Balfron Matters

2025 Pedagogy Festival - thanks everyone for you contributions

6 May 2025

Weekly communication for staff

Building Futures Together

Dear colleagues,

I hope you have all had a lovely holiday weekend and enjoyed some sunshine.

Thank you again for your contribution to our Pedagogy Festival. I hope that you found it beneficial and enjoyable. To help us gather evidence and improve, please take a moment to complete our evaluation.

Massive thanks again to Michelle and the working group leads who have done a great job to support and inspire us to develop on our 'plus ones'. Please make sure you give us feedback through the evaluation. Onwards and upwards!

Sharing practice is both important and enjoyable. Why not join the group on in C8 for Wednesday's Lunch and Learn. The focus is on questioning strategies. Other professional learning opportunities this week include the BOCSH online conference on Wednesday 4-6pm. Everyone is welcome to book-in. Details below.

As mentioned last week, we have scheduled follow-up sessions with this Mark Burns. The purpose is to support the evaluation of our work and to look at how we can look at assessment and feedback to support learning, teaching & assessment in the BGE. Mark will spend the day with Working Group Leads on 8th May and PTs L&T on the 9th.

Parent Council - staff reps

The final Parent Council meeting of the year is on Tuesday night. It is also the AGM. We are looking for teacher reps to attend the parent council next session. Having teachers there is extremely helpful in reassuring parents, sharing perspective and expertise. There are only 5 meetings in a year. They run on a Tuesday evening. If you could contribute to that, please let me know. Your input would be much appreciated.

The School App

We have launched the School App as a replacement to social media and a method for communicating with parents. It will not replace emails or newsletters but hopefully enhance both of those. I am very keen that we share lots of pictures, learning and successes with parents and carers so that they have a positive flavour of all the great things that go on at Balfron High School. Ideally, at least one person from each team will be able to directly add to the app. The next online training is Wednesday 7th May P2 10.10am to 11am. Please let Wati know if you are free to log-on.

Thanks for your hard work and professionalism.

Have a great week. #buildingfuturestogether

Elaine

This week at Balfron:

SQA Exams

Mon: Holiday

Tues: N5 & AH English

Parent Council AGM

Wed: H English

N5 Woodworking

BOCSH Online Sharing Conference

Thurs: H PE

N5 Drama

Working Group Leads CLPL Mark Burns

S1 Parents Evening

Fri: N5, H, AH History

PTs L&T CLPL Mark Burns

Notice Boards

Supervision Rota

Parents: What's on at Balfron

BHS L&T website

Equally Safe At School (ESAS)

Expressive Arts Team

Pupil Equity Matters

Leadership Reflections

Maths Team

Pupil Support Team

Science Team

School Counselling Service

Pupil Landing Page (Inc notices)

Collegiate Calendar 24-25

BOCSH Looking Outwards Learning Together May 2025.pdf

Thanks everyone for your commitment, enthusiasm and professionalism.

Below is a little snapshot of our morning.

I've just realised that I have everyone BUT Michelle. Next time, please help me make sure that we get a pic of our Pedagogy Strategic Lead!

Last week at Balfron - Wider Achievements

Photos include:

S3 leading at Drymen's Health & Wellbeing Day
S3 Sports Leaders at the Tennis Festival with 240 primary 4 children from across Stirling schools
Finlay trying out his car made in robotics
Forest School den building this week
Young Chemists hard at work - Ellagh and Amanda
Congratulations to Lynne and Kelly-Marie who completed the Kilt Walk, raising

Please take photos and share with me directly via email or Whatsapp (with each pupil's permission). Let's recognise and celebrate all the good stuff. We will also share in the Parent newsletter, Balfron Highlights. #wearebalfron #buildingfuturestogether

Photos include:

S3 leading at Drymen's Health & Wellbeing Day
S3 Sports Leaders at the Tennis Festival with 240 primary 4 children from across Stirling schools
Finlay trying out his car made in robotics
Forest School den building this week
Young Chemists hard at work - Ellagh and Amanda
Congratulations to Lynne and Kelly-Marie who completed the Kilt Walk, raising

Behaviour Matters

Here is the full data set from 17 March to 25 April for S1-3. There are 3.6 times more merits across the board than demerits. Areas for us to look deeper into are cooperation and latecoming. PTs PS and FCLs, please pick this up with the individuals who are highlighted regularly in these areas. In the interests of fairness, one of our school values, please ensure that you regularly log merits and demerits as per our policy (also below).

Thanks for your help with this - all of us doing the same thing makes it much easier for each other.

Behaviour Data March 17th - 25th April

March 17th - April 25th 2025 Behaviour Stats by Year

Inhouse CLPL 24-25

active learners - active thinkers

Active Learners

This term we'll continue to explore techniques to add to our repertoire to keep our BGE learners Active!

Most can be added into lessons for a 5-10 min activity to boost engagement

Find lots of ideas previously explored this session in the Active Learners Classroom: 6a7mbjk

What's coming up at Lunch n Learn this May?

w/b 12 May

Clair M talks us though some

of her MTV favs.

Come along to get some great ideas for add to lessons

This week: Wed

Exploring the using of

Questioning Strategies

different styles of questioning is used to achieve different things

We'll look at the Walkthru series to explore resources in this area

w/b 19 May

Lesley and Stephanie give us another opportunity to get hands on with all the active learning activities they explored this session in their PLusOnes

There are so many activities here to add to your repertoire, you don't want to miss this.

w/b 26 May

Elaine J explains the cooperative strategy:

Stand and Delivery

and its use in engagement and building in accountabilty into group tasks in her higher class this session.

The Walkthrus Series

As a school, we have purchased the excellent Walkthrus series.

The full collection can we viewed on our BHS L&T website.

As our seniors move onto study leave, its an opportunity to grab a bit of time for professional development, and the self-study nature of this resource is perfect for this.

The Formative Assessment and Relationships & Behaviour Clusters are shown here but there are many more to choose from