Using Glow In Primary to Secondary Transition (part 1)

Overview
Lairdsland Primary School is one of 5 schools whose pupils move on to Lenzie Academy. Mrs Mackenzie, the Primary 7 teacher, used Glow to ease the transition between primary and secondary. She created a Glow group at local authority level that was accessible to the staff and S6 pupils at Lenzie Academy and the P7 staff and pupils at Lairdsland Primary school and the other associated primaries.

This Glow group provided the mechanism for:
• P7 pupils to use the discussion boards to have their questions answered by S6 pupils
• Secondary subject teachers to introduce their subjects through Glow Meet to the pupils and answer questions specific to their subjects

This cookbook will show how the group was set up with membership from a number of schools and also how multiple discussion boards were set up in the Glow group to allow separate Q and A sessions to take place with different teachers and the S6 pupils.

Context

Mrs MacKenzie saw Glow as being ideal for developing and building upon the existing transition process.  To move things forward she met with Jim Melrose the DHT of Lenzie Academy and Jan Pollok the schools link QIO.  6 departments in Lenzie Academy were identified as participants and then links were made with the other 4 associated primary schools – Lenzie, Lenzie Moss, Millersneuk all from East Dunbartonshire and Auchinloch from North Lanarkshire.

After getting agreement from all schools involved regarding the approach,  Mrs MacKenzie went ahead and created the group which was sited at Local Authority level and membership given to the relevant people from all schools including those in the different local authority.

All 6 departments (English, Science, Art, PE, Maths and Business Ed) all agreed to follow the same basic format of their Glow page:

• An Ask the Teacher discussion forum to allow the pupils to ask questions about the subject
• A Glow Meet to introduce staff and/or launch a challenge for the P7s.

English: Mr McKinstry delivered a spooky story writing lesson to all P7 pupils using Glow Meet and then set a competition.  The children had to write a 100 word spooky story that was then uploaded to Glow.  Glow Meet was then used to announce the winners at each school and  the overall winner.  Unbeknown to the children Mr McKinstry was actually in the overall winner’s school.  When he announced this and that he would be opening the door of the winning classroom the tension was palpable.  It was even better when he opened the classroom door and the children let out an enormous roar!

PE: Mr Imrie used the Glow page to advertise PE festivals and let the children know the type of after school clubs they could be involved in.  Over 100 questions were asked by the pupils and Mr Imrie managed to answer them all.  The discussion forum was only open for a month to reduce the workload on the secondary staff.

Maths: Mr Jarman used the Glow pages to launch a monthly maths puzzle.  A Glow Meet for all P7 pupils was held to tell them about the puzzles.  The children could then post the answers to the group and Mr Jarman also included useful maths websites, maths clubs in Lenzie Academy and answered questions in his Ask the Teacher discussion forum.

Art and Business Education: Mr Cassidy and Mrs Scott  working collaboratively, the 2 teachers asked the children to complete a questionnaire about good logo designs for a health promoting t-shirt.  The children used the survey tool in Glow to do this.  The S1 art pupils then designed logos which were uploaded to Glow and the P7 pupils voted on their favourite.  The S1 Business Ed. pupils then worked out the cost of making the t-shirts and the winning design was printed for the P7 pupils to wear on their Get Active day as part of their induction.  The children also had the opportunity to ask questions about both subjects.

Science: Mr Melrose and Mrs Kerr held a Glow Meet for all the P7 pupils where they carried out a lot of very explosive experiments.  The children were then set a simple science experiment challenge, the answers to which they had to bring with them to their induction days.

A separate page in the Glow Group was then created to allow the P7 pupils to ask the Lenzie Academy Prefects questions about life at Lenzie Academy.  This proved to be very popular.

Ingredients
The elements that Mrs Mackenzie required to complete this task in Glow were:
• A Glow group at local authority level
• Separate pages in the Glow group for each subject matter and for the liaison with the S6 pupils
• Different discussion boards on each page
• Different document web parts on each page
• Access to Glow for her pupils plus access for the teachers and pupils at Lenzie Academy

The Glow group was set up with membership from across all the schools, they had to site this at Local Authority level to ensure it was within the line of sight for all people involved. Line of sight means it appears in their My Glow Groups list. Another option would have been to have the Glow group at school level however if this had been chosen then Vicky would have had to send the link to each school involved who would then have had to paste the link somewhere in Glow. By putting the Glow group at LA level this extra task was not required.

Recipe
How was the Glow group set up?

Impact
Vicky ran a survey of her pupils at the end of the project using a survey web part to find out how the project had gone with her pupils. (see the separate cookbook to establish how this can be done).

The results were overwhelmingly positive:
73% of pupils said the project helped them prepare for life at secondary school
76% of pupils found the answers to their questions helpful
70% said the project should be repeated next year
66% said they would be willing to be the secondary pupils next year, helping the next year’s P7

(see the separate Glow Cookbook on this same project to find out how Glow Meet was used and also how the survey tool was used during the project)

Using Glow In Primary to Secondary Transition (part 1)4.753