Recognising pupils’ wider achievement

S6 pupils and Mr Russell

Sixth year pupils at John Ogilvie High School in South Lanarkshire have recently started to use a Glow Group to store their records of achievement. Senior staff are so pleased with the results that they plan to extend the process to the rest of the school. This cookbook looks at the system the school has developed.

Context:

When Eddie Morrison became headteacher at John Ogilvie High School in South Lanarkshire two years ago, he was keen to encourage pupils to reflect on their achievements, their participation in the school, their family and community, and how these contributions shape their own development.

Working with senior staff Des Reilly and Fiona Mullen, Eddie has developed a simple but formal mechanism – the school’s own diploma – to recognise what pupils have achieved in their lives. The diplomas are presented to the departing sixth year pupils at a valedictory mass.

Eddie Morrison talks about the John Ogilvie HS diploma

click to enlarge

This year Eddie wanted to streamline the process and asked Technology teacher Colin Russell to see how Glow could be used to hold a Record of Achievement for each pupil. Colin created an S6 Wider Achievement Glow Group, and after some experimentation with the default web parts, decided to create a custom list web part. This has a number of advantages over a standard Documents web part, in particular being able to fine-tune the permissions so that while teachers can see all the documents uploaded, pupils can see only their own. The process for creating a custom list, and setting the permissions, is shown in the ‘how-to’ videos later in this cookbook. A helpsheet is also available:  Helpsheet – creating a custom list web part – GC554_v1 1

Updating RoAs

To start creating their Record of Achievement, each pupil works through a questionnaire, which prompts them to reflect on what they have accomplished: the positions of responsibility they hold, school committees they belong to, whether they have participated in presentations or musical events, undertaken voluntary work in the community or been involved in environmental campaigns.

The pupil then downloads a template from the Wider Achievement Glow Group to start to build a personal Record of Achievement. They upload their record to the custom list web part, which allows each pupil to see their own record, but not those of other pupils.

With the Records of Achievement being readily accessible in Glow, pupils can edit their own record as often as they wish, and many have been keen to work on them at home.

A tour of the S6 Wider Achievement Glow Group

Colin Russell and sixth year pupils talk about the Records of Achievement

Ingredients:

In order to use a custom list web part to hold pupils’ records of achievement, Colin needed:

• A Glow Group with all S6 pupils as members
• All S6 pupils given Contributor rights
• Relevant staff given Web Designer rights to the group

Recipe:

The video clips below show:

How to create a custom list web part

How to modify item-level security on the web part

How to change permissions on a web part

How to save a custom list web part as a template

How to create a new web part from the template

Impact:

For staff supporting pupils in creating their records of achievement, the ease of access to all pupils’ documents through Glow is proving highly beneficial, providing a far more effective means of reviewing the documents and giving feedback to pupils.

For pupils, access to their record both at home and at school has been very motivating, with pupils regularly updating their record following discussion with staff, other pupils or their parents. Pupils are also recognising the potential for using a discussion board in their Wider Achievement Glow Group to ask for information or help from their peers.

For office staff, the task of creating the diplomas should be considerably quicker this year as they are able to access pupils’ records of achievement and copy text directly to the diplomas.

The school is now planning to create similar Wider Achievement Glow Groups for the current S4 and S5 pupils. Each pupil will create a Record of Achievement and update it regularly as they move up the school. On visits to the school in coming months, P7 pupils will also start to log their achievements using a record sheet based on the four capacities of Curriculum for Excellence.

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