Health & Wellbeing in Integrated Learning Communities

For anyone who wants to find out a bit more about the functionality of GLOW and participate in some friendly discussions about Curriculum for Excellence I can wholeheartedly recomment GLOWing Thursdays!

I was asked by a good colleague Robert Hill to join in and present at today’s GlOWing Thursday about Health and Wellbeing. After a few technical hitches I was pleased to join in from my temporary location of Fort William, in sun-drenched hotel overlooking Ben Nevis.

It worked brilliantly, bar a few croaky voices due to internet connections. If you are interested to see the playback, I think that the LTS channel on You Tube will show them soon. For now, you can access my slides here.

I really focussed on the background to Health and Wellbeing from 2003 and how far we have come, a bit about guidance that Highland produces to support schools in implementing the Schools (Health Promotion and Nutrition) (Scotland) Act then a good look at how we can develop the Health and Wellbeing Experiences and Outcomes, particularly cross-curricular approaches and inter-disciplinary projects.

There were about 6 people at one time, not a lot but I was delighted to be asked and proud to be using the GLOW service. Thanks to Jennifer McDougall and Katie Barrowman.

I spent a day with my fellow Subject Supporters and a few probationary teachers in Highland looking at the HLP  Highland Literacy Project.  The purpose was to see how we can ensure Literacy is embedded across the curriculum in Highland schools. The HLP is a fantastic project / resource for teachers and I can highly recommend it to you. The tips and teaching methodologies will be useful for anyone, even teacher trainers. The brainstorm pic is a collaborative exercise completed with a colleague which began with the title ’strategies for improving literacy’. 

The Highland Literacy Project focuses on the methodologies employed in the teaching of Literacy which allow the pupils to become increasingly independent learners. It is both ‘whole school’ and cross curricular. All aspects of literacy are intertwined; reading and writing are firmly connected and are underpinned by structured talking and listening and the use of collaborative strategies.

Very soon through the implementation of Curriculum for Excellence  – Literacy, Numeracy and Health and Wellbeing will become the responsibility of all practitioners within a school community. I think collaborative strategies are a great way forward to improving literacy and illustrates neatly how Health and Wellbeing is a key part. For example – using active learning methods by working in trios is inclusive practice which increases self-esteem and confidence.

The climate that needs to created within the classroom to enable this to happen is underpinned by aspects of good Health and Wellbeing . I also think the ’skills for life’ that children and young people can develop by learning to read for information using literacy methodologies translate perfectly for digital literacy and online savviness. If you are delivering health education too, I would certainly use literacy strategies to explore different sources of information, podcasts, leaflets, posters, websites and books for their accuracy and values.

I think this is too good an opportunity to miss, so I’m proposing to re-create the brainstorm above using an online collaborative mind mapping tool http://www.mindmeister.com/12184306 so you can join in and share links and ideas!! It also saves you using a magnifying glass to decipher my hand writing (I must admit the neater writing is my colleagues)

Thanks also to my colleague in my Twitter Personal Learning Network –  Ian Stuart who suggested using the online mindmap tool. If you click on the mindmap picture at the top you can see a better view of it with twitpic.