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Castlefield Primary School
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Address
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Castlefield Primary School
Maple Terrace
Greenhills
East Kilbride
G75 9EG
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Contact
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Andrea Reid
01355 230810
headteacher@castlefield-pri.s-lanark.sch.uk
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Introduction
Castlefield Primary School is a non denominational school in East Kilbride. The school is located in the Greenhills area of the town in the Educational Authority of South Lanarkshire. There are 176 children in the school at present plus a 40/40 nursery. The construction of our new school has just begun with a move in date of February 2007. The nursery class are in temporary accommodation due to a partial demolition of our infant wing to make way for the new building. Primary 1-7 remain in the main building but with very limited space until the new build is complete.
The school has good provision of ICT due to SLC working in partnership with RM. We currently have two computer bays located in our junior and open senior areas. Unfortunately our infant computers are in storage due to space issues.
We are looking forward to having 2 open area computer bays in our new school with much more space.
Our school has invested in a variety of software and hardware over a period of time to augment our allocation from RM eg digital cameras, data projectors and Quizdom. The staff integrate ICT into the curriculum with a variety of programmes to enhance learning needs such as Successmaker, RM Maths and accelerated Reading. We are currently investing in a laptop for each teacher with the aim of having these also networked in the new building. The addition of white boards and class data projectors will give staff the opportunity to make learning increasingly active.
The Initiative
After a consultation parent questionnaire in 2005 we identified several issues which we wanted to address. One area was to increase communication with parents. Parents had said they would be keen to have a school website where they could view school news and information. We contacted our SLC ICT co-ordinator who was already involved in working on the Take2theweb pilot with some other schools. She was keen to have us involved and we were certainly keen to be involved.
Purpose
To begin with the school ICT co-ordinators met with our SLC ICT co-ordinator who was able to gave us a breakdown of some of the aspects of take2theweb which we felt were important. We discussed with her website policy, content, questionnaires.
Outcome
• We wanted to develop a website which would increase communication between school and the home
• We hoped that over time the website could increase the use of ICT in the home - home/school work could be put on the site
• Sending home newsletters which can be lost can be a nuisance we hoped the website would allow parents to download such information in an easy format
• We wanted to celebrate our children’s work and to publish it
• A team of 2 ICT co-ordinators and an early year’s worker would gain additional ICT skills
• Pupils would eventually become more skilled as they gained additional skills eg use of digital camera, podcasting etc
• Promoting the school via a website would help to raise our profile in the community
How Did We Do It?
• Initial meeting with ICT co-ordinator to discuss policy
• Inset whole staff awareness raising of websites and issues
• Questionnaire for parents about content and expectations
• Action Plan writing of how to do it!
• Training at LTS for staff involved
• Approximately 5 days of time for the team to put site together
What next?
• We have now gone live - the basic layout is up and running. We hope to begin podcasting some events such as our children reading Scottish poetry.
• A team of digital camera users have been trained P1-7 as part of an art project with a local artist - we will utilise them with photographing events
• A pupil website team will be trained up soon!
• Promotion of website at our next parent consultation evening where we will have drop in demonstrations
• Additional materials on each class section eg the topics we are studying
• Cool links to fun homework sites
• An ICT self evaluation for the school to decide what further steps we can take eg e-mailing newsletters to parents
The list could go on and on……
Conclusion
This was well worthwhile and we are pleased with what we have achieved so far. It has required a lot of hard work by the staff involved, although additional time out has been arranged a lot has been done at home. The parents have reacted very positively as have the pupils and I am sure it will be well used as time goes on.
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