Balfron Matters
19 April 2022
Weekly communication for staff
Dear colleagues,
I hope that you all had a very pleasant and restful break. It was certainly needed! Many thanks to those of you who gave time to run Easter School sessions. I know that young people and their families appreciated this. I have received some lovely feedback. with the remaining funding, we are now offering Saturday sessions - more details below.
As we adapt to changes in our day to day lives, I thought an update on COVID mitigations in school would be useful.
19 April - no requirement to LFD test every week
Face coverings are encouraged in indoor communal areas, but not mandatory. We will continue to offer masks to pupils as they come in to school in the morning.
Pre-pandemic absence codes will be used on SEEMiS
Day trips and residentials permitted
No restrictions on parents and wider community entering the school
30 April - symptomatic testing for most people ends - Testing sites will close
The last day for Senior Phase pupils is Friday. While S4 & S5 will be in classes, S6 will be in for a graduation type assembly, brunch and some games on the astro. They have missed out on such a lot over the last two years, that I hope we are able to give them a positive send-off. Your help and support in supervising this would be welcome and appreciated if you are free. We will start in the theatre, move to the atrium and then the astro.
Finally, congratulations to Andrew Burns who secured a permanent chemistry post with us at the end of term.
Have a great week.
Elaine
This week at Balfron High:
Team Meetings
Friday - S6 Leavers' Assembly & Brunch
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From wb 25 April - S1-3 assemblies will run in the theatre.
Celebrating success assemblies will kick off the new term.
Reminder - Sharing Estimates with Young People
We will be sharing estimates with young people and their parents on 20 April. Estimates should be entered into the Tracking & Monitoring module.
The absolute latest submission is by 3pm on 19th April. Phil will generate reports after this time.
These will be genrerated from SEEMiS.
Ukraine Fundraiser Week
I would like to extend a massive thank you to Scott Perman and the many fabulous teaching and support staff who supported his idea to fund raise in the last week of term. Raising over ÂŁ2200 was fantastic and it struck me that the range of activities and support that everyone gave brought the community together in a way that has been missing since pre-pandemic days. The wonderful mural on display, created by S2s (designed and led by the Art Team), send a powerful message and set the scene wonderfully for the week. Here are some photos of some of the many activities throughout the week, culminating in our non-uniform day. Thank you all so much!
Saturday Supported School Programme
Thanks to those of you who have already shared availability for Saturday sessions. Payment will be made in the same way that was managed for Easter School. The payment for sessions is ÂŁ 25.17 per hour. Each session is 2 hours. We used around half of our budget total (ÂŁ6,400 aprox) for Easter school which leaves us a max of 64 two hour sessions.
They will run in mornings only from 10.30-12.30pm
If you are keen to offer a session, Check that the date you can offer suits your SQA exam date .
Sign up if you are available to offer Saturdays here
CPL Corner
More from Tips for Teachers. This episode is an interview with Kate Jones. Kate is well known for her work on pedagogical practice. I love that these are time-stamped. That means we can jump straight to a particular item of interest.
Kate's top tips are:
1. Sometimes it is better to review than retrieve (03:33)
2. Make use of the Encoding specificity principle (19:46)
3. Take a low effort, high impact approach to task and question design (34:28)
4. How to make the best use of technology for retrieval practice (48:34)
5. How to design good multiple choice questions (1:06:21)
Below is a link to all of the suggested CLPL resources from 2021-22
I became interested in the differing purpose of review and found this short Rosenshine Masterclass, from Tom Sherington, very useful.
Calendar 2021-22
19 April Return to school
Team meetings
22 April Leavers' Brunch/Graduation morning
25 April SQA Exam Leave starts
Leadership Team Meeting
29 April In-service Day
Calendar 2021-22
2 May Holiday
11 May Working Groups- Tri-Learning
Health & Wellbeing - Counselling for staff
Did you know counselling is available through Stirling Council?
Employee Counselling is available through our Occupational Health provider, People Asset Management (PAM)
There are a few ways employees can request Counselling.
Stuart Shaw on shaws@stirling.gov.uk
Contact hr@stirling.gov.uk
Call Ann at PAM on 0800 882 4102
If you want some more information about counselling, what to expect or looking for self-help resources then please pop in and see Karin Figliolini or drop her an email.
Useful Links
S:\_Shared\_Weekly Info\Staff Cover\2021-2022
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Quality Assurance 2021-22 - Classroom Visits
Term 1 Classroom Observations
Our observation pro forma is based on the HGIOS QI, 2.3
Features of highly effective practice are on page 2 along with challenge questions.
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Quality Assurance 2021-22
Open Doors Dates
I will be joined by a PT for Open Doors this session as follows:
7 October Expressive Arts L McAllister
19 October English G MacKay
28 October Science N Macquarrie
9 November Health M Skinner
25 November Mod Languages A Barrie
29 November Technologies D Gormal
6 December Social Subjects S Boyle
10 February Maths M Young