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Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
Although current events have completely disrupted our last term of Nursery this year, the quite bright, glittering silver lining for us at the Small Isle Nurseries has been the opportunity to forge new inter-island friendships. Before this year, our children from the Muck, Eigg or Rum Nurseries rarely met (or hadn’t at all), and now they are sending each other post, desperately excited to share stories and actively engaging in conversations, questioning and learning through our twice weekly Google Meets.
Like many Nurseries in the Highlands at the moment, we started by putting out activities for the children to do at home with their parents. Though these have been somewhat successful the feedback we got from parents was that they really wanted to provide as much social interaction for their children as possible. So we started with a Google Meet once a week and that very quickly became twice a week!
“He really gets excited about the Meets and seeing his pals” - one of our lovely parents.
We play interactive games like scavenger hunts, action songs and dressing up. We read a story every Meet or sometimes re-tell our favourite without the book! Our book of the week last week was Elmer, so the weekly activities were all things patterns and jungles. We also asked the children to create some Elmer themed art to send to a child on another island - thank you to Calmac and the Post Office Workers for facilitating this.
The children have loved all aspects of our Meets and have been fully engaged and included.
We also asked the children what they enjoyed most about our virtual Nursery Meets:
“Story! Because we can read them and they have words and pictures.”
“Seeing my friends! Because I like playing.”
“Today I loved doing the yoga, because I liked being the different fruits!”
Another way to get the children to interact with each other was to encourage them all to write their own version of a fairy-tale during our fairy-tale themed week. This activity also clearly showed the high quality of parental engagement and how valuable this is during a child’s learning. The stories provided superb opportunities for turn taking and listening and talking; they also created some great laughs throughout the group. We have attached Arlo’s story for you to enjoy.
However, although planned activities and structured sessions are important and really enjoyable, the most valuable moments are when the children are chatting. Who has brothers and sisters? What is better, tigers or pirates? (We decided if they joined forces that would be best… or maybe if it was a pirate tiger??).
Hearing that our Nursery pupils are talking about their new friends at home with their family and truly developing new and hopefully long lasting friendships is simply wonderful. We plan to continue these virtual Meets after all this is over, and hope this is the start of something great across the Small Isles Primaries.
If anyone would like to find out more about what we have been doing or would like any advice on running virtual sessions - let us know!
Jenny (Rum), Phoebe (Muck) and Katrin (Eigg)
The Small Isle Nurseries Team
A teacher at an Inverness Primary school has set up the region’s first ever online Festival of Reading in a bid to enhance digital literacy across the region’s schools.
The Merkinch Reading Festival is the brainchild of teacher Niall Ridgway, who came up with the idea after watching a number of online music festivals. These were broadcast as a replacement for the live events which were cancelled due to the coronavirus outbreak.
The event, which is to be live streamed using a live steaming function within the Google Meet (video conferencing) software, can accommodate 100,000 viewers.
The Festival is a celebration of reading and learning and takes place online today (Friday 5 June) between 10am and 5pm.
Thanks to hard work behind the scenes by Highland’s Digital Development Team, which includes Head Teachers Tania Mackie and Robert Quigley, the live stream function has now been made available to all Highland schools. Highland is one of the only areas in Scotland with this functionality.
Previously Google Meet’s own video conferencing element only allowed up to 250 people to be logged in at once, but due to the streaming function within the software, the school is able to open up the festival to all schools in Highland.
The teacher behind the idea, Niall Ridgway, said: “The Merkinch Reading Festival marks a huge step in the development of digital literacy across Highland Council schools as well as within Merkinch Primary.
“Twenty-one members of staff at Merkinch will read stories or extracts from their favourite books, with the majority of these stories being shared via the e-book format. This supports all learners to clearly see the books, read along, and enjoy the images. Let's celebrate reading!”
He added: “Teachers in Highland enjoy a daily drop in video call and I mentioned the idea during one of those and it just took off from there.”
Head of Education Services Nicky Grant, said: “Niall’s very exciting Reading Festival will build on the current interest in live streaming, which offers additional potential for presenting to larger than normal audiences, as young people and staff return to School in August.”
Chairman of the Education Committee, Cllr John Finlayson, said: “Once again I am delighted to see the innovative approaches being promoted across the Highlands to develop online learning and provide access to a wide audience and I would like to thank everyone involved.”
Portree Primary School came up with an innovative way to keep children active during lockdown and ensured they didn’t miss out on their annual sports day. The pupils took part in their first ever “virtual sports day,” on Friday with each child given an event to take part in at home.
The virtual event was the culmination of the schools Health and Wellbeing Week and pupils had been given a weekly activity grid to prepare them for their virtual sports day. The activities were designed to encourage pupils to work together as a family at home and focus on being happy and healthy.
And Skye’s very own Hugh Campbell, one of Scotland’s top long-distance runners, sent the children a special message of support ahead of their sport day, highlighting the importance of good nutrition, sunshine and outdoor activity. As part of the school’s screen free Health and Wellbeing Week the children were also tasked to create posters, plan events, create prizes but most of all have fun. The winning house will be announced this week.
Chairman of the Education Committee, Cllr John Finlayson, said: “It has been great to follow the virtual learning journey promoted by schools across Highland including Portree Primary School, over recent weeks and I am really impressed by the inspirational ways staff have been liaising with and supporting learners and parents.
"The Portree Primary Sports Day is a fantastic example of the school, pupils, parents and community members working together to create something unique and memorable for learners even at this difficult time. I would like to pass on my congratulations to everyone involved and it is very clear that pupils enjoyed their very different 2020 Sports Day."
Portree Primary Head Teacher, Sara Matheson, said: “This is an idea that was put together by our PE staff at school in order to focus on Health and Wellbeing and to reduce screen time for all.
“The efforts and response from our pupils and parents were extraordinary. Pupils made awards, created events, advertised their sports day and most importantly embraced the ethos of having family fun outdoors.
“We are incredibly proud of our pupils who are rising to every challenge set – this event was another example of their ongoing incredible efforts.”
These are unusual times and, as such, call for a different approach to learning. Nevertheless, it's important to remember that "difference" does not necessarily mean "deficit". This is NOT second-class learning! In many ways it is richer as it sits in "real life" contexts which are often more meaningful and deeper than many class-based activities can ever be.
The range and variety of activities demonstrate the richness of the children's lives in Gledfield and emphasises how close many of the children live to the natural world. It is their engagement and interaction with their world that makes the impact of these photographs so striking and which belies the claim that children no longer have a "childhood" in the traditional sense of the word. They demonstrate the ways in which your children are growing up and making sense of the world in the 21st Century, despite the trying times we are living through.
sites.google.com/cullodenacademy.org.uk/outdoorexplorers/Activities