Education Home Learning updates

Over the coming weeks we will be highlighting some of the lessons that have been taking place across the West Lothian school community.

While physical school buildings may be closed, learning is certainly continuing across all sectors, with teachers, learners and parents embracing the chance to put their digital skills to use schools have also been providing learning packs where appropriate which have been positively received.

Bathgate Academy

At Bathgate Academy staff have responded calmly and creatively to the challenges of teaching 'remotely' and many innovative approaches have been used to engage pupils in an online learning environment.

There has been a great emphasis in creating a classroom environment with teachers holding conference calls with pupils allowing them to speak to staff directly and ask questions about their learning. This is working especially well in English and with ASD pupils.

In the Music department online quizzes have been undertaken during timed conditions, to energise the learning environment and Maths teachers are scheduling work with fixed submission dates and asking pupils to paste photos of their written work into pages created within Class Notebook. They are using Multiple Choice forms and awarding points per question which allows teachers to provide feedback.

In S1 Science, pupils and their families have been challenged to test the link between smell and taste by holding their noses whilst eating an onion and an apple. Will they taste a difference? Pupils are upcycling their blue bin materials to make water wheels which harness the power of energy. Being at home has its advantages to making learning relevant.

The school has also ensured that the pupil's health and wellbeing is catered for through daily PE challenges, Art challenges, more cookery at home options and weekly wellbeing checks.

James Young High School

Meanwhile staff at the James Young High School have created a Virtual School using Glow and Microsoft Teams where students can access their learning at anytime, anywhere and on any device.

In CDT teachers have created video clips to support students in their learning and can review work completed as it is uploaded through the assignment hand in function.

The school's History students have been researching dangers in the trenches and make posters about them. They have produced some impressive work as seen below:

Science students have been carrying our research into the Rock Cycle and have produced some creative visualisations of it for their teacher.

They have also been completing online assessment activities in S2 where the questions are automatically marked and feedback and a score are given to the students immediately.

In Modern Languages students have continued to use a wide range of games based learning to learn their vocabulary and have been using the feedback facilities on Teams to understand areas of strength and next steps in learning.

A few examples are shown in the following pictures:

Whitburn Academy

At Whitburn Academy teachers have also been using tools such as Microsoft Teams to allow pupils as much of a chance as possible to communicate with staff and talk through their work with both pupils and teachers able to provide each other with valuable feedback.

Technology deployed by the school has also given pupils independence to conduct their own learning independently.

Pupils have been undertaking virtual experiments in Science. Using Microsoft Teams, pupils have been able to watch experiments from links posted by their teacher. They then work independently through a series of tasks in order to write-up the virtual experiment, much in the way they would in class. They are able to post their work for feedback at each stage and ask questions if they need to.

Use of video screen casting has also been vital in allowing teachers to carry out live classroom lessons. Pupils have been able to check-in with teachers who can deliver the online lesson via video-link. The video conference tool allows teachers to use on online whiteboard to show 'worked examples' and pupils can work through these while getting feedback. The screen-casting tool means that the teacher can cast whatever help or resources pupils need in real time.

Teachers can also create different channels on Microsoft Teams. In one example Mr Tibbetts (English) created three channels on a page:

1. "Ready to Work", a channel to register and read instructions each day;
2. "Check my Work", a channel for pupils to post work in-progress for feedback;
3. "I Need Help!", a channel for pupils to ask questions.

Pupils are never more than one click away from a dedicated channel, and can to take ownership of their learning, and work together on problems.