Balfron Matters
Monday 19 June 2023
Weekly communication for staff
Dear colleagues,
I hope you have had a great weekend - just two weeks to go until we secure a well deserved holiday. We are nearly there!
There is so much to recognise and celebrate from last week. I hope that you are as proud as I am of the wide range of opportunities for young people that we collectively provide. Well done to Ben, Jasmin, Amelia and Summer who presented their film at the SEET Scotland Awards and won the prestigious award for use of language in their film. Thanks to Marie-Claire who encouraged and supported them in the making and delivery of the film based on the Sustainable Development Goal, No Poverty. The group made use of English, Spanish, French and Urdu to tell their story.
Massive thanks to Claire for her work in coordinating a highly successful three day P7 Transition. A very keen and excited cohort enjoyed a day on timetable, the Sports festival and for the first time, our excellent STEM festival. It was particularly positive to see our S6s provide support and and encouragement at the Sports festival and our very impressive S2 Young STEM leaders enjoyed having an input at the STEM festival.
An extensive amount of thought and work went into making all aspects of the transition high quality and fun - huge thanks to you all for that.
I don't think we could have wished for a better Sports Day - planning delivery, participation and weather were all fantastic. I would like to echo Neil's thanks to everyone. Such a successful day requires everyone to pull together, so a huge thank you all. A particular thanks to Neil and the team who have been building up to the finals day for some time. The quality of performances was superb with many new school records made. The ethos of participation and encouragement was also fantastic. A special well done to Scott who led, organised and encouraged young people in the events, from the microphone all afternoon. He was like a professional Sports Commentator - watch out Andrew Cotter!
The feedback regarding Jack, Fa and Noah's perfomance presenting at the national YPI event in Perth has been incredible. If you get a chance, to congratulate them, please do.
Our new S6 are proving to be an impressive cohort. Thanks for showing the videos made by the 15 Head Prefect candidates during Form time last week. From the voting data, ten pupils will go forward to interview on Monday. Wishing good luck to (in no particular order) Skye, Murrin, Amelie, Jasper, Harry, Euan, Zara, Isla, Jack and Logan. We are going to appoint six - one to link with each year group. I plan to share the outcome at the close of school on Monday. House Captain interviews will take place on 21st and 22nd June. Applicants can be found here. Thanks for your patience with the inevitable disruption needed to support the interviews.
Thanks to Neil Macquarrie for pulling together the suggested themes document for Form Class time. If you lead on an area that benefits from a whole school input, please input your theme on the document - Form Class themes. This will help us to avoid overload while not missing important themes.
It is our turn to host a VSE (Validated Self Evaluation) in September '23. This involves HTs from Dunblane and McLaren along with staff from their schools spending two days with us observing lessons, leading focus groups and reviewing our evidence. The focus will be QI 2.3 (learning, teaching & assessment) and one other, still to be identified. I will update you as soon as I can. An additional meeting has been added to the collegiate calendar 23-24 to take account of time needed for a briefing nearer the time. The calendar is just about ready for sign-off. Thanks for feeding your views into that.
Have a great week.
Elaine
This week at Balfron High:
Team Meetings
Mon: S2 Assembly
Head Prefect Interviews
Tues: S3 Assembly
Wed: S4 Assembly
Campsie House Captain Interviews
Lomond House Captain Interviews
Thurs: S5 Assembly
Endrick House Captain Interviews
Sports Awards
Fri: S6 Assembly
Modern Studies Interviews
CfE - Lomond 2, Science
Primary 7 Transition Highlights
Sports Day - Friday 16 June 2023
Last week at Balfron
When people outside your walls know what you are doing, it gives value to those inside
Photos from last week include:
Jack, Fa and Noah at the YPI national event
Jasper and Harry in the Donald Dewar Debating Final
Ben, Jasmin, Amelia, Summer at the SEET Scotland Awards
Assemblies - June
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SIP 2022-23 Review and Priorities for 2023-24
Assembly Programme April- May 2023
CLPL Corner
Building new vocabulary
The leap up into a new level, particulary in the senior phase, feels challenging for learners at first.
Strategies to support challenging vocabulary building are essential if our teaching styles are to be adaptive, meeting learning needs.
Check out these top tips below. The video clip is a fantastic example of supporting literacy in the classroom.
Top tips for vocabulary:
Say the word to students: using its correct pronunciation - get the class to repeat the word back to you.
Write it on the board – it is vital to write it out clearly learners can see as well as hear it. Learners can then use the 'look - say - cover - write approach' - there is a reason all primary teachers use this!
Break the word down into its parts – option to use different coloured pens for this.
Repeat the word one more time emphasising the different parts of the word
Discuss the etymology of the word – it is useful if you can link the word to everyday language that the learners are familiar with.
Give an example sentence using the word – if appropriate ask learners to write their own sentences using the new words they’ve learned.
Regularly reinforce the new vocabulary by revisiting it – use word games, such as bingo, hot seat and dominoes, or set spelling tests.
CLPL opportunities
Leadership courses for session 23/24
Sign up now!
There are a number of fully funder professional learning programmes available from Education Scotland for next session. Applications are now open. Of particular interest, I wanted to highlight the Educator Leadership Programme (ELP):
Have a look at these enquiry posters from our 2022-23 ELP Cohort: ELP 22/23 | Flickr and our 2021-22 TLP Cohort: TLP 21/22 | Flickr
There is also a wee Blog post that tells you a bit more about the programme. So if these posters or the Blog inspired you then why not join our growing community by signing up here.
For aspiring middle leaders, applications are open to the Aspiring to Middle Leadership course.
For Middle Leaders, applications are currently open for Middle Leaders Leading Change – Education Scotland (Rona Grant) has written about the programme here and for even more inspiration; have a look at her brilliant February Blog post: Middle Leadership Glue (education.gov.scot).
Digital CLPL
always available through the links below
Below is a link to Dougie's Tech Tips Play list. Always worth a look - great tip on getting rid of adverts from presentations using YouTube this week.
External CLPL
BHS Professional Learning Notice board.
Search. Click. Book
Powering up our seniors for successful studying
Study Skills Resources
National weekly study sessions: https://www.e-sgoil.com/
BHS Study techniques website: https://sites.google.com/stirlingschools.net/bhs-study-skills/home
NeLO Learning Spaces: https://www.thinglink.com/card/1421866155961745410
Achieve: https://achieve.hashtag-learning.co.uk/user-start/?next=/
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Teachers Guide to the BHS Study Planner - 3 min watch
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BHS senior study planner
e-sgoil weekly online supported study timetable
One portal to hold all information
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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
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