A parent's story
Frances is a single working parent who moved to Falkirk a year ago with her two daughters, Sarah and Kirsty.
Kirsty, an S1 pupil, requires additional support for learning. She was previously at a special school, so Frances was pleased that Falkirk Council was able to give Kirsty a place at the same secondary school as older sister Sarah.
Helping an underachieving child
At her previous school, Kirsty’s teachers reported that she was underachieving, as she was quite disorganised.
Frances wanted to help her daughter make a fresh start at her new school. She blamed herself for losing touch with Kirsty’s progress when she had moved to secondary school, but felt awkward asking teachers for information.
Parents’ evening problem
Kirsty had misplaced a parents’ evening letter she should have given to her mum. When her guidance teacher asked Kirsty for the reply slip, she admitted that she’d lost the letter.
Encouraging Kirsty to shoulder the responsibility, her teacher simply asked Kirsty if she had access to the internet at home. The answer was 'yes'. Her teacher then showed her how to access Glow, and where to find information about the school’s parents’ evening.
So when Kirsty told her mum about the lost letter, she also told her mum where she could get all the information about parents’ evening.
Getting parents’ evening information on the home computer
Kirsty showed her mum how she could log on to the school’s pages on Glow. Frances discovered she could read vital information about the parents’ evening, and even book appointments with the teachers.
She also found Kirsty’s test results and reports from each subject teacher, as well as detailed information about the curriculum for each subject.
Identifying Kirsty’s interests - and how to support her learning
From the results, it was obvious Kirsty was doing well in history, but had made a poor start in science. Kirsty said it was because science was ‘hard’ while history was ‘fun’.
Her history teacher had an interactive whiteboard and did role-plays of historic events. The class had also been taught to organise their notes using mind-mapping software. Kirsty could print out maps of her ideas, as well as saving them into her own folder on the school network. If she lost anything, she always had a copy.
Kirsty told her mum that one of the reasons she didn’t like science was because there was lots to write down, and her notes got disorganised.
Parent’s evening - a chance to improve Kirsty’s learning
With all this information, Frances could talk to the form tutor about Kirsty’s good progress in history and not-so-good progress in science.
Frances and the form tutor agreed that with the right tools and approach, Kirsty was able to do really well. Frances also discovered that the science class worked at lab tables, so they couldn’t use computers very often. The form tutor suggested that Kirsty could book a laptop computer to use in science classes.
Emailing Kirsty at school
Six weeks after the parents’ evening, Frances remembered to wish Kirsty ‘Good luck’ for the science test she knew she had that morning. Frances had access to the internet at work, so she also told Kirsty she’d send her an email message which she could collect from the school’s network room at the end of the day.
Taking notes with a laptop computer
Since the parents’ evening, Kirsty had been using the laptop computer in science to keep notes. She did this with mind-mapping software.
After the lessons, Kirsty saved her notes to her personal space in Glow on the school network. Kirsty then used the internet to pick up her notes at home, through her own Glow pages.
Support to pass a science test
Kirsty’s mum saw a big difference - her daughter now spent a lot of time on the computer at home, and found it much easier to revise a science test. The Glow group, that Kirsty’s science teacher created, even had links to revision material.
When Frances logged on to Glow from work, she was thrilled to see that Kirsty had received very positive feedback from her science teacher and a grade ‘B’ for the very first time.
Frances was even able to send her daughter a congratulatory email. The response from Kirsty? ‘Can we go shopping on Saturday now?’
Getting closer to her daughters’ education
Glow made it easy for Frances to follow both daughters’ education more closely. She could see the work they were given by all the subject teachers – as well as all her daughters’ answers and marks.
So Frances knew exactly what her daughters were studying at school – and they had no opportunity to keep her in the dark!
Frances also used the parents’ information area on the school site to understand the qualifications her girls will be working towards as they move up the school.