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The CfE and Glow News e-update provides you with updates on Curriculum for Excellence and support for practitioners, along with all the latest developments within Glow.
Read the November issue to find out about the following:
- Support for Curriculum for Excellence (letter to directors of education)
- Curriculum for Excellence engagement - Q&A on CfE implementation
- National Assessment Resource (NAR) – new features
- Recently published support materials for practitioners:
- New – Improving communication skills – Duncanrig Radio
- New – RME as the focus for Learning and Assessment
- New – Resource calendar
- New – Entrepreneurial skills across the curriculum
- New – Cheers for credit unions!
- New – Building your Curriculum: Outside and In
- New – Outdoor Learning: Practical guidance, ideas and support for teachers and practitioners in Scotland
- New – Principles for a partnership approach for the food and drink industry and other related organisations working with schools
- New – Learning through sketchbooks in art and design
- Update on new qualifications
- A new Gaelic Thesaurus / Co-fhaclair ùr Gàidhlig
- Early Years National Glow Group
- Scottish Ballet Glow Group
- Glow Mythbuster
- CPDRequest - a free CPD service on Glow
- Date for your diary - Glow TV event: Holocaust Memorial Day 2012 - 27 January
- A selection of Glow Cookbooks
Support for Curriculum for Excellence (letter to directors of education)
A letter from Dr Bill Maxwell, Transitional Chief Executive, Education Scotland, was sent to directors of education on 27 October 2011 outlining support for Curriculum for Excellence for 2011-12. This elaborates on the actions announced by the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning at the Scottish Learning Festival on 21 September 2011.
Curriculum for Excellence engagement - Q&A on CfE implementation
A new series of question and answers have been developed to help practitioners understand Curriculum for Excellence and how it is being embedded within educational establishments across Scotland. The document has been published as a PDF on the Education Scotland website.
The information is intended to support leaders, managers, practitioners and others within the education community in their own understanding of many of the key issues surrounding areas such as certification, assessment, making subject choices, parent or carer engagement and support for implementation.
National Assessment Resource (NAR)
The National Assessment Resource (NAR) has been enhanced and many new features added.
A helpful user guide and step-by-step videos are available to help you find your way around the new features:
NAR is a single resource for assessment materials for Curriculum for Excellence and includes materials developed by Education Scotland, SQA and practitioners.
You will need your Glow log-in to access NAR. All staff in independent schools can access NAR via the SQA Connect service.
Recently published support materials for practitioners:
Improving communication skills – Duncanrig Radio
As part of their curriculum, the pupils from Duncanrig Secondary School and the associated Communication Support Base (CSB) which caters for pupils with autism spectrum disorders, have been taking the radio airwaves by storm with their very own radio project. The pupils have been performing their own radio shows on community radio station, Camglen Radio 106.6FM, which serves the people of Cambuslang and Rutherglen.
RME as the focus for Learning and Assessment
The purpose of this case study is to demonstrate how teaching, learning and assessment of the RME topic of Sukkot was effectively planned and assessed as a central context for learning at first level within an interdisciplinary learning study for a P1/2 class.
The events in this calendar are celebrations, awareness days and action weeks all covering topical issues relevant to schools. Each of the events includes details of websites and support materials to help plan activities for learners.
Entrepreneurial skills across the curriculum
This group of case studies highlights the positive impact that developing entrepreneurial skills has had on the confidence and self-esteem of young people. The case studies also embody the opportunities to develop skills across the curriculum that young people are entitled to receive.
This resource illustrates the development of financial capability using pupil-run credit unions. The activities address experiences and outcomes within Curriculum for Excellence and help schools and early years’ establishments make connections across learning.
This 3-18 resource will support staff in embedding financial education in the curriculum, supporting family learning and promoting partnership working within the community.
Building your Curriculum: Outside and In
As an active and productive pedagogy, outdoor learning is an integral part of good practice within learning and teaching. Planning for regular, frequent learning outdoors ensures that progressive and sustainable outdoor learning opportunities are embedded in the curriculum and that they form a central part of the vision and ethos of the school or centre.
Building your Curriculum: Outside and In supports a strategic approach to the development of outdoor learning and provides a framework and process for collaborative planning and review.
Outdoor Learning: Practical guidance, ideas and support for teachers and practitioners in Scotland
This resource provides practical, accessible and straightforward advice on how to engage children and young people with learning outdoors. It incorporates ideas for organising learning in the outdoors, for making connections across the curriculum and for planning within curriculum areas. It also includes a CPD framework and supporting materials.
This Scottish Government document sets out key principles to help support the development of meaningful and sustainable partnership working between schools, the food and drink industry and other related organisations. Curriculum for Excellence states ‘Creating strong partnerships with a range of organisations helps to deliver a more personalised learning experience for every child and young person’.
By using food in its widest context (social, health, environmental and economic) as a vehicle for learning, the food and drink industry and other related organisations can support schools to encourage pupil engagement and learning.
Learning through sketchbooks in art and design
Air Iomlaid (On Exchange) was a partnership project bringing two schools and their communities together with practising artists to explore their outdoor environments through art and language. The lead artist described the project as undergoing a process of ‘getting fit’ artistically.
This resource is intended for primary and secondary teachers who want to build confidence in discussing the visual elements of the art and design curriculum with learners and colleagues. A key focus is the use of sketchbooks as a method of developing artistic confidence in the learners. Sketchbooks are also used by teachers as a way of recording and analysing learners’ progress.
New qualifications update
The Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) has published an update about latest draft documents for the new qualifications.
SQA has revised the postcard size ready reckoner to show SQA’s new and revised portfolio of qualifications. The reckoner shows SQA qualifications against the levels of the SCQF and the credit points allocated to them.
Information for parents and carers
The Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) has published resources to support parents and carers in understanding changes to National Qualifications.
Resources include:
- a parent leaflet, giving the latest information on the new qualifications
- Mythbuster videos, answering some of the most common questions about the qualifications
- a jargon buster to help explain the terms used.
A new Gaelic Thesaurus / Co-fhaclair ùr Gàidhlig
A thesaurus of synonyms and related concepts. Under each word the user will find a list of ‘associates’. These are synonyms or other closely similar terms. There are also ‘related terms’ which are not synonyms but which may be helpful to the user in identifying a suitable term.
Co-fhaclair anns a bheil co-fhaclan agus faclan eile a tha ceangailte riutha. Fo gach ceann-fhacal, chithear liosta de 'cho-fhaclan' – feadhainn le ciall a tha faisg air ciall a’ cheann-fhacail fhèin. A bharrachd air sin, tha 'faclan dàimheach' ann; chan e co-fhaclan a th’ anntasan ach feadhainn a dh’fhaodadh a bhith feumail don neach-cleachdaidh ann a bhith a’ lorg facal freagarrach.
Early Years National Glow Group
The Early Years team at Education Scotland have updated and ‘revamped’ the National Early Years Glow site!
It provides a wonderful wealth of early years information, including direct links to the Early Years blog, Early Years resources and other places to visit within Glow to help practitioners with their learning and teaching. There are also opportunities to take part in discussions.
Scottish Ballet Glow Group
The Education team at Scottish Ballet, Scotland’s national dance company, has launched a new Scottish Ballet Glow Group.
Scottish Ballet's schools' programme links directly to the work of the company and provides a broad range of access points for pupils of all ages and abilities.
You can use the Scottish Ballet Glow Group to read blog entries, discuss dance related topics, browse the picture gallery or find out what events are coming up.
Glow Mythbuster
Every year all Glow users are given the opportunity to take part in a survey so that we can find out what they think about Glow. From this year’s findings it became clear that there was a need for clarification on some elements of the functionality, as Glow was perceived not to do things that it does in fact do. There is now an online list that clarifies these points.
CPDRequest - a free CPD service on Glow
CPDRequest is a service for CPDCentral members on Glow. It is a fairly simple concept. If seven (or more) members of CPDCentral request CPD on a specific topic, the National CPD Team at Education Scotland will find someone to put it on for you, online, on Glow for free!
You can find out more on the CPD Team blog or by following the short link (http://bit.ly/cpdrequest - needs a Glow username).
Date for your diary - Glow TV event: Holocaust Memorial Day 2012 - 27 January 2012
Join us to take part in Holocaust Memorial Day 2012, Scotland's national event from Dundee, with Holocaust survivors and a full programme of events to mark Holocaust Memorial Day.
A selection of Glow Cookbooks:
e-portfolios in East Renfrewshire – Part 2
The schools in East Renfrewshire are using e-portfolios as part of their adoption of the recommendations in Building the Curriculum 5, and whilst every school in the local authority is following the same basic adoption principles, each school has its own specific plans for implementation and use. This cookbook highlights the plans of one of these schools.
Story Telling in Early Years using Glow Meet
Margo Kerr is currently seconded from her nursery post at Kirknewton Primary School and is working as the Early Years ICT Development Officer within the West Lothian Council Early Years Team. Margo’s remit is to provide curricular ICT support to all Early Years practitioners (nursery – P3) within the Local Authority and to drive forward and support the implementation of Glow within the Nurseries.
There are five standalone Early Years Centres and eight Nursery Schools in West Lothian. Since these Early Years establishments are not attached to a school, they do not have access to a school Glow establishment site. West Lothian therefore asked to have a separate, single Glow establishment created for the standalone Early Years establishments. The staff in all of these nurseries had their Glow accounts provisioned within this establishment, which is called ‘West Lothian Early Years’ to enable them to all work together.
Sharing Learning Intentions with pupils and parents
Kerry Malcolm is P1-4 teacher at Fisherton Primary School. Her 09-10 class had 22 pupils. Kerry received an hour’s introductory training session from a Glow Mentor. Being quite computer literate to start off with Kerry immediately saw the potential within Glow for the pupils to enjoy using it and to expand learning in her classroom. She was keen that Glow would encourage pupils to be more involved in their own learning and help them become more independent learners. She notes that working in a multi-composite class there is always the challenge of gaining more time to work with pupils and ensuring that they are always focussed and on-task. She could see that using Glow would help achieve this.
Using Glow to support the revision of Standard Grade Biology
Karen Maitland is a teacher of Biology at Queensferry High School in Edinburgh. Karen is an advocate of the use of technology aimed at enhancing the learning and teaching process.
In this cookbook Karen will talk us through how she uses Glow to support the learning and teaching of Standard Grade Biology.
Using Glow to support an Authority-wide In-Service Day
In West Lothian, one of the recent In-Service days was used to give all staff the opportunity to engage with the new plans and forthcoming arrangements for assessment. In order to ensure that all staff from every school had access to the same information and resources about this, the local authority decided to use Glow to support the day’s activities.
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