 Lochend Family Learning Project
Progress Report February 2006 AIM 1 To introduce P5-P7 pupils to their local community learning centre and its facilities. Primary 5 and 6 pupils will be provided with an induction to the network, Internet access, an introduction to the Pathfinder website and e-mail accounts. A total of 155 Primary 6, 5/6 or 6/5 pupils from the Lochend Learning Community have visited their local Learning Centre in a small group. They learned how to navigate the local Pathfinder website www.greatereasterhouse.co.uk and how to email each other using the First Class system. After the first visit they received a registration card with their photo on and a Bronze certificate. They earned their Silver certificate on the second visit. Each pupil who has attended these visits has completed an evaluation. It is in multiple choice form and asks if the pupil enjoyed the visit, which activity they like best, if they think they have learned lots of new skills and whether they will return to the Leaning Centre. The response has been very positive. 94% of pupils thought the visits were really good or said they had enjoyed them. Sending emails was the most popular activity (38%), although 46% of the children said they had enjoyed both emailing and looking at the Pathfinder website. 89% of pupils said they thought they had learned something or lots of new things. 78% of pupils said they would like to go back to their local Learning Centre. AIM 2 Primary 7 pupils will visit the Learning Centres to further develop their IT skills development. This will be linked to the Primary/Secondary Liaison work at Lochend High or to pupil needs as specified by the Primary School. A total of 80 Primary 7 pupils have visited the Learning Centres since August. Bishoploch Primary 7s went to Bishoploch Hall in groups, to work on their skills of cutting and pasting pictures from the Internet and adding sounds to these. We also practiced saving pictures to file. This was in preparation for the pupils developing a web page about the Rainforest at Lochend High as part of the IT Primary Secondary liaison project within Lochend Learning Community. Wellhouse Primary 6/7 pupils used their cutting, pasting and word processing skills to compile a page about themselves. These were made into a book which Maureen Morris (a volunteer from the Hub) took to Australia when she went on an official visit in recognition of her work. For their latest visits, Wellhouse 6/7 thought about the environment of their area and ways the residents could improve it further. They decided on slogans, which will be displayed on the electronic board outside the Hub. They also made banners to take home. This links with Wellhouse’s Eco – School work. In consultation with Commonhead staff, it was decided that the P7s’ skills using Microsoft Word would be developed at their visits to FARE. Games were played to familiarise the pupils with the keyboard. We then discussed their likes and dislikes and they wrote a Word document about themselves, illustrating this with pictures from the Internet. The P6/7 groups from Rogerfield went to FARE. They were looking at Study Skills. We thought of different sources of information and discussed the advantages and disadvantages of using the Internet for research. The pupils found out 3 facts about a chosen subject and a compiled a biography of a famous person. Each fact or picture needed to be referenced by a source; e.g. a website. P 7, P5/6 and P3/4 classes from Easthall Primary have visited The Glenburn Centre to use the computers to research topics. AIM 3 To involve young people and their families in learning together using their local community learning centre. A visit to the Learning Centres was arranged for the children when members of their family were welcome. Those attending received a Gold certificate and a gold pencil. This was either arranged after school or during school time. 23 parents have attended these sessions. A Widening Access IT course has been arranged for 10 parents of children at Wellhouse Primary. This will be supported by a tutor from John Wheatley College . It will take place at The Hub for 8 weeks. 11 Support staff from Lochend Learning Community will start an ECDL IT course at Bishoploch Hall for 6 weeks. AIM 4 To develop web based learning resources for upper primary and lower secondary children in partnership with Lochend New Learning Community. These will support the school curriculum. Since August five new web links pages have been created for primary schools on Environmental Studies topics. They are shown as a grid with hyperlinks to the website, a description of it and questions or an interactive task. Updates for the booklets with all the websites I used on the Pathfinder Lochend Family Learning page were printed and given to all the teachers. Teachers from Bishoploch, Wellhouse, Commonhead and Blairtummock Primaries attended in-service sessions about the web links pages in the Lochend Family Learning Area of the Pathfinder website at www.greatereasterhouse.co.uk Support Staff from Blairtummock, Bishoploch, Commonhead and Rogerfield also learned about the web links sites created in order to support pupils, at their own In-service sessions. Two groups of Teaching Access students at John Wheatley College were introduced to the Lochend Family Learning Project. They were shown the primary web links pages on the Pathfinder website and how they could be used. Ways in which the students might look for suitable websites and checks they should make on these were suggested. Secondary In consultation with the staff at Lochend High 4 new web links pages have been made for S1 and S2 Glasgow 5 – 14 Social Studies subjects. Websites have been found for topics on each page of the Nelson Thornes Modern Studies S1/2 textbook. A group of Modern Studies S1 students now regularly use the IT facilities at Bishoploch Hall in order to update their weblog http://modernstudies.blogspot.com/. They use the websites found as a as a source of information for this. AIM 5 Development of homework support. There are currently 4 after school clubs running that were set up by this project. The long term aim is to make them self sufficient. The popular Community Connections club for (mainly) Provanhall children now runs independently by a local volunteer. The children range from P2 – S2. They do ICT and Art activities, 3 – 5pm on Thursdays. The Glenburn club for (mainly) Easthall children is also very well attended. I run a club on Tuesdays teaching IT skills. Next year BOSCOS staff will take over the Tuesday club. We have been working together on IT skill development and planning a programme in readiness for this. On Monday, Thursday and Friday another local volunteer looks after the primary children while they go on their favourite websites. There is an after school ICT and homework club at The Hub in Wellhouse on Thursdays 3.30 – 5.30 pm . The young people further improve their IT skills and play appropriate interactive games. The Pavillion Learning Centre IT Homework club is on Fridays. We are working on a Health Project. The children who attend (mainly from Blairtummock) are learning about Health issues, from visiting experts and specified websites, in order to design a Health wallchart which will be distributed to all primary and nursery pupils in Lochend. Pupils from Lochend High will also consulted by the primary pupils about the final content. Evaluation Regular presentations about the project are made to the Greater Easterhouse Learning Network Representatives at their meetings. This gives an opportunity for feedback from the Learning Centres. At the Lochend Learning Community Head Teachers’ Meeting, January 2006, the project was discussed and orally evaluated, including the aims, organisation, in-service, pupil response, use of the Pathfinder website and links with the Learning Centres. Publicity PQ magazine issue 21 featured an article about the Family Learning Week organised by the project in partnership with PAL and Greater Easterhouse Learning Network. http://www.greatereasterhouse.co.uk/news.asp This project was given as an example of a Key Achievement in the Greater Easterhouse Partnership report. There is an article about it in Section 16. It is referred to as GELN Education Development Project.
The Pathfinder includes links to
3rd party sites which are deemed to be useful or of interest to
residents of Greater Easterhouse as part of the Learning Network
service. However the Greater Easterhouse Learning Network is not
responsible for the content on 3rd party websites and a link to
a site should not be regarded as a recommendation of the service.
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