Don Ledingham’s Learning Log

We held a very successful “Corporate Parenting” Conference today at the Marine Hotel, North Berwick. .
Adam Ingram MSP , Minister for Children and Early Years gave a  well informed and committed keynote address and emphasised the need for us to collectively address the needs of Looked After and Accommodated Children and to focus upon the improving [...]

 
The power of our strategic groups came to the fore this week at our 3 -18 Strategic Learning and Teaching Group.
This group has 25 members who represent a wide cross-section of those of us involved in education in East Lothian.  I know its accepted logic that such a large group can’t operate successfully but it’s [...]

 
Ever since I started teaching I’ve been frustrated with the idea of “Christmas Leavers”.
The school leaving age regulations read as follows: 
Children may leave school once they reach their statutory school leaving date, this is dependent on date of birth. For children born between 1 March and 30 September it is 31 May of their 4th year [...]

 
It’s peculiar how sometimes things just seem to come together in an unexpected and unplanned manner but I had a meeting today where that very thing happened - and I would put it down in no small part to the discipline of keeping a Learning Log.
The various elements of this web of connections are as [...]

 
I visited Dunbar Primary School this afternoon and observed a nursery class and two P3 classes. I was particularly interested in the planning process for nursery classes as I’d sat in on a session during yesterday’s In-Service at Preston Lodge where a group of nursery teachers had been discussing how they lan their work over [...]

 
I’m just getting round to completing some posts about recent visits to schools. Part of the delay was connected to the problem of uploading some photographs from my phone to the web.
The above photograph shows a P3 pupil using numbers to complete a mental paths challenge.  Each child has a set of numbers in front to [...]

I visited St Martin’s Primary school watched active learning in action when I observed a P1 class doing maths. I watched spellbound as the children showed incredible enthusiasm, confidence and focus towards the tasks set by their teacher Cath Nairn.
Cath explained how the pupils were probably three to four weeks ahead of where they would [...]

I was out in Humbie Primary school yesterday afternoon.
Humbie have embraced the active learning approach for early years which have seen the introduction of pre-school approaches into early years of primary.
The school are now exploring the use of the coaching in the learning and teaching process. Some of the teachers in the school were exposed to [...]

I met Ian McGowan today who is one of the Directors of INPP in Scotland.

I was interested to find out more about this programme which I’d heard can have positive outcomes for children with Developmental, Specific Learning and Behavioural Difficulties.
I hope to invite Ian to Haddington to speak to him with some colleagues before we make [...]

We made a decision last year to introduce Midyis baseline testing for all our secondary schools for a test which all S2 pupil sit. Over the last couple of weeks we’ve been analysing the data and its has thrown up some very interesting results.

Such has been the success that we have now agreed to use the [...]