Sharing Learning Intentions with pupils and parents
Overview
Kerry Malcolm
Kerry Malcolm is P1-4 teacher at Fisherton Primary School. Her 09-10 class had 22 pupils. Kerry received an hour’s introductory training session from a Glow Mentor. Being quite computer literate to start off with Kerry immediately saw the potential within Glow for the pupils to enjoy using it and to expand learning in her classroom. She was keen that Glow would encourage pupils to be more involved in their own learning and help them become more independent learners. She notes that working in a multi-composite class there is always the challenge of gaining more time to work with pupils and ensuring that they are always focussed and on-task. She could see that using Glow would help achieve this.
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There are 2 Cookbooks available on Fisherton Primary’s use of Glow. You will find one on their use of Glow Chat for Book Detectives here – Using a Glow Chat for Book Detectives work at Fisherton Primary.
In this cookbook, we will find out:
• What the Fisherton Primary P1-4 Glow Group looks like
• How Kerry made use of a page in the Glow Group for Learning Zone information
Context
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Kerry was discovering at parents’ meetings that the parents really weren’t very sure about what was going on in their child’s class and with their learning. Being a parent herself, she knows it is hard to get information from your own child about what they are learning in school. Although the Fisherton parents don’t yet have Glow log-ins, the school are about to set up a parent workshop on Glow. In this workshop they will explain what it is and how the pupils are using it in class.
She knows the pupils are accessing Glow at home and the parents will see this but feels the parents are still a bit baffled by Glow. To help combat this Kerry has also set up a Learning Zone page in Glow so that the parents would have an idea of what is going on in school. The school does send out a termly newsletter stating what the pupils are going to be learning that term. However, Kerry though that using web parts on a page in Glow would allow the facility of breaking this information down and being able to share it with parents through their child logging on to Glow from home. Parents are able to become, as Kerry puts it, “co-educators”. They can ask questions of their child about what’s on the Learning Zone page and help with homework.
To decide what goes into the Learning Zone Kerry will have a look at her Forward Plans and work out what they’re going to be doing for the next month. She will then put this into more ‘child-friendly’ language. The pupils then use this space as a guide for what will be coming up next and will often discuss what’s coming up with Kerry in the classroom. They are then more motivated and involved in their own learning themselves. It helps them know what is coming up and what to prepare for.
Kerry was given some time out of class for a one-to-one introduction of Glow to every pupil. She did some more focussed training with a particular P6 pupil who supports their own P5-7 teacher and class with Glow and also occasionally gives support to the P1-4 class. Pupils had home access right from the start of using Glow although not all pupils are able to access it from home. The pupils were encouraged to keep their Glow username and password in their homework diaries and this has worked well.
Ingredients
The Learning Zone page
Image web part
At the top of the page is an image web part to set the scene and make the page more attractive for the pupils and their parents
Learning Zone text editor web part
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This contains bold text to invite parents and pupils to check out the learning intentions for the coming month
Text editor web parts for Maths and Language
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These web parts are divided into a colour coded section for each year to give information for what’s coming up. At the start of term, at the moment, they have yet to be filled with the learning intentions.
Text editor web parts for Health and Wellbeing and Social Subjects
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The topic for the coming months will be listed in each of these web parts.
What did Kerry need to do to allow her class Glow Group to act as a hub for the P1-4 pupils?
- A Glow Group built at school level
- Set Contributor membership for all the pupils in the class
- Create a new page for the Learning Zone
- Add an image web part with an image to the top of the page
- Add 5 text editor web parts to contain information
Recipe
The first two videos below act as a virtual tour by Kerry of the Fisherton Primary School P1-4 Glow Group. Please note that the audio for this tour was recorded before the end of the 2009/2010 session but the video to go along with it was recorded at the start of the 2010/2011 session. As a result some of the aspects that Kerry describes for a page have been slightly changed for the start of the new term. The videos that then follow show how the elements within the Learning Zone page can be recreated. Details are:
Tour of the Group Part 1 (5:14)
Tour of the Group Part 2 (5:09)
Creating a new page in the Glow Group (1:14)
Adding an image web part to the page (4:49)
Adding the 5 text editor web parts to the page (1:24)
Changing the titles of the web parts (1:40)
Adding information to the text editor web parts (5:03)
Impact
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Kerry feels that sharing the Learning Zone page through pupils logging onto Glow with their parents from home allows the parents to participate in their child’s learning. Kerry is keen to get parents set up with their own log-ons for Glow and to this end she will be setting up a parents workshop on Glow in the near future.
Kerry speaks about the Learning Zone (2:26)
Laurel, Heather, Roisin and Emily speak about using Glow at Fisherton (2:14)
Laurel, Heather, Roisin and Emily talk about the Learning Zone page (0:38)
