Using Glow for Personal Learning Plans – PLPs

Highlighting Relevant Capacities

Overview

Claire Reynolds is Principal Teacher at Holy Family Primary school in Kirkintilloch, East Dunbartonshire. She has responsibility for a P.7 class and is class committed 0.8. As part of school policy each child must complete a PLP involving evaluation of targets for Language, Mathematics and Health and Wellbeing. Following this evaluation new targets for each area are also set.In this cookbook we’ll look at how Claire used a Glow Group and the web parts within it to create a PLP for completion throughout the academic year 2009-2010 with her class. The cookbook will exemplify this good practice and show how to re-create it.

Context
Personal Learning Plans were introduced several years ago at Holy Family PS and are completed by all stages from P2-7 termly. Each child is required to set targets for literacy and numeracy as well as Health and Wellbeing and Personal and Social Development.
The PLPs are continually reviewed and adapted in terms of content in order to include curricular changes and in particular the impact of Curriculum for Excellence (CfE).

CFE Outcomes and Experiences met through this process are,

I can spell most of the words I need to communicate, using spelling rules, specialist vocabulary, self-correction techniques and a range of resources.
LIT 2-21a
Throughout the writing process, I can check that my writing makes sense and meets its purpose.
LIT 2-23a

By considering the type of text I am creating, I can select ideas and relevant information, organise these in an appropriate way for my purpose and use suitable vocabulary for my audience.
LIT 2-26a

Opportunities to carry out different activities and roles in a variety of settings have enabled me to identify my achievements, skills and areas for development. This will help me to prepare for the next stage in my life and learning.
HWB 2-19a

Each child is issued with a paper copy of the PLP which they should complete through the year. With the support of the class teacher in a personal interview the targets for literacy and numeracy are set. The child then takes the PLP home to share this with their parent/carer and to agree these targets with them. With their parent/carer they also agree Health and Personal and Social Development targets for the term. PLPs are then returned to school and referred to on a weekly basis to ensure that each child is on track to achieve their targets. At the end of each term the PLP goes home and with their parent/carer the child evaluates their progress on each of the set targets.
While this system has worked well the potential of Glow in order to provide this support for each pupil was recognised by Claire. The ideas were discussed with the SMT to agree to Claire using Glow for session 2009-2010 with her P.7 class for PLPs. The children had been using Glow for at least one year and were familiar with some basic web parts.
While the initial introduction to using Glow for PLPs would take some time and instruction with her class the life long skills the children would acquire would be transferrable to other Glow projects and in their use of the internet when uploading and downloading documents/files.
Claire introduced this project to her class in August 2009. Children who did not have access to the internet at home were very keen to use Glow and would use a relatives or library computer. Where this was not be possible the paper copy would be sent home.

Ingredients
What did Claire need to do to create the elements of the Glow Group and the PLP structure?

1. A Glow Group
2. Access to Glow Group for all pupils.
3. Pupil familiarity with uploading and downloading from My Glow
4. E-mail accounts for all pupils, in this case, Glow mail.
5. Access to a word processing package in school and at home.

It was necessary to ensure pupils had Contributor rights within the Glow Group to enable them download the PLP, complete it and upload it to their My Glow.

In the next section, we’ll take a look at the ‘Staff Communications’ Glow Group and learn how to recreate elements within it.

Recipe
The video below shows the ‘PLP’ Glow Group. The videos that then follow show how these elements can be recreated. Details are:

*What does the PLP Glow Group look like?

*How to remove a page from a glow group.

*How to design a page in a glow group.

*How to rename a web part.

*How to send targeted news from a Glow group.

*How pupils would download and upload documents using My Glow.

*Teacher Video on Impact of Glow

Impact
The impact of using Glow to create and complete PLPs as well as share them with parents has been very effective.
The pupils have gained many skills in using Glow through this project and are now much more confident in uploading and downloading items to and from Glow. This project has also helped to develop parental involvement in Glow activities and raised their awareness of some of the functionality and uses purpose of Glow as a Learning Platform.
There has been the obvious impact in terms of Eco School status and financially in terms of colour printing and paper. There has been real and purposeful use of ICT and Glow and it has been a good way to motivate the children to complete and evaluate their PLPs regularly. It has been found that the children are eager to use Glow and ICT for this task in comparison to paper copies.

Using Glow for Personal Learning Plans – PLPs2.957