Tag Archives: Workshops

Responsibility of All

Managing severe allergies in schools

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Nighean Hannah from the NHS recently delivered a CPD event on managing severe allergies in schools.  Her PowerPoint which can be viewed here provided lots of useful information on:

  • What anaphylaxis is
  • Symptoms
  • Types of reactions
  • Causes and treatments
  • Devices
  • Management in schools
  • What to do in an emergency

I found this a very useful learning experience and would recommend all staff to have a look at this.

The following websites provide more information Allergies and Intolerances and Anaphylaxis Campaign

Self-Reflection, Teaching Pedagogy, Vision and Leadership

Working Together for Better Science Learning – a Cluster Approach to CPD

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St Margaret’s Academy Science department has been approached by SSERC to develop the transition process in science. The rationale and outline of this programme: “Working Together for Better Science Learning – a Cluster Approach to CPD programme” can be downloaded here. Myself and colleague Keith Varty along with one of our primary colleagues Jennifer Currie were invited along to the first workshop of the Armadale cluster to see how this works and if it is something that we would be interested in leading across our cluster. Each cluster primary school had sent at least two representatives to this event and Armadale Academy also had members of the science department there to help support their primary colleagues in the science tasks carried out during the workshop.

Continue reading Working Together for Better Science Learning – a Cluster Approach to CPD →

Responsibility of All, Self-Reflection, Vision and Leadership

Assessment and Moderation – Key Messages

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IS Day presentation by Catherine Kerr (PTC Science)

To be honest I’m not really an expert on the subject. As a starting point I walked about the school asking staff what their understanding of Assessment and Moderation was. The responses were really interesting as the teachers that I put on the spot (mainly un-promoted staff) all had very similar understandings, concerns, and misconceptions. My Assessment and Moderation presentation therefore focussed on the teachers at St. Margaret’s point of view and my hope was that it would build on what was already known as well as clarify some of the key messages from educational policy and best practice.

The information provided came from several sources including the Education Scotland website which provides lots of current information on Assessment and Moderation. In addition I accessed the National Assessment Resource (NAR). As a database I think the NAR is a bit of a let down but the search facility is useful. I searched for ‘sharing the standards’, which brought up different authorities examples of moderation some of which were excellent and used throughout my presentation. All of the information I thought staff might find useful has been placed in a ring binder for each curricular area.

Further useful links include:

Responsibility of All, Teaching Pedagogy, Vision and Leadership

Using CAT data effectively – Presentation

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John Slavin Faculty Leader Raising Attainment

This was a brief introduction to how the CAT data that the school has for each pupil could be used to aid teaching and learning.

Initially, I explained that there are three batteries of tests: Verbal examples, Non-Verbal examples and Quantitative examples and briefly described examples of each. Pupil profiles are generated from this data and strengths / development needs can be identified.

Data for whole classes can be graphically represented in a Scatter graph to give a powerful visual interpretation of the results. The results can be analyzed with the help of the scatter diagram.

I have produced such scattergraphs for each class in S3/4 and will do likewise for S2 in time. If anyone is interested in looking at CAT data and how it can be used to highlight achievement / underachievement, Dr. Ben Doody and myself (John Slavin) are running a workshop on 07 September 2012. This will provide teachers with an opportunity to gain further experience of using this data and can hopefully aid the identification of the pupils’ needs.

Responsibility of All, Self-Reflection, Vision and Leadership

Health and wellbeing – Themes Workshop

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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

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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

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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.

Responsibility of All, Vision and Leadership

Rights Respecting Schools Staff Workshop

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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)