The CfE and Glow News e-update provides you with updates on Curriculum for Excellence and support for practitioners, along with all the latest developments within Glow.
Read the January issue to find out about the following:
- New case studies on National Assessment Resource
- Building your Curriculum: Developing your secondary curriculum
- Quality assurance and moderation – what is it?
- Recently published support materials for practitioners:
- New – National Qualifications
- Education Scotland’s Learning Blog
- Join the Great Climate Change Debate on Glow
- Glow Science wins BETT award
- Glow Light images needed – please send us your pictures
- New Panda UK blog offers news, ideas and learning resources
- Getting Outside: a new blog for outdoor learning
- A selection of Glow Cookbooks
New case studies on National Assessment Resource
Education Scotland has worked with a range of establishments to publish new case studies on the National Assessment Resource (NAR). These case studies focus on the process of recognising achievement, profiling and reporting.
All of Scotland’s local authorities were involved in developing these materials, which reflect the local flexibility that schools and local authorities have in developing their processes, in line with the guidance provided by Building the Curriculum 5. The materials cover the early years, primary, secondary and ASN sectors and all have been through a national quality assurance and moderation process.
Support materials are available to help practitioners find their way around NAR and include videos of teachers and headteachers talking about their experiences of NAR, step-by-step guides on how to get the most from using NAR, and a downloadable User Guide and poster. On NAR, and on the Education Scotland website, you will find information on assessment, quality assurance and moderation, all of which are integral to planning learning and teaching.
You can access these case studies by clicking on the 'Aspects of Assessment' tab within NAR. You will need to log in to NAR with your Glow log-in or through SQA Connect.
Building your Curriculum: Developing your secondary curriculum
Education Scotland has published a new resource as part of the Building your Curriculum series. Developing your Secondary Curriculum is designed to support staff in engaging in professional dialogue and covers a range of areas relating to secondary curriculum planning. The resource is intended as a toolkit that can be used selectively to focus professional dialogue on particular priorities for development.
Quality assurance and moderation – what is it?
Quality assurance and moderation is a vital part of Building the Curriculum 5. It helps to support teachers in delivering positive outcomes for children and young people. It builds upon your existing practices and is part of the day-to-day work of all establishments and local authorities.
Teachers already use a wide range of activities to ensure that high standards are maintained. Education Scotland is working with all education authorities to develop innovative practice both within individual schools and more widely across authorities. We will share these examples with you in the spring through our website.
Recently published support materials for practitioners:
Reference grammars for primary teachers of modern languages
These reference grammars aim to help primary teachers brush up on the basic rules of the modern language(s) they teach in primary schools. They cover French, Spanish, German and Italian.
New qualifications update
New Qualifications Update – December 2011
The Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) has published an update about latest draft documents for the new qualifications.
Music Courses – Your Feedback
The Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) is seeking the views of all music teaching staff on two proposals by the end of January 2012.
Latest draft documents
Unit Specifications for Access 2 and Access 3 are available on the SQA website. These documents define the mandatory requirements for each Unit and give more detail about what is required for each Unit in the Course.
Award Specifications are also available. These documents give information on the Award structure, details of any assessment requirements and guidance on access. In the new Awards there will be a focus on the additional skills that learners will develop such as skills for learning, skills for life and skills for work.
Give your feedback on the Awards by 29 February 2012.
Curriculum area events
Resources from the Curriculum Area events held last year, including presentations, workshop materials and some discussions from the events are available on Glow: and on SQA website for independent schools and colleges. Details have been sent to SQA coordinators.
Advice and guidance on new National Qualifications
Education Scotland is developing advice and guidance for practitioners on the delivery of courses within the new National Qualifications (NQ) framework. A new advice and guidance area within the NQ Support web pages is available, giving further information and linking to a new advice and guidance factfile and an online survey.
As part of the ongoing development work associated with new National Qualifications, Education Scotland consulted key partners to determine the type and nature of supplementary guidance which should be developed to support the new NQs.
The web pages explain the support that is currently in development and the form that this will take. This advice and guidance will be published in the spring.
Education Scotland’s Learning Blog
Visit Education Scotland’s Learning Blog for the latest information from teams.
Join the Great Climate Change Debate on Glow
The Education Scotland Global Citizenship team is inviting secondary schools to join in the Great Climate Change Debate on Glow.
This is a series of Glow Meets bringing together a panel of scientists and experts to answer questions and help learners navigate their way through climate fact, fiction and controversy. Join the discussion in Glow Meets on 23 January, 30 January and 6 February.
Glow Science wins BETT award
Twig Science won a BETT award earlier this month for their secondary science solution, Glow Science.
Glow Science is a free resource offering rich engaging learning material for pupils aged 8-14. It can be used in many different ways to support the Sciences experiences and outcomes, as well as other areas of Curriculum for Excellence. Glow Science has been available free to all teachers in Scotland since April 2011 and is accessed using your Glow username and password.
It includes over 500 three-minute films and their associated learning materials (including quizzes, lesson ideas, extension questions, diagrams, images), cover Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Earth Science..
Glow Light images needed – please send us your pictures
Have you been admiring the images on the Glow Light interface? If you have (or if you think they could be even better) this is your chance. You can provide the picture for Glow Light for the whole country to see. The picture might be of a well known local landmark, a local event or even a piece of pupil’s work. How you choose the image is for you to decide.
Please ensure that you put in the name of your authority, school (where appropriate) and contact details in case we need to ask you for more information.
Please upload your pictures to the Picture Library at least a week before the date it is due to go onto Glow Light. We cannot guarantee that your image will be used but we will use as many as possible.
New Panda UK blog offers news, ideas and learning resources
To mark the arrival of pandas Tian Tian and Yang Guang at Edinburgh Zoo, in December, Education Scotland set up a blog which is packed full of the latest news and links, resources, videos and competitions. The pandas offer another exciting opportunity for schools, teachers and pupils to engage with China, its language and culture.
The arrival also offers opportunities to stimulate learning right across Curriculum for Excellence, for example environment and cultural heritage, science, literacy and creativity. The Panda Blog provides ideas related to these examples.
Getting Outside: a new blog for outdoor learning
In Scotland, all children and young people are regularly expected to access learning through a consistent and progressive experience of the outdoors. Educators across sectors are building their curriculum to include work in curricular areas and inter-disciplinary projects delivered through outdoor learning. We hope that our new Getting Outside blog will provide a connecting point for our outdoor learning community and that we can share ideas, resources, materials, comments and discussions about outdoor practice and pedagogy.
Glow Cookbooks
Higher Computing – pupil support and pupil voice
Last session, the Computing Department in John Ogilvie High School, South Lanarkshire, decided to create a Glow Group to host all of the resources that pupils studying Higher Computing would need access to throughout the year. Joe Kane is Head of the Business Education and Computing faculty and undertook the task of building the Group.
To find out more read the Cookbook here.
Jessie Porter Nursery: Sharing and collaborating through Glow
Jessie Porter Nursery School in Dundee is a pre-school centre catering for close on one hundred children aged three to five years.
In this cookbook, Jo Bell, an ICT Staff Tutor (Early Years / Primary), describes how she worked with Jessie Porter Nursery School to develop a Glow Group aimed at showcasing the work that is going on in the nursery, strengthen Nursery / Primary transition links and to share how they are planning for and developing Curriculum for Excellence in the early years.
To find out more read the Cookbook here.
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