Encouraging independent learning in Advanced Higher German

Overview

The Modern Languages Department in James Young High School in Livingston, West Lothian, is always looking for ways to provide pupils with innovative and interesting resources and activities that will help them develop their language skills.

Sophie Martin is one of the teachers within the Department. She took an early interest in using Glow after being introduced to it by the school’s Glow Mentor, setting up a Glow Group within the Modern Languages Department, giving information to pupils on all of the courses taught there.

This then led her to create separate Glow Groups for the classes she teaches.

In this cookbook we will look at the Group that Sophie created to support her Advanced Higher German class.
In a second cookbook, we will look at how Sophie used Glow Learn to share listening and reading resources with the pupils.

Context

Sophie’s Advanced Higher German class this session had five pupils in it. She was keen to support them not only in the development of their language skills, but also to prepare them for the independent study that they will face when they go to University. She wanted to create an environment for the pupils that would enable them to support one another, as well as being supported by her as their teacher.

Sophie was keen to keep things simple, so rather then using the ‘Full Glow Group’ template when creating her Group, she chose instead to create it using the ‘Glow Group Document Library’ template.  This is a single page Glow Group which by default comes with only one web part – a Document store. Sophie then added additional web parts to the page. All of the Group’s content sits on this one page, making it very easy for the pupils to find what they are looking for.

Sophie made all of the pupils in the AH German class members of the Group, giving them Contributor rights.

There are a range of web parts on the page, all serving very specific purposes:

 Text Editor web part

The Text Editor web part was used to display photos of the many trips and activities that the class took part in. These activities really helped to bond the class.

This gives the class a great way of remembering the places they’ve visited, as well as adding interest and colour to the page.

Discussion Board

The Group has a discussion board which was used extensively by the pupils during the year.  They used it to post their thoughts and feelings about exams and to talk about their learning in general. They also used it to tell one another of resources that they themselves had come across and had found useful. This was a great way of facilitating peer support.

Document Store

Sophie used the Document Store in the Glow Group to upload many useful documents for the pupils, which they could then access throughout the year, both in school and at home.

These resources would have previously been shared with pupils by saving them individually onto each pupil’s USB memory sticks or by printing out paper copies, so uploading them to the Group made sharing resources simpler.

Class notes were also uploaded. Inevitably in S6, pupils often had to miss class for events such as University open day visits. Having access to the notes meant that they were not missing out completely on what had been taught and could catch up in their own time. They could also refer back to these notes when revising or doing homework.

The pupils themselves used the Document store to upload their essays for marking. They could do this from home and so not have to worry about remembering to bring in their homework the next day!

Web Links web part

Links to useful website, appropriate to Advanced Higher German were added to the Web Links web part.

Sophie altered the display of the web part to enable the Notes field to be displayed. Here she has added comments about each of the sites, helping pupils know the content and purpose of each. This saves them visiting lots of sites needlessly, as they can simply go to the site that Sophie has indicated as being appropriate.

Glow Learn

Sophie also made use of Glow Learn to support the pupils. She built a course and uploaded resources into it then enrolled the pupils on it to give them access to the word documents, powerpoint files and other resources that were there.

One of the main things that the Glow Learn course was used for though was to give pupils access to sound files, which they used as listening practice in preparation for their exams.

Sophie found this to be really beneficial, as did the pupils.

Find out more about this and the pupils’ thoughts on having access to audio files, in the cookbook ‘Ecoutez! Using Glow Learn to support listening in Modern Languages’

Ingredients

To be able to provide this range of support for the AH German class, she needed to do the following:

- Create Glow Group at school level, using the ‘Document Library’ template
- Give the pupils contributor rights to the Group
- Add in further web parts: Web Links, Text Editor, Discussion board
- Modify the web links web part to show the Notes field

- Create courses in Glow Learn
- Upload resources to the courses
- Enrol pupils onto the courses to give them access to the resources

In the following videos we will take a look at the AH German Glow Group in James Young High School then find out in the subsequent videos how to replicate some of the elements within it. There will be a second cookbook looking at how to create a course in Glow Learn as a way of sharing resources with pupils.

Overview of the AH German Glow Group (2:32)

How to create a Glow Group using the ‘Glow Group Document Library’ template (3:03)

How to add members to a Glow Group (5:28)

How to add web links and display the Notes field (4:50)

How to add images to the Text Editor web part (8:49)

Impact

Sophie feels that the Glow Group brought real benefits to the pupils studying Advanced Higher German.

She feels that the Glow Group really brought the class together. They used it in the same sort of way as they might use a social networking site like ‘Facebook’, but for educational purposes. In their discussions, they were very open with one another when talking about how they were feeling about exams. This was a great help to the pupils as it gave them a means of talking about their worries and concerns and enabled them to get support from their peers.

Using Glow also enabled Sophie to give pupils access to audio files which allowed them to practice their listening skills. Since audio files can often be quite large, they can often be difficult to share, so Glow gave a means of doing this easily.

In general, Sophie feels that using the Glow Group provided a great channel for communication and collaboration, both between her and the class and also between the pupils themselves.