a wealth of Professional Development Opportunities which have impacted both on my own practice and that of my colleagues.

I embarked on this development as literacy is core to every child’s education and I was interested in exploring ways in which this could be improved at an authority level in order to improve the learning experience for all.

A major aspect of this post has involved the wider development of debating across West Lothian. I have, for the last four years, run the West Lothian Speaks! Debating competition which is aimed at encouraging S1 and S2 pupils to learn debating skills and develop their confidence. St Margaret’s has participated in this competition each year and is the current holder of the shield. This has impacted on St Margaret’s as I believe that by raising the profile of debating early, pupils are more encouraged to join the school debating club which is highly beneficial to developing their literacy skills. Last year, I launched the West Lothian Public Speaking Competition, aimed at S3, in which 8 West Lothian Schools participated. A member of staff within my department assisted in preparing the pupils for this competition which also contributed towards her CPD. Continue reading Literacy Development and Debating →

Health and wellbeing, Uncategorized

Health and Well-being INSET 7th May, 2013 ‘Unlearn Art’

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During the INSET afternoon on 7th May, I invited my colleagues in St. Margaret’s Academy to ‘Unlearn Art’. The invitation meant coming to the Art and Design department for the afternoon to spend what was to become real quality time, working together to produce artworks, with no preconceptions of what the outcomes were to be, not to worry about not being able to draw or paint and just simply enjoy being creative again, which for some meant not having lifted a paint brush since S2! What a wonderful afternoon. My creative colleagues were cross curricular, including staff from Science, Maths, English, French, TLC , and of course, Art and Design. I am tirelessly impressed with the variety of work produced by my pupils even when following the same instructions and Learning Intentions and my creative colleagues were no different. The individuality displayed was amazing, I was so impressed by the enthusiasm and total engagement, as each one threw themselves into their art work with total abandon! Fantastic, I couldn’t have wished for more. However all good things must come to an end but staff returned over the next few days to complete their art work which had become a source of pride and enjoyment for them, and rightly so. Thank you for sharing the Health and Well-being INSET with me and ‘Unlearning Art’. Hopefully we will be able to repeat the experience soon, but most definitely next year. I’m looking forward to it already. Take the time to peruse the gallery of artworks and comment as you please.  Diane Continue reading Health and Well-being INSET 7th May, 2013 ‘Unlearn Art’ →

Numeracy, Responsibility of All, Self-Reflection, Teaching Pedagogy, Uncategorized

Maths – Good Practice

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The lesson was the last in a series of lesson in preparation for a Level F test and so the confidence of the pupils was the focus. Pupils had written their own questions in a previous lesson, perhaps ones they thought were challenging,  and after vetting the questions I handed them back and ensured the pupils were experts in their questions. They then moved around the room sharing their question with other pupils and if anyone was stuck they were able to show them how to do the question.

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Bon Anniversaire St Margaret’s Academy

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To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the opening of St Margaret’s Academy[1], pupils in class 1.1 undertook an interdisciplinary learning project encompassing French and Health & Technology. Miss Williamson (ML) and Mrs Thomson (H&T) joined forces to connect learning across both subjects. In French, pupils translated a cup cake recipe from French into English and followed the French recipe in H&T to make celebratory cup cakes. The cakes were decorated with maroon icing and finished off with an edible topper bearing the school badge. In another lesson pupils created handmade invitations written in French. To round off the project pupils hosted a Tea Party where invited guests including Mr Sharkey, Mrs Laing and Mrs Brennan sampled the baking skills of class 1.1. The event was a great success with pupils asking when they can do this again (and staff no doubt wondering when the cup cakes might appear again!)  Here are some of the comments pupils made about the project:

“I enjoyed the joint classes between French and H&T. The recipe was easy to translate and all the teachers (at the Tea Party) looked like they had fun”.   Calum Duff

“I enjoyed everything. It was fun making the cakes and (working on) the recipes and invitations. I would love to do it again”. Zulaikha Gul

“I enjoyed baking and eating the cup cakes. I found it fun to see many teachers join in the party”. Marielle Beloy

“I enjoyed seeing our French teacher see what we do in another subject”. Courtney Mangan

“I enjoyed everything. It was awesome. Hope we do it again”. Zara Iqbal

[1] St Mary’s and Our Lady’s High Schools merged to form the new St Margaret’s Academy in 1993. St Margaret’s moved to its new building in Livingston in August 1994. The school was officially opened in November 1994.

Self-Reflection, Skills, Teaching Pedagogy, Uncategorized, Vision and Leadership

Action Enquiry in Science – Talking to Learn

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Ann McLean – Biology/Science Teacher

In 2009, I completed my masters at Stirling University. Three years hard slog to obtain the status of Chartered Teacher but the benefits have been invaluable. The course introduced experienced teachers to ‘Action Enquiry’ and guided us towards being researchers in our own classrooms.

We carried out two research projects. The first was a classroom based enquiry and involved only one teacher as researcher. The second was a collaborative project, involving two or more teachers.

My first project was inspired by a ‘difficult’ second year science class I had inherited (2V).  Most students were poorly motivated, badly behaved, had a fairly negative view of Science and failed to engage with and participate in lessons. A nightmare class you might say!

The class had a large number of less able students who were struggling  and a couple had significant behaviour  problems.   The only way I could get them through any work was to resort to rigid ‘ lock step’, teacher led lessons. I couldn’t trust them to do practical work so I demonstrated it and any notes they had to make were copied from the board. I became increasing  unhappy  with this ‘reception’ style  teaching where my passive learners were  receiving facts from me and expected to learn them. Although I tried to encourage and motivate my students, I didn’t see much improvement. They continued to be reluctant Scientists with very low self esteem. They performed poorly in assessments which triggered the whole cycle again. Continue reading Action Enquiry in Science – Talking to Learn →

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St Margaret’s Spelling Bees

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Mairi Godley – Modern Languages Teacher

After two rounds of learning 100 words in their target language and spelling them out under exam conditions, four of our pupils will be ‘spelling it out’ on the 14th June at St. Andrews university. Our finalists are:

Sarah Lovett – 13 and over French
Martyna Hildebrant – 13 and over Spanish
Rose Ewins- under 13 French
Katie Rafferty – under 13 Spanish

Many pupils participated in the initial stage of this competition which was completed just before Christmas. From there the top performing pupils participated in our semi-final which took place in the library before the Easter holidays.

Our four finalists now have 100 new words to learn for the final where they will compete against pupils from across the country.

Well done to everyone who has participated- the spelling bee is proof that learning languages can be fun!

How this has developed my teaching and learning is the desire to create activities where pupils enjoy being challenged in the competitive form and this can be applied to every subject.