Balfron Matters

18 October 2021

Weekly communication for staff

Dear colleagues,

Welcome back. I hope that you had an enjoyable and restful break.

As part of Open Doors, Lynn McAllister and I had a great morning in Expressive Arts at the end of term. It was really uplifting to see and hear our young people being both focused on learning and very creative in approaches. Our morning in a minute can be seen by following the Expressive Arts Highlights. Over the past few weeks, the team had been working on a range of fortnightly focus topics that were evident across the team lessons. These included meeting and greeeting all classes on arrival, giving positive encouragement (catching the good things) and ensuring learning Intentions are clear, reminded and referred to. The 'Pupil of the Month' board and celebration of success was also great to see. It is such a privilege to get into classrooms and I am looking forward to visiting all the others starting with the English Team on Tuesday with Gordon MacKay.

It has been great to get around the school and seeing our community come back to life in the building. The requirement for extended COVID mitigations meant that we had to make some big changes and now it is great to be able to get things back (mostly) to working order. With that in mind, I am looking for you help to get everything up to date. Please join me in removing any previous session posters or old and out of date items from the corridors or open areas.

It is going to be another busy week with S4 Parents' meeting on Wednesday and the many trips, clubs and extra activities. Thanks for all that you to to make Balfron a great school for our young people and a lovely place to work.

Finally, congratulations to David Whiteford, Clair Millar and Heather Ellis who secured the Project Leads posts. It is exciting to be able to invest directly in our school recovery in this way. I know that you will all be keen to join me in congratulating them and supporting them throughout the year.

Have a great week.

Elaine

This week at Balfron High School:

1C2 FCL Interviews
Open Doors in English (Tuesday)
S4 Parents Meeting (Wednesday)
Wellbeing Wednesday nominations

Next week:

The L&T group have created an input for Team Meetings

Day to Day Digital Tips

Phil has created some shortcuts for pupils when they logon to their Chromebooks.

Now when a pupil logs into their Chromebook, they will still be given the Glow Launchpad, but with 2 further tabs:

1. All Daily Announcements will be immediately available in the second tab. The source for these is a read-only drive that the Office Staff have ownership of.

It is linked in the School website under ‘news’ – its direct link is: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1gB1n4Fb63MGfKOnWDSdn_z6i3u9GsKeQ

2. A help page of all Chromebook shortcuts, including how to use accessibility settings, is available as the third tab.

It is important that all teaching and SfL staff are familiar with how to use the accessibility settings on a pupil CB, as well as pupils themselves.

The link is here: https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/183101

When you need cover - a little reminder

Staff should ensure that any cover requests for the next day are entered on the system by the end of break the day before.

Cover is done by lunchtime each day to ascertain if we need additional supply staff. In the event of an unexpected event occurring after that please contact Mrs McNeillis or Mrs Short.

It would be helpful if cover is entered as soon as you are aware it is needed. The earlier we have notification, the easier it is for us to judge when there may be issues.

Please do not enter dates in the American format as this can cause confusion!

CLPL Corner - Making a difference in our classrooms - Rosenshine's Principles

This week's suggestion is a dive into Barak Rosenshine's Principles of Instruction.

The poster on the right gives a summary of the 10 Principles of Instruction, generally considered great classroom practice.

The link above is Tom Sherringham's 30 minute overview of Rosenshine's Principles relating to questioning and checking for understanding (3 and 6 on the poster).

Tom Sherringham has recorded a series of Youtube videos called Kitchen Pedagogy where he explores key aspects of teaching.

Questioning & checking for understanding is going to be the first L&T focus of the year created by the Learning, Teaching & Assessment group. Activities and discussion will be shared at team meetings on the week beginning 25 October.

Next week is Wellbeing Week

The week will run from 25th October. Incorporated into the week will be:

Form class tasks
HWB theme across curriculum for S1-3 pupils
Active Girls Day
Boys Positive Mental Health Day
Parental engagement through a video
Staff Activities

We will supply form class leaders with tasks for each day covering a variety of topics.

The IDL will be lesson inserts or a theme for the week of wellbeing. The HWB Working Group will coordinate this, but each team will be responsible for planning this.

Active Girls day is a Sport Scotland project to promote girls' participation in Sport and Physical Activity. This will be led by Fiona Fisher and Sarah McLay and will take place on Thursday 27th October.

Boys positive Mental Health Day will will take place on Friday 28th October. Andrew Lauder is taking the lead on this one.

Professional Discussion Group - Thursday lunchtime, Strathendrick Suite

Massive thanks to Clair Miller who organised the last professional discussion group. Look out for your emails to get this week's topic.

GTCS Standard for Middle Leadership was been updated in August 2021

For PTs and aspiring PTs, The Standard for Middle Leadership provides an aspirational and developmental framework for teachers in or considering leadership roles. It outlines the strategic vision, professional knowledge and understanding, interpersonal skills and abilities and professional illustrations that support teachers in leadership roles.  Set alongside the Standard for Headship, these Professional Standards provide a framework for professional growth for teachers in leadership roles. Consequently, they have some additional purposes:

support for self-evaluation and reflection for teachers in, and aspiring to, formal leadership roles in our schools; 
informing the process of recruitment and selection; and 
contributing to dialogue about leadership and management.

Here is a link to the updated Standard for Middle Leadership

All five standards can be accessed on the GTCS website

Calendar 2021-22

18 October Return to school

20 October S4 Parents' Night

wb 25 October Team Meetings

28 October Leadership Team Meeting

S2 STEM Event, SCDI Energy Quest

wb 8 November Team Meetings

1 November S5/6 Parents Meeting

Calendar 2021-22

16 November S1 Parents' Meeting