Balfron Matters

15 November 2021

Weekly communication for staff

Dear colleagues,

Thank you all for another positive and productive week at Balfron High School. I know that it feels challenging in many ways right now and also know that everyone is working really hard to promote and safeguard the best standards for our young people.

Many thanks to colleagues in the Health Team for having Michelle Skinner and I observe lessons for an Open Doors session. Apologies for forgetting to take pictures - no visit in a minute to share this week I'm afraid. That said, it was fantastic to see such a range of learning activities and our young people leading excellent and well prepared sessions with Balfron Primary P2 and P3s pupils on the Astro Turf. Fair to say that warmed our hearts!

The Parent Council continue to be exceptionally supportive of all that we are doing for their children. £500 was secured in a bid from Virgin by Mrs Armstrong for new mini-whiteboards. Many thanks to Karen McColl who has these on order for all of you completed the form. I hope that they will be with us soon. An email was circulated last week inviting colleagues to put forward new bids for funding. The Parent Council continue to work hard on raising funds for us through activities like the 500 club and the Balfron Clothing Co.

It has been busy again for all of us covering. Thanks to everyone for doing their bit. It gave me an opportunity to try out online mini whiteboards as suggested by Anna Barrie at the Expressive Arts Team Meeting. It was very straight forward to set up and the cover class of S2s seemed to enjoy seeing their answers pop up in real time on the board. Here is the link: Online Whiteboards

Another highlight of my week was supporting the COP 26 activities. Neil Cameron and I had the pleasure of taking the S3 presentation winners to the expedition where we visited a veryical farm. It was genuinely insprational.

Many thanks also to Gordon MacKay and the Advanced Higher History pupils who recorded a well considered and poignent input for Remembrance Day. Highlighted by Phil's Tanoy, it was as always, an important and very worthwhile input. Thanks to all.

This week we have our S1 Parents' Meeting online. This provides an opportunity to get to know a new cohort of parents, feedback on progress and share our values and professionalism.

Thanks again for your input. Have a great week.

Elaine

This week at Balfron High School:

Tuesday 16 November- S1 Parents' Meeting

Wellbeing Wednesday nominations

Thursday 18 November - SLT Attainment Meeting with SC based on Insight Data

Parent Council Update

I have shared a link from my report to the Parent Council last week (right). In addition to general updates, I shared the respect assembly and survey results. They were very supportive of the work being done across the school.

Thanks also to Dougie Scott who reminded parents how to access Google Guardian updates. Many of the parents are keen to keep on top of what their children are doing. With that in mind, please ensure that you follow the policy. The guidlines are below as a quick reminder.

The Parent Council has some funding available that they are keen to pass on to the school. They are inviting us to put forward a bid.

You can bid via email to me with the following detail:

Lead Person
Title
Purpose
Amount

I will collate responses for submission. Please email your bid by November 16th.

PC Meeting Meeting 9 Nov 21

Posting Homework and Assessment Information on Google Classroom

Per our HW policy, to help parents when looking at guardian summaries, and pupils when checking their classroom to-do list, please:

Communicate homework via an assignment post on classroom. Title should clearly indicate it is homework or be prefixed (HW)if the title does not make this clear. This applies whether homework is to be submitted online via classroom or in-class. If rolling an in-class task into homework, please update the assignment title to reflect this.
Make sure a due date has been specified when creating the assignment - if there is no due date, pupils and parents will not see the task in the summaries or to-do list (at least not readily because it gets lost amongst all the other assignments with no due date). You can amend an assignment due date at any point if necessary.
Check accompanying information re. how the task is to be completed/submitted and attachments etc. are included - this helps parents support our less organised pupils.

A few sidenotes:

Assessments: When pupils are expected to revise/prepare for a planned assessment, this should be communicated as homework in the above way. Either you or the pupils can them mark the assignment as done on the day of the assessment to remove it from the to-do list.
it is worth going through your "to review" section to tidy up old assignments (usually those you have set for during lessons) which are not to be graded/have no due date. When you open an assignment, select all pupils and "return" this will remove these tasks from pupil to do lists and guardian summaries. Very short how to video here.
If you reuse assignments from a template classroom (as many teams now do), try to amend the assignment titles in there to clearly specify homework - it is easy to forget about this when reusing an assignment with a pre-existing title.

If you would like any help or advice, please just get in touch.

Dougie

Temp Leadership Opportunities - PT PS (0.4) and Equity Lead (4 periods). Next steps...

Thanks to everyone who registered an interest in the Equity Lead post. I will email interview details this week. We are keen to get this post up and running quickly.

As per my email, those interested in the PT PS (Lomond, 0.4) post should have applications to me (cc Amanda Short) by Wednesday 17th November. We plan to interview for this post week beginning 22 November to allow for a period of handover.

It has been positive to see a steady interest in both of these posts.

CLPL - Level 1 and 2 Google Training Opportunity

Stirling Council has secured support from Google to offer free level one (and then level two) google certification and training (virtual google bootcamps) to staff. This program will be supported in a number of ways to align with the experience and confidence level of staff taking part. In addition to the training session/bootcamp mentioned (2.45-3.30 on the first February inservice day) there will be weekly video updates, a training platform and exam support which staff can access/dip in and out of as appropriate.

To get this program started Tracey Patrick is looking for up to ten members of staff who would be interesting in engaging with this opportunity. Dougie Scott will be in touch to collatet he names of those interested.

COP 26 - S3 Visit

Thanks to all of you for promoting COP26 in the last few weeks. It has been really inspirational. Neil Cameron and I had the pleasure of taking the S3 presentation winners to the event. Thanks to Joanne Lloyd and Ross Macintosh, we secured an invite to visit the IGS (Intelligent Growing Solutions) vertical farm.

It was fascinating to see how crops can be grown in units with light, temperature and oxygen levels managed off site. Former parent, David Farquhar is the CEO of the company. You may remember Callum and Lorna who were with us until recently. Callum is now with the company and Lorna is ready to graduate with a 1st in Marine Biology.

Their work cought the interest of the First Minister in addition to Global businesses.

We are delighted to have forged a link that will provide opportunities for our young people in STEM internships and work experiences.

Here is a link for those interested: https://www.intelligentgrowthsolutions.com

Senior Phase Courses - Please ckeep encouraging pupils to stay in courses

I appreciate that you are working hard to keep young people in courses. More than ever, we are recieveing requests to have pupils with draw from courses.

There is much at stake for young people, and it is important that we do all be can to support them through before we agree to them waithdrawing. Where possible the focus should be on building resilience. SLT will:

discuss with PT to review progress
discuss with parent
consider of needs beyond school
decision
Info to Phil to update SQA data.

CLPL Corner - Teaching Strikes Back with Bruce Robertson

This is another great podcast from Darren Leslie's, 'Becoming Educated'. Bruce Robertson talks about one of his most recent books, "Teaching Strikes Back".

This podcast explores the curriculum. They discuss content and the place of knowledge, skills and experience in schools. they talk about curriculum (the what), pedagogy (the how) and the importance of educational research and cognitive science.

As always, a thought provoking reflection and discussion. I would highly recommend a listen.

‎Becoming Educated: Teaching Strikes Back with Bruce Robertson on Apple Podcasts‎Show Becoming Educated, Ep Teaching Strikes Back with Bruce Robertson - 17 Oct 2021

ICT CLPL from Dougie

Many of you use Classroom to collect pupils' written work. If so, you may be concerned about spotting plagiarism. The built in plagiarism check on Google Classroom can automatically scan submissions and flag up potentially plagiarised work at a single click. See here for a how to. It's dead easy.

Remember to get in touch if you or your team would like any support with anything digital learning related. I'm particularly keen to support any potential new users of Peardeck given how great it is at supporting whole class questioning and engagement, built in to your google slides. Maybe ideal for a team training session?

Professional Discussion Group - Thursday lunchtime, Strathendrick Suite

Thanks for the input this lunchtime. there is so much to unpack, I think we'll just continue to discuss the paper next Friday 19 lunchtime Strathendrick

A few weeks ago, a paper was released by Scot Gov called,

Scotland’s Curriculum: Into the Future: Implementation framework for the OECD’s 2021 review of Curriculum for Excellence (link below)

This is a key document for us, as the outcomes are going to shape everything from curriculum to assessment and even how our profession may develop and change.

The paper sets out a framework for how Scotland will address the recommendations in the OECD report.

It includes using the analysis and advice set out in Professor Stobart’s working paper, ‘Upper-secondary education student assessment in Scotland’ (shared in Balfron Matters last week).

Reform is being addressed under 5 Themes: