Continuity of Learning and Emergency Closure Planning
Continuity of Learning and Emergency Closure Planning (Part 1)
Overview
All Local Authorities are required to have in place, measures to ensure continuity of learning for pupils. They are required to provide learning and teaching opportunities should a pupil or pupils be unable to attend school. This may be required for an individual pupil who is absent due to long-term illness, or for all pupils in the event of a school closure due to adverse weather, failure of the school heating system, or some other reason.
West Lothian has been looking at Glow as one way of addressing this.
Context
West Lothian has been keen to explore a range of ways in which Glow can be used to support pupils. Whilst this has been initiated by the need for continuity planning in the event of non-school attendance, there is also a desire to support pupils more generally.
Laura Compton, the Glow Key Contact for West Lothian, met with a small group of classroom practitioners and a member of the National Glow Team, to discuss the variety of ways in which they might use Glow for this. Within their discussions, the group was very conscious of the need to minimise the amount of work that this might involve for teachers.
Since all schools in West Lothian had previously had support in their implementation of Glow, many teachers were already creating Glow Groups to use with their own classes. The group therefore decided to capitalise on this in order to provide support across the Authority.
Rather than new Local Authority Glow Groups being created for each subject area, West Lothian decided to utilise existing school groups, with their initial focus being to provide support for pupils approaching SQA examinations.
All of West Lothian’s 11 Secondary schools were asked to nominate teachers who were already using Glow with their classes, and who already had learning and teaching resources held within a Glow Group. The teachers were asked if they would be willing to open up these Glow Groups to pupils from across the Authority, to enable them to have access to materials from not only their own school, but from others too. This meant that if, for example, a pupil studying Higher English did not have access to a Higher English Glow Group within their own school, they would be able to access one in another school.
It was then decided that a Glow Group would be created at Local Authority level, with all pupils and teachers from all school having contributor rights. Within the Group is a page for each subject, with links on the page to the existing school based Glow Groups. Pupils have reader access to the Groups that are not in their own school.
Also on each page is a Document store with learning and teaching resources, and a Web Links web part with links to useful subject-specific sites. Pupils will be able to receive remote tuition or advice from a teacher in any school across the Authority using the communication web parts, since each page also contains a Glow Chat, a Glow Meet and a Discussion Board.
Not all subject areas or levels will be covered initially, but it is hoped that the range available will increase as more teachers become involved. Also, provision will be extended to lower Secondary and to Primary pupils too.
In this cookbook we will look at
• The West Lothian Pupil Study Support Glow Group
• How to set up a similar Glow Group
Ingredients
What did West Lothian need to set this up?
• A Glow Group, accessible by all staff and pupils in the Local Authority
• Membership for all pupils to Glow Groups in schools other than their own
• The support of teachers
Recipe
In this section, we will look at the current structure of the West Lothian Pupil Study Support Glow Group and then find out how to set up a similar type of Group.
Video Clips:
What does the West Lothian Pupil Study Support Glow Group look like? (4:02)
How to create new List web parts (5:39)
Local Authority Thoughts
Listen to Laura Compton, Glow Key Contact for West Lothian, talk about the Authorities reasons for using Glow as part of their business continuity planning:
Interview with Laura Compton (2:00)
Next Steps
At the point of writing this, the Glow Group is still in the process of being populated and has not yet been opened up to pupils.
West Lothian is also considering the potential of Glow Learn to provide similar Authority-wide support for pupils. This will require further support for staff though to enable this to happen.