Ingham McGhie, PE Department, St Margaret’s Academy.
I, alongside other members of the St Margaret’s Academy PE department, attended the PE network meeting on Friday 10th January at Broxburn Academy. Each secondary school in West Lothian was well represented giving a rich and meaningful meeting. The focus of the meeting was to give a set of pupils a practical grade for National 5 (badminton) as a type of moderation process. Continue reading PE Network – National 5 performance grading
Philip Harrison – English
Independent writing skills are useful in any subject, but especially in English. To develop these skills in S1 I decided to use group work strategies to encourage learners to construct their own understanding of a novel. I hoped this would enable them to work with greater independence when it came to writing an essay. They would own their work and rely much less on writing frames and teacher support.
I was confident to encourage their independent writing because I was had read some of their work from P7. These essays demonstrated that they were already capable of extended writing with support. So I devised a series of lessons which would replace teacher support with peer support. They planned their own essays and searched for quotations to support their ideas. Then they wrote up their essays individually with minimal teacher support. The results were good and this will be good preparation for critical writing throughout the junior phase.
John Slavin – PTC Mathematics
Catherine Kerr PTC Science gave a presentation on the new Senior Phase Benchmarking Tool on the 6th December in St. Margaret’s Academy. The new SPBT will be used in place of the STACs which recorded the SQA results.
There are several major differences in the two systems. The new SPBT will have 7 categories, four national and three local ones.
The overall presentation is much more visual than STACs. The home page shows the dashboard which has the four national measures, based on the national priorities. It is called a dashboard to emphasise the interconnectedness of the measures.
Continue reading Senior Phase Benchmarking Tool (SPBT) Workshop
Jane Laurie – Biology/Science Teacher
After finishing my PGDE in 2011, I decided that my studying days weren’t over yet and I applied for the CREDL course at the. CREDL is a Post Graduate certificate in Religious Education that is completed by distance learning. It allows practitioners to teach RE in Catholic schools.
What the Course Entailed
The CREDL course was completed online and involved a great deal of discussion with the tutors at the University of Glasgow. There were two modules and each was made up of 8 sections. These sections included a plethora of interesting questions and readings to be completed. At the end of each section I was asked to choose two questions and discuss my opinions via email with my tutor. Initially I thought this was going to be intimidating, as I was opening myself up to a very qualified university tutor, however it was completely the opposite, it gave me the chance to reflect on what my opinions and values actually are. Continue reading CREDL PgCert Qualification (Religious Education by Distance Learning )
dssf
Collette MacAllister – Chemistry Teacher
Having worked in the semiconductor industry for 18 years prior to joining the teaching profession, I was keen to share my experiences not only with my own pupils but with fellow teachers and pupils out with my own classes. When chatting to two of the Physics teachers they mentioned that semiconductors was a topic within the Higher Physics course and asked if I would mind sharing my experience in this industry with their pupils and with them.
In the classroom the pupils learn about the device Physics (specifically n-channel enhanced MOSFET ) whereas my experience was in the manufacturing of many integrated circuit devices. I aimed to complement the theory taught in the class room to make this microscopic topic tangible and allow the pupils to see its real life application.
The pupils were keen to hear about the extensive travelling around the world that this line in work had taken me : from the UK, through mainland Europe ( France, Austria, Germany, Luxembourg to name but a few), through the US (from Washington State to Arizona) to Asia. Continue reading Science in Industry
Keith Varty – Biology/Science Teacher
During the recent staff meeting I organised a short CPD workshop to support Learning and Teaching of the Senior Phase. This workshop focussed on Developing Independent Learning Skills and aimed to share strategies that help the young people of St. Margaret’s Academy become independent learners. Although I knew that I foster these skills in the young people in my classes, I did not feel like an expert. As a result, I decided that during this workshop staff would have the opportunity to work independently through this PowerPoint presentation before having the opportunity to discuss any questions that arose.
I then provided a demonstration of how I make use of the virtual learning platform that is Edmodo, to give pupils more responsibility for their learning. This involvedshowing staff how I:
At a recent SSERC course I was able to take part in a range of innovative practical activities that I hope to be able to integrate into our science and chemistry courses at St Margaret’s.
Practical activities included:
Catherine Kerr PTC Science/CPD Coordinator
During the whole staff meeting on the 30th August 2013 I presented information about Professional Update – a new procedure required by the GTCS involving all registered teachers. The main focus of the presentation was to reassure staff and to clarify the process including the increased expectation of all teachers to identify their own professional learning needs, the importance of an annual PRD meeting to discuss these and the value of keeping a record of professional learning. A link to the GTCS Professional Update Frequently Asked Questions site can be found here and includes information about the aims and benefits, roles and responsibilities and pilot programmes that are going on this year. A informative Power point presentation on Professional Update can be accessed by clicking the picture at the top of this post.
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
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
Glow Blogs uses cookies to enhance your experience on our service. By using this service or closing this message you consent to our use of those cookies. Please read our Cookie Policy.
