Category Archives: AifL

Effective classroom strategies for closing the gap

An interesting new report has been published by the Centre for Excellence and Outcomes in Children and Young People’s Services (C4EO) with the full title “Effective classroom strategies for closing the gap in educational achievement for children and young people living in poverty, including white working-class boys“.

The news release states:

Effective Classroom Strategies For Closing The Gap In Educational Achievement For Children And Young People Living In Poverty, Including White, Working Class Boys looked at the international research on “what works” in improving learning outcomes for children in poverty. The review focused on strategies and interventions to improve core literacy and numeracy across early-years, primary and secondary settings. It found that there are a number of approaches that can help. These include:

  • Improving the quality of teaching by coaching staff in specific teaching strategies;
  • Using evidence-based approaches, such as co-operative learning, structured and systematic approaches to teaching phonics and “learning to learn” strategies;
  • Whole-school improvement packages which address multiple elements of school provision; and
  • The use of well-specified, well-supported and well-implemented programmes incorporating extensive professional development.

Click here to download the full report.

Using Google Forms in the classroom

Many of us in East Lothian now have access to Google Apps through eduBuzz. This is such a powerful tool and people are thinking of more and more uses for it in education all the time.

Tom Barrett is harnessing the power of the crowd and the cloud to put together lots of examples of how Google Forms are being used in classrooms. This is changing all the time as people add to it, but at the time of posting this was up to 57!

Tom’s got lots more of these in his blog, click here to view them.

Tranent Cluster CfE Assessment In-Service

The Tranent teachers came together on Monday 25th October and held a CfE Assessment In-service as a cluster.

The morning began with a workshop activity on Building the Curriculum 5 and AifL, facilitated by myself. You can see the powerpoint I used below.

As part of this activity, the teachers summarised the key differences in BtC5 and then shared their top key difference in groups. You can see the full summaries below, but some of the emerging themes included:

  • Engaging/involving pupils and parents in assessment
  • Varitey of assessment approaches
  • Assessing skills
  • Moderation activity
  • New National Qualifications
  • The National Assessment Resource

After a coffee break, the teachers then had the opportunity to hear from David Cameron. David was as engaging and inspiring as always and really cut to the heart of what teachers and schools needed to do in order to implement Curriculum for Excellence.

You can see David’s presentation below:

A huge thank you to all involved in the morning!