CPD Forum

Hi Dehra, we are working in partnership with a local Primary School as a result of the school receiving funding to raise attainment.  The family learning started last week, and we delivered to 4 groups of families, 2 Reading with families of P2/3 and 2 Numeracy with families of P4/5.  This will continue next term with different families, and also another 2 groups of families for P6/7 shall be working on a combination of literacies and PSD.

I've developed the numeracy learning and teaching for this raising attainment project, and we engaged with 10 families last week, we hope to have more come along this week.  Our main aim is to support parents/carers to be able to help their children to improve their maths.

My colleagues and I would be more than happy to share information with anyone interested. 

As discussed recently Dehra, and for anyone else about to work on Raising Attainment projects, I found the Scottish Survey of Literacy and Numeracy (SSLN) reports on Education Scotland website and also Renfrewshire Council's progression and support pathways useful starting points to plan and prepare the learning and teaching.  I also met with the literacy and numeracy champions of the Primary School to gain an idea of where the learning was at with the particular year groups I was working with.  Due to the family learning aspect, I used spikey profiles and a very simple self assessment tool at the start of the course to help all learners, children and parents, to gauge where they were at in their maths and also their confidence levels in the use of maths.

Hi Dehra,

In response to your email today (see below), I thought I would just share here, and perhaps we could start up this discussion again.

We are in the process of reviewing the processes and paperwork we use within the families and communities strand of the attainment challenge (p1-p3). In particular we are trying to improve how we gather, record and evidence the impact participation in our family learning programmes is having on the wider family, and how that filters through to the child’s attainment in the classroom. Would any of your team be able to share the process, paperwork or even tools you are using?

There's lots of self evaluation throughout our family learning, and initially a very visual family learning plan is completed by the family, and re-visited within a couple of sessions throughout the 10 weeks of learning, (should any of the learning require to be re-negotiated), and again at the end of the 10 weeks. The families also take a copy of the learning plan home, and put it in a prominent place, where they can review it together regularly. The family learning plan highlights goals, timescales, what they need to do to achieve their goals, and family members or community members whom they will approach to help support them with their learning. 　

Within the maths, along with the children, the parents complete their own spiky profile and confidence line (self assessment of where their maths is at, and where they think they are at in being able to support their child with their learning). These are carried out at the start of the sessions and repeated again at the end of the learning sessions. Children and parents can then make their own comparison and discuss within large group with the tutor, to highlight impact or progression, and the information is then recorded. We video a lot throughout the learning sessions as well as at the end, asking lots of open questions with regards to progression; being able to support their child; impact on homework; learning at home; confidence; communication/engagement with school etc.  We also video evaluations, where the families have a visual aid (alien faces showing all sorts of emotions) to describe how they felt about the session.  This works particularly well, as it helps them to reflect on their learning and their emotions.

Within the reading, the children have the opportunity to take home books with an associated toy. A diary is written up, highlighting what they have learned, and this is then discussed within the large group, and dialogue recorded.　

So far, discussions with one of the schools have identified 100% attendance (for the first time) at parents' night, better communication with parents, and increased confidence of children. We have delivered Pizza Time to transitional families who are getting ready to move on to High School, and this is our second time delivering the Pizza Maths and Pizza Reading.  Discussions with the families have identified that they feel the family learning has helped the children with their school work; raised the parents' confidence with supporting their children with homework as they now understand language and processes used in the learning; parents feel more confident speaking to teachers and asking relevant questions about their child's learning, and some parents have progressed on to other learning within the community.

For digital learning week, the Pizza Maths introduced ipads and there's a short video on Glow Yammer where the child talks about how he gets confused at 'carrying his 1's' within the classroom, but the ipad has helped him with this, and the parent confirms that using the ipad as a tool has helped him.　

I've also shared other videos on Glow Yammer within Scottish Attainment and Digital Learning and Teaching groups, which you may find useful, and there's lots of interesting dialogue going on within the groups.