Tag Archives: critical thinking

Critical Literacy @ Lasswade Primary School

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Lasswade Primary School are doing some interesting work across the school with Critical Literacy as a result of  a one day training day for Midlothian staff (Primary and Secondary school teachers and librarians – not sure if any librarians actually attended) as part of their CPD. The training Critical Literacy – Raising achievement through a Curriclum for Excellence was organised and run in partnership with the University of Edinburgh with a focus on “raising achievement across the curriculum through an action research approach to critical literacy ..”. 

The school formed a working group to plan and implement Critical Literacy which is seen as

“the way that we interact with and make meaning from different texts” and “involves the reader analysing and engaging with a text”.

Text being defined as anything which communicates meaning. For early years this includes looking at pictures for clues and forming opinions of characters in stories.

 Critical questions to ask of texts include: construction of characters; gaps and silences; power and interest; whose view: whose reality?; and questioning the composer.

The working group decided to use the Scots focus month to plan and implement Critical Literacy mainly at second level:

  • P5 – Scotland Today;    identifying and explaining difference between fact and opinion (Loch Ness Monster) ; looking closely at text to see how the author influences the reader to take their point of view about the character (Granny Porage & Greyfriars Bobby); to predict what might have happened if circumstances had been different in the story – different ending, implications of different ending(Greyfriars Bobby).
  • P6 – Scotland Homecoming Video: made their own Scotland homecoming Video
  • P7 – The Broons: recognising bias, views and values of characters, view of the world the text is presenting, understanding the purpose of text 

Support for Learning Teacher – Language programme for Scots Focus present Day:

They found that:

  • the children were motivated
  • enjoyed engaging with different texts
  • used critical thinking – very quickly began to question.

They are now looking at P1 – P4.  Louise Donaldson who is part of the working group is now the teacher for Primary 1 – and is using Goldilocks and the Three Bears to look at the text from different points of view – What would you do? Using role play and looking at moral issues. What would they (the children) have done in her (Goldilocks) shoes:

  • Goldilocks went into a house that she didn’t know – would you?
  •  She sat in chairs which broke etc.

It’s interesting to hear how this same story has been looked at from a critical literacy point of view / questions here compared to Kilmacolm Nursery Blooming Blooms questions. Both trying to encourage children’s critical thinking and questioning. It was also interesting to hear about critical literacy and see its important relationship to information literacy.

It was also interesting to hear about the work of the Support for Learning Teacher and to hear of how children start in Primary 1 learning sounds and key words.  They require support from the Support Learning teacher if the know less than 10 words.  In Primary 2  the Support for Learning Teacher sessions are about spelling and phonics – checking letters. 

Discussions also took place about when children start to copy text to record information they have found.  One solution offered to avoid copying text from books is:

  1. children pose question
  2. highlight bullet points
  3. close books
  4. use bullet points and put information into their own words.

My thanks to Lasswade Primary School, the Head Teacher,  Louise Donaldson and her colleagues Hazel Stewart (Support for Learning Teacher), Audrey McGlade and her P5 class for allowing me into their world and sharing what they are doing with me.

Information Literacy in Junior (Primary) 2

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Returned to St Margaret’s School, Edinburgh (Monday 8th February 2010)  where I spent the day in a Junior (Primary) 2 class (pupils are 6 years old) as part of the work I’m doing for Learning and Teaching Scotland CfE Literacy Team – Real and Relevant – Information and Critical Literacy Skills for the 21st Century Learner’ (Early and First Level). The day was really interesting with the following information literacy activities linked to the Curriculum for Excellence Experience and Outcome HWB 1-30a 

By investigating the range of foods available I can discuss how they contribute to a healthy diet.

  • Research activity – ‘Facts about our topic’ – working in pairs the children research a topic (fruit, vegetables, bread, dairy products) finding interesting facts about their topic using a selection of books from the school library that the teacher had picked and displayed in her classroom.

One of the pair I observed copied text straight from the books they had selected. It made me think – is this where it starts, the copying of text rather than putting it into your own words. I suppose when you are learning to write you do copy text! As the teacher was busy with another activity / group I decided to ask the girls if they could pick out the words that were important in the text they had written which was about bread making (the topic they had chosen to research was bread). The girls were able to do this and we started to talk about different breads and which ones we liked including French sticks (baguettes) and chapatis (one of the girls mothers mother lived in Dundee and always made then chapatis and Biryani
 when they visited so chapatis for this child is associated with Dundee rather than Indian cuisine).  As a result of our discussions the girls were able to identify key fats about their topic.

Another pair working on fruit successfully selected their facts without writing / copying whole texts.

  • Evaluation Exercise– working in pairs the children had to discuss with their partners and use the evaluation form (see attached photo) to carry out an ‘Evaluation of my Picallili Monster’.

Their Picallili Monster was made out of food chosen by them the previous week as part of a project relating to food. I wish now I had taken a photo of the Picallili Monsters. The pair I observed didn’t work as a pair until they were reminded by the teacher. Whilst one child was more focused and could decide on: St Margaret's School, Junior 2 Evaluation Form

  1. what she liked best about the project
  2. the part of the body she liked best and why
  3. if she could change her monster would she and why.

The other child was indecisive and even with some questioning from me seemed to choose something randomly resulting in the part she liked best being the part she would change.

As indicated the above exercises worked best when there was an interaction between the children and the teacher or myself with these activities to direct / encourage their thinking. Active learning is a wonderful thing to see in action but a single teacher on her own is not able to interact all the time with all the individual pupils or pairs. It did however make me think that assistance from other practitioners such as school librarians with such learning activities would be greatly appreciated and beneficial.

My thanks to Miss Elizabeth Wood and her class at St Margaret’s School in Edinburgh for allowing me into their world.

Fashion Brand Retailing course for S6 pupils at Glasgow Caledonian University

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A video featuring GCU’s Department of Fashion, Marketing and Retailing Fashion Brand Retailing course for S6 pupils, is now live on the Learning and Teaching Scotland website. The video, was produced as part of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education’s Journey to Excellence project. HMIe singled out the department’s work as an example of how universities should interact with other agencies and the community and for developing a culture of ambition and achievement in its students.

The video features the department’s work with school pupils, with pupil and staff interviews. It also includes input from the university’s Effective Learning Services on aspects of information literacy for the course research assignment, referencing, critical thinking / Literacy and Study Skills (Academic Literacies).

GCU Effective Learning Services works closely with the library and has a range of online guides for improving course work including:

Other support offered by Effective Learning Services are ‘ Vidcasts for the self directed  learner’ by Angela Shapiro, Lecturer & Aidan Johnston, Learning Technologist, Academic Support and Employability, PASS).

 

A Vidcast or vodcast, contains audio and images, either moving or fixed. The impetus was research on students’ attitudes towards workshops by the ELS. The majority of responses rated the workshops high/very relevant. Nevertheless, it is impractical to expect that every student can attend the workshops or meet with ELS staff face to face and many students access the ELS materials on line (4,595 used support guides on line 2008/2009). Moreover, many students commented that they wanted to access workshop material at a later date.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

Podcasting appeals to auditory learners and with the addition of visual prompts the vidcast can also support dyslexic students in retaining information. Alternatively, users with visual impairments will be able to select to listen solely to the audio element and can download the material on to their mobile device. Students can also choose when and where they wish to engage with the vidcasts and this approach enables students to revisit the material at their own pace, all contributing to self – directed learning opportunities. The PowerPoint slides are in chapters, supported by further links to specific areas of the ELS website to give additional information. Two formats were used: one for on line access embedded within a webpage using a flash based video player and one for students to download for use with their iPod/mobile video device.