Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Case Study of using PbyP at Capel -le- Ferne Primary School
PbyP is used at Capel -le -Ferne with year 5 and 6 pupils across their curriculum and with year1 to extend the EYFS profile using PbyP Foundations.
Capel-le-ferne is a 4-11 community Primary School near Folkestone, Kent with just over 200 pupils on roll. The Headteacher is Mr D.J. Metcalfe. The school achieves results below the national average and has a higher than average number of children with statements of special educational needs.
Who?
James Blomfield, ICT Coordinator at Capel-le-ferne was tasked with raising the profile of ICT in the school to support the use of the new ICT suite alongside the whole school aims to “develop a more creative curriculum based around the skills that children will need to prosper” and “to develop thinking skills and independent learning”. (School Improvement Plan)
How?
James selected PbyP UK Key Skills ladders to use with learners in Years 5 and 6 to develop thinking and learning skills. “A lot of children are spoon-fed at school; we are trying to get them to break the habit and think more for themselves – to be more proactive in their learning”, he explains.
Learners can select evidence from any subject area or out of school projects and activities to build up their skills profile in PbyP. Weekly individual mentoring meetings organised by the PbyP tool support the process.
Success.
The school noticed very quickly how the children enjoyed being able to take more responsibility for their own learning development. “Because they can choose their own learning targets and exercise creativity we have found children lining up projects for themselves. There are children who are setting themselves 10 targets at once.”, James explains.
The use of PbyP enables the school to give the children more responsibility in a measured and supported way and at the same time creates a record of their progression through the skills profile.
The children said:
"The good thing about PbyP is that you can work on apiece of work whenever you feel like it, as you can use the software wherever and whenever you want "
Year 6
“It's good because you can see your level of work in loads of stuff and not just maths and literacy.”
Year 6
"I like the fact that other people from around the world can mark your work and you can mark someone else's work"
Adam, Year 6
"First you look at the target in PbyP. What I sometimes do then is check the work I have already done at school to see which is best to submit for a target. For example if the target if numeracy, I might look at my numeracy folder to see if there is any work there that might be evidence.”
Katie, Year 6
“PbyP is about learning to learn and becoming a better learner.”
James Blomfield
Next Year.
James plans to increase the amount of evidence children use from their activities outside of school in their portfolio. There is a link on the school website directly to the PbyP login page to enable learners to access their PbyP account when and wherever they want. The school are now trialling PbyP Foundations, a specially designed site and ladders based on the Early Years and Foundation stage learning goals with their reception class to record evidence for each child’s EYFS profile.