Balfron Matters
2025 Pedagogy Festival - thanks everyone for you contributions
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:
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
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!
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
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
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.
Inhouse CLPL 24-25
active learners - active thinkers
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?
Clair M talks us though some
of her MTV favs.
Come along to get some great ideas for add to lessons
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
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
Focus on Feedback
We continue to discuss strategies around feedback, one of our most powerful drivers of improvement for learning
Have a look at our discussion so far on the slides and come join us for more sharing of great practice around feedback
Key Messages Around Feedback
Adaptive Teaching is simply our
Everyday Excellent
Scaffolds:
A temporary support to reduce
the complexity of a task
writing frames ◾word banks ◾ structured study mats ◾help sheet how-to◾ number lines◾ worked examples ◾graphical organisers
Scale:
Flexibility within the scale of output required
Can build this up over time
Challenge:
Meaningful ways to extend learning that isn't just 'more of the same'
All resources in the Classroom
code to join: 6a7mbjk
Promoting Study Skills
Head Prefects will be promoting all things
Good Study this week at lunchtime
Direct your seniors to the stall for:
BHS Core 4 steps to Study Success
QR links: How-to Techniques
QR links: e-sgoil support pages
Grab n Go Study Planners
Grab n Go Flashcards
Top tips on the best Study Apps
Positive physical & mental wellbeing
Powering up our seniors for successful studying
Quick links for form and class resourcing
This Week: Display in S4/5/6 Form Class
Sharing our Resources
Feedback from our festival was super positive, it was clear we all enjoyed sharing and learning from one another
Please share useful resources here
Accessing our digital resources
Professional Reading Library - Strathendrick Suite
More Digital CLPL
always available through the links below:
Education Scotland:
Professional learning modules
to work through at your own pace.on Scotland: Professional Learng Modules
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