Self-Reflection, Skills, Teaching Pedagogy

Personal Development in Spanish

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Mairi Godley- Modern Languages Teacher

Having graduated from Strathclyde University in 2005 in French with Marketing, Spanish was entirely new to me when joining St. Margaret’s in 2006. Back then it was proving to be a popular subject and so I decided to embark on a graduate diploma, a distance learning course, in Spanish from Dundee University.

Miss Doran (at the time) and I initially participated in a 6 month intensive language course, which progressed onto the two year diploma. Although this was successfully achieved in 2009, my command of the language at that time did not leave me feeling fully confident to teach Spanish at senior level. Curriculum for Excellence did not pose any problems but I felt the need to further improve my level in order to teach at a higher level.

This is what prompted me to complete a Comenius in-service training course in Barcelona this summer.  I am no stranger to such courses as, in the summer of 2008; I spent 3 weeks in Granada, completing a language course that supported my studying in obtaining the Spanish diploma. Continue reading Personal Development in Spanish →

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 →

Self-Reflection, Skills, Vision and Leadership

Internal Verification

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Anne Keenan (Health and Technology) and Laura Watson (Science Department)

Internal verification is a huge aspect of the new CfE qualifications. Over the last year we have become very familiar with the process of internal verification through teaching Skills for Work: Laboratory Science and Skills for Work: Early Education and Childcare. Both of these courses are internally assessed and require the assessors and verifiers to have a sound understanding of the assessment procedure to enable the internal verification to be carried out accordingly.

The key to this process running smoothly is for the assessor and verifier to have an agreed and shared understanding of the standards that must be reached in order to ensure the candidates’ evidence meets the assessment requirements.

It is the role of the assessor and verifier to discuss and record (SQA guidelines) the agreed assessment, any amendments and an in-depth discuss to ensure the candidates’ evidence meets the assessment standard.

Internal verification provides us as teachers with the responsibility of ensuring standards are met, allowing ourselves to draw on our professional judgement in deciding whether candidates evidence meets the set requirements, enabling them to gain the overall qualification.

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.

Responsibility of All, Self-Reflection, Teaching Pedagogy, Vision and Leadership

Science – Good Practice

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Keith Varty – Biology/Science Teacher

When you watch this video you will observe a Science lesson where S2 pupils were actively engaged in learning about cell biology, specifically microscopy and cell structures.  This lesson began with sharing the learning intentions, both visually and verbally, in the form of questions to allow pupils to recognise what their specific targets for successful learning would be.

Afterwards, the lesson progresses to the identification and description of parts of animal and plant cells and shows how I used an innovative approach to Smartboard use and Show Me Boards. This approach captivated pupils and  focused them on their learning, whilst ensuring that they were actively engaged in activities that would allow formative assessment of the knowledge and understanding, which they had developed during the course of the topic.

Continue reading Science – Good Practice →

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.

Skills, Teaching Pedagogy

Go! Animate

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Laura Williamson – Modern Languages Teacher

During my last week at Teacher Training College we were shown how to use an online cartoon movie maker called ‘Go Animate!’.  It is an animated cartoon maker with a range of characters, backgrounds and props to suit any subject area.  Most importantly it is really easy to use!

Once you have chosen your characters and backgrounds you can give your characters voices and even movements and expressions. This is a really useful tool for creating fun and interesting listening exercises for Modern Languages because not only can you change the voice from male to female but you can choose the language and accent. This means that when you type French or Spanish, for example, the person speaking actually has a French or Spanish accent.  This gives pupils more challenge as they have the opportunity to experience other voices apart from the teacher’s.

Importantly, the listening exercise can also be differentiated to include speech bubbles, so that pupils have the choice to read what is being said as well as listen. The speech bubbles give learners confidence that they can understand what is being said. It can be as complicated or as simple as you please because you control the content.

I have used ‘Go Animate!’ several times now and the pupils always welcome it with great enthusiasm. Here is an example of a listening activity based around future plans that I used with an S3 class.

‘Go Animate!’ could be used in any subject. For example, in Geography it could be used to talk about weather systems and pupils could answer questions or make notes. It is an effective learning tool as pupils see something that is visually attractive which makes them more focused on the task. Since you can make the characters say whatever you want, it can fit in with any topic.

Furthermore, ‘Go Animate!’ not only allows the teacher to be more creative with listening activities but it can also be used to give pupils the opportunity to be more creative with their outcomes to consolidate learning.

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