Facilitator Training Subject Learning Communities Friday 5 th March 2010

What are the desired outcomes from the day?  Snowball activity:  Write your own desired outcomes on post-it notes (use a separate note for each outcome).  Come together as a group of 5/6:  Share your outcomes  Remove duplication  Agree on one set of desired outcomes  Come together as a large group of 11:  Share your sets of outcomes  Remove duplication  Agree on one set of desired outcomes for the large group

 We will have an idea of where the learning community will be based: e.g. edubuzz/anew site. Will it be a common format?  Set up an online network.  To discover more about the proposed learning communities model.  See what AifL is going on and get some consistency.  Work with like minded people.  See who else is interested from my subject area.  For each subject specific group to have a focus for the development of the curriculum.  Establish a group of like minded people to produce quality materials.  To know what area(s) to focus on within my group.  Roles & expectations of being a facilitator, and what help/resources are available to help?  To learn about the role of facilitator.  Facilitator roles?  To get a better understanding of the roles of a facilitator.  The role of a facilitator is made clear in terms of remit, timescales and priorities.  To find out what backing I have from above.  Funding – Where can I get funding from?Enterprise in Education? Will the pupils get access to the site?  To establish better links between schools  How will/can we share good practice better?  Meeting other like minded people to share ideas.  To share ideas, concerns and realistic possibilities of CfE in PE.  To hear other people’s/subjects thoughts on moving forward with CfE.  To make the transition to the new curriculum easier – shared practice.  To have working examples of CfE  Try to establish core activities that every school will complete.

The proposed model  Discuss the following in your groups of 5/6:  What is your opinion of the proposed model of Subject Learning Communities?  What would you change to improve this proposal?  How can we make the model sustainable?  Summarise your agreed answers to these questions on flipchart paper.

Roles of a facilitator  Group task  Review the various examples of the roles and responsibilities of facilitators.  Use these ideas and your own to develop a guide/framework which could be used by Facilitators of Subject Learning Communities.

Principles of learning communities  Starter questions for group discussion:  How do the changes needed for embedding Formative Assessment relate to Curriculum for Excellence?  How can we achieve Wiliam’s five principles of teacher learning communities?  What do you understand by the terms 'reflective practice', 'action research' and ‘professional enquiry’?  Could your subject learning community be an opportunity for collaborative professional enquiry? Is this desirable? Why?

Principles of learning communities  Group task: How could communities operate to improve learning?  Imagine your group is a successful Subject Learning Community which has been working collaboratively for two years.  What does this look like? What have you achieved? How does this feel? What impact has it had on you and your pupils?  Outline the steps/processes your community have been through over the past two years to become successful.

Starting a Subject Learning Community  Group task: How do you start a community?  You will be given a scenario as a group.  Decide as a group what steps the facilitator in the scenario should take to set up and run the Subject Learning Community over the first year.