Supporting progression and continuity in Maths and Numeracy
Margaret Tracey and Jim Reid are the Glow Key Contacts for South Lanarkshire Council. Through discussion and collaboration with the Local Authority’s QIO with responsibility for Mathematics and Numeracy, they were keen to make use of Glow to address the issues of progression and continuity within the Curriculum for Excellence Mathematics strands.
Context
After consultation with the Local Authority’s ‘Training – Learning and Teaching Group’, Margaret and Jim decided to use Glow to give teachers access to resources and ideas that would enable them to work confidently with the Curriculum for Excellence Experiences and Outcomes and also give them a place to communicate, discuss their approaches to learning and teaching and to share further resources. This was partly done to remove the need for every teacher to have to repeat the same process in every school – using a Local Authority Glow Group helps reduce the workload for staff. After consideration, it was decided to do this initially for Maths/Numeracy, English/Literacy and for Science.
Margaret Tracey explains this in the following videos:
Margaret Tracey: Part 1 – Why South Lanarkshire decided to do this (1:51)
Margaret Tracey: Part 2 – How the content was decided upon (1:34)
Margaret Tracey: Part 3 – How the Authority plans to evaluate it (1:40)
The Working Party
Aubrey Taylor is one of South Lanarkshire’s Glow Development Officers, currently seconded from Cathkin Primary School. She was tasked with setting up the working party to look at the Maths and Numeracy Experiences and Outcomes. She was also responsible for creating and structuring the Local Authority Level Glow Group that the working party would use to upload and share their resources and lesson ideas. Aubrey talks about this:
Aubrey Taylor: Building the Glow Group (1:05)
The members of the working party chosen were experienced practitioners, and were selected so as to represent each of the Curriculum for Excellence levels. There was one person for each of Early, First and Second levels and two who worked together on both third and fourth levels.
It was decided that the group would be tasked with providing learning and teaching activities and resources for two of the strands within the Mathematics and Numeracy experiences and outcomes: Estimation and Rounding, and Patterns and Relationships. This decision came after consultation with Headteachers and schools to find out which topics they might most like to have initial support for when implementing Curriculum for Excellence. They were also chosen so as to make best use of existing resources and expertise.
A series of meetings was set up for the working party to get together, discuss their task, talk about learning and teaching and to plan the structure and content for the Glow Group. The meetings took place every three weeks or so, and after each meeting, the members of the working party were tasked with preparing specific resources and carrying out specific assignments. This ensured continuity and consistency across the levels.
The meetings and tasks gave the members of the working party the opportunity to really explore the content of the Experiences and Outcomes, and also to reflect on what content would come both before and after the specific level they were tasked with looking at. They found this a particularly useful and productive exercise.
The working party also benefitted from input from one of the writers of the Curriculum for Excellence Maths and Numeracy outcomes, who was able to assist in the understanding and breaking down of the outcomes, to ensure no content was missed, misunderstood, or included at the wrong level.
The Glow Group
It was decided that since there were only two strands being looked at by the working party, all of their resources and lesson activities would be housed within a single Glow Group. This Glow Group is currently called Working Group – Maths, but will soon be renamed.
Page tabs were created for the stands and levels: there is a separate page tab for each level for the Estimation and Rounding strand and a separate page tab for each level for the Patterns and Relationships strand.
There is also a page for staff – a place for them to discuss their uses of the resources, their own learning and teaching ideas, and for them to upload further resources to enhance bank of materials able to be used by all practitioners across the Local Authority. This page will soon be removed and a sub-Glow Group created for staff instead, so that pupils will not have access to it. It was created as a page initially to simplify the process for the working party.
Each page has a similar layout to help ease users’ navigation around the Group.
There is a range of web parts used on each page, all of which were agreed upon by the members of the working party. Aubrey added the required web parts and created new web parts as required.
Web parts used on each page:
Text Editor
There is a text editor web part on each page. It is used to show the Outcome(s) being covered at the level and give information on the key concepts being explored. The border and title bar of the web part has been removed to give the illusion that the text is written directly onto the page.
Web Links
Each page has a web links web part, containing links to sites which have relevant resources and activities at the appropriate level. It was necessary for Aubrey to create a brand new web links web part for each page to avoid seeing the same web links web part appearing on every page.
Document Store
There is a Document Store on each page, containing learning and teaching resources and activities, all relevant to the particular Curriculum for Excellence level being looked at on that page. Like the web links web part, the Document Store is a ‘list’ web part. It was therefore necessary for Aubrey to create a new Document Store for each page, again to avoid having duplicate stores on every page.
Discussions
The staff page in the Glow Group has a Discussions web part, to enable practitioners from all schools across the Local Authority to share ideas and talk about how they are using the resources provided. This will be useful for all, but will perhaps be particularly useful for staff who do not have a stage partner in their school, or who are new to a stage or level, as this will enable them to collaborate with staff from outwith their own school. It will also support communication and collaboration across levels and sectors.
Access for Practitioners and Pupils
All staff and pupils in South Lanarkshire will have access to the Glow Group. Staff have Contributor permissions and pupils have Reader with Discussions rights. This will help to foster increased collaboration and communication across schools. Staff should look out for information about the launch of this Group in the coming weeks.
Aubrey Taylor talks about this:
Aubrey Taylor: Access and Permissions (0:24)
Ingredients
What did South Lanarkshire have to do to create the ‘Working Party – Maths’ Glow Group, build its structure and add content, giving staff and pupils access?
- Create a Glow Group at Local Authority Level
- Add staff and pupils from all schools in South Lanarkshire as members
- Add and rename pages
- Add a text editor web part to each page and add content to it
- Create new web links web parts and add them to each page
- Create new Documents stores and add them to each page
- Add a Discussion Board for Staff
In the following videos we will take a look at the Working Party – Maths Glow Group, then find out how to replicate some of the elements within it in the accompanying ‘how to’ videos.
Tour of the South Lanarkshire ‘Working Party – Maths’ Glow Group (6:34)
How to add and rename pages in a Glow Group (3:08)
How to add the text editor web part to a page and add content to it (3:59)
How to remove the border from a web part (2:21)
How to create a new web links web part (6:34)
How to create a new Document Store (5:36)
How to add posts to a Discussion Board (2:26)
Impact
The Glow Group has not yet been used by staff, as the working party has only recently completed its work. It is due to be launched across the Local Authority very shortly though, and its name will be changed to reflect the fact that it is now not merely for the use of the working party.
That said, there has already been a lot of benefit returned from the work that has been carried out by the working party. They feel that it has been invaluable to have been able to spend really focused time looking in detail at the Experiences and Outcomes and really understanding what is required from them. They have also greatly appreciated and benefited from the chance to listen to practitioners from other stages and other sectors, to learn about what is covered at levels before and after their own area of expertise, and to find out about the different types of learning activities that take place.
Some members of the working party talk about this:
Aubrey, Sorrell and David: Benefits to the working party (1:23)
Hear them also talking about the benefits they feel practitioners will get from the Glow Group:
Aubrey, Sorrell, David: Benefits for practitioners (0:42)
There are plans to evaluate the benefits of the Group, by using a survey within the Glow Group to gather opinion on how useful the Group and its resources are to practitioners. The amount of traffic on the Group will also be interrogated through use of the Glow Management Reports which Margaret Tracey has access to, to find out how well it is being used.
Read how South Lanarkshire have implemented similar projects for Literacy and Science in the following Glow cookbooks:
Supporting continuity and progression in Literacy and English
October 25, 2010 - 12:27 pm
Thanks for all the hard workevryone, I’ll certainly be passing this on to the rest of the staff and looking forward to it all up and running (I can see the new menus in already).