AiFL questioning

Neat little fans made by the Depute at Westburn Nursery. She took Blooms taxonomy and the starter questions which are within this blog from various sources and put them into an easy to manipulate format for the staff at the nursery. They hook these on to their badge lanyards and they are great reminders during the day and at planning sessions. Equally useful for older children to use themselves in group discussions/feedback sessions etc etc.

Add these to thinking dice, beach ball question prompts etc to raise the profile of these techniques or refresh AiFL work. Sometimes the cheaper option like these fans work just as well. Its not hard to use the kind of ideas infant and early years staff have used for years to push eg great questioning further – an old football with sticky white labels on it with question starters written in pen, throw it round group – the sticker your thumb lands on when catching is the question to be answered etc.

Good meeting with Brian McLaren from the consolarium the other day, and he enjoyed having a little tour of some of the establishments in the area. Looking forward to gathering in the evidence of the hard work Cathkin Community Nursery are about to start using eyepet as a context for learning. We will publish all that material here and pass it on to the consolarium

Lots of abbreviations in this post…

Brian McLaren did an enjoyable session at Loch Primary yesterday evening. Staff had the chance to try out lots of the goodies from his travelling bag – games on the wii, PS3 etc. I wasn’t able to get there as quickly as I wanted (but caught the second half). Prior to this I was up at Cathkin High where they were planning a student project with UWS commercial music students, Calderwood Primary will also be involved – exciting work will culminate in pupils developing a myspace type web presence with their recorded musical artefact. David Scott from UWS as always just fantastic to work with.

Its good to see the Loch moving forward with this GBL approach. Great way to engage youngsters. Their PT talked about her work on planning an interdisciplinary project using Endless Ocean tonight at the PT drop in session, she was also showing how she uses the Glow outcome tool to gather outcomes together into a planning document. Several teachers now playing with this around the primaries in particular in the area and are finding this a great practical tool.  At Loch they’re building up to each class having a GBL interdisciplinary topic per session as a context – eg Endless Ocean, Guitar Band, Eyepet, Wildlife Safari, Nintendogs etc, alongside this they are using their Nintendo DS’ for various ongoing activities. Fascinating inputs from other PTs – other highlights included Stonelaw’s Pete Mulvey and his  ideas around using flipcams and Trinity’s Ian Gilroy talking about positive behaviour, input from Martin Frame on the work ongoing at Cathkin PS where the children run their own bank with the assistance of RBS, Jaye Richards showing how various bits of Glow are really useful in particular Glow Meet and emphasising that take tools/ideas and be creative in how you use them to enhance your teaching and learning.  The best CPD always comes from classroom practitioners.

Learned a lot this afternoon from the area SMPS who did a session with LC HTs on IEPS, ASPs and CSPs. Clarified the reasoning behind certain planning tools in schools which are used to meet pupil needs. Really enjoy working alongside the senior manager pupil support as it fascinates me how much expertise they have in this area and I always come away having learned something new.

A task for me at the moment is completing a round of CP audits in schools, looking at how schools are developing CfE work and their CfE timelines, catching up with PRDs for nursery Heads, and keeping working away with schools about where they are with evaluative statement writing of QIs. Nursery inspection finished last week and Primary one coming up in a couple of weeks. Exciting new additions to my remit coming on the horizon too which I’m going to really enjoy. I could never say my daily routine is dull, always diverse and interesting.

A new baby

My cats were most put out yesterday. As I become increasingly like the cat lady from the Simpson’s, for instance one of my cats enjoys being snuggled up in to me  a sort of  pashmina thing whilst I’m hoovering….. my cats seem to be becoming more human…This is sad but true as those who know me will testify. Yesterday they enjoyed the PS3 empty box for a wee while but they were not happy with me during the eyepet hatching. There’s been a lot of turning of their backs and evil glares since.

A new baby – Jack Sparrow Reid hatched out. I am learning how to play this you understand, so that I can do a wee spot of training in some of the area nurseries and infant classes. If it makes me squeal with delight then its pretty much a certainty that it’ll provide a great context for some of the youngsters in our area for great learning experiences. I will post up planning materials etc as we work on them. Hopefully we can video some of the experiences – I’m particularly keen to find a way of detailing how the planning and consultation with children is carried out, before during and after the focus.