Balfron Matters 

Dear colleagues,

Learning Matters

Sometimes it feels like the biggest challenge in the classroom is to engage and motivate our young people. An important key to this is to constantly check for understanding and doing our best to ensure pupils cannot opt out. I believe that checking for everyone's understanding is one of the singlemost important things we should do every period of every lesson. This will help ensure that young people are not passive as they won't have a choice!  It is helpful to ask yourself are you teaching one person or everyone? Some easy ways to check for everyone's understanding are:

• cold calling (definitely no hands up)

• think-pair-share (then cold call or show me boards)

• show me boards

• brain dumps

The list is not exhaustive, but an easy start.  If you need any resources to support this, let me know.  

Tom Sherington has a great short (8 mins) video highlighting 5 ways to check for understanding. Michelle has done a fabulous job of creating a new L&T website (link on the right). In time this will grow to hold ever aspect of our L&T work.  We were excited to buy Walkthrus. There are fantastic resources that support almost all areas of our work.  We hope you will find this useful for your working groups.

Course Choice Matters

We all know that there is a close link between course choice and attainment.  We must get our young people into the courses best suited for success.  Using the tracking data you have provided, this week PTs will begin  interviewing S4 pupils and SLT will be interviewing S5 pupils.  

Attainment Matters

Our focus is 'the drive for five'.  For most young people this will be a drive to 5 Highers before they leave, others 5 National Qualifications. Phil has done a great piece of work identifying pupils who are most at risk and need our support.  Please ensure that we do all we can to help them progress and staff in courses.  Note that a "D" at higher is considered a pass and worth more insight points than an "A" at National 5. The Retrieval Practice section of Walkthrus is helpful.

Behaviour Matters

At the Leadership team meeting we discussed how we best support all staff with behaviour.  Please help eachother by ensuring a consistent approach to our classroom management and expectations.  The PTs and SLT will reinforce these key things in classrooms, already in our policy:

• Meet and greet pupils at the door

• Outdoor jackets off 

• Mobile phones away

Mobile Phones - Next steps

Thanks for sharing your views and suggestions on the issue of mobile phones.  Here is a link to the summary. The next steps are:

• Enforce in all classrooms.  That is the current rule. PTs, SLT to spot check & support

• Continue the consultation

• EB to share this with all parents/carers & pupils during Mobile March.

• EB to collect parent/carer view & pupil view

• Test change during Mobile March - classroom resources

I have bought a few mobile phone holders for classrooms. If anyone would like to try them out, let me know. 

Mobile March

I am launching Mobile March at assemblies this week and will reinforce the 'bag it' rule.  Without demonising mobile phone use, the purpose is to highlight the links between screen time, learning and wellbeing.  All suggestions welcome!

Have a great week.

Elaine

• Increased consistency in Learning & Teaching

• Improved Wellbeing & Inclusion of all young people

• Increased offer in Curriculum

• Increased Attainment & Achievement

• Increased influence of Pupil Voice on Improvement